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Introduction

You sat back, sighing with relief that your website was running faultlessly, optimized for search engines, and producing traffic, leads, and sales. Maybe you ventured into email marketing or pay-per-click advertising to generate new customers. Then you thought with satisfaction, “I’ll just let the money roll in.”

Instead, you were inundated with stories about Facebook pages, Twitter and tweets, blogs and podcasts, Snapchat, Instagram, and all other manner of social media buzz. By now you’ve probably tried more than one of these social media platforms. Perhaps you haven’t seen much in the way of results, or you’re ready to explore ways to expand your reach, increase customer loyalty, and grow your sales with social media.

Much as you might wish it were otherwise, you must now stay up to date with rapidly changing options in the social media universe. As a marketer, you have no choice when more than 77 percent of Internet users visit blogs and social media and when your position in search engine results may depend on the recency and frequency of social media updates. Social media marketing is an essential component of online marketing.

The statistics are astounding: Facebook has more than 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020; more than 4.4 million blog posts are published every day; more than 500 million tweets were sent per day on average in 2020; and nearly 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute on YouTube. New company names and bewildering new vocabulary terms continue to flood the online world: TikTok, Snapchat, Bitmoji, influencer, and sentiment monitoring, for example.

Should your new business get involved in social media marketing? Is it all more trouble than it’s worth? Will you be hopelessly left behind if you don’t participate? If you jump in, or if you’ve already waded into the social media waters, how do you keep it all under control and who does the work? Which platforms are the best for your business? Should you take advantage of new channels or stick with the comfortable ones you’ve already mastered? This book helps you answer both sets of questions: Should your business undertake social media marketing? If so, how? (Quick answer: If your customers use a social media service, use it. If not, skip it.)

About This Book

The philosophy behind this book is simple: Social media marketing is a means, not an end in itself. Social media services are tools, not new worlds. In the best of all worlds, you see results that improve customer acquisition, retention, and buying behavior — in other words, your bottom line. If this sounds familiar, that’s because everything you already know about marketing is correct.

Having the most likes on Facebook or more retweets of your posts than your competitors doesn’t mean much if these achievements don’t have a positive effect on your business. Throughout this book, you’ll find concrete suggestions for applying social media tactics to achieve those goals.

If you undertake a social media marketing campaign, we urge you to keep your plans simple, take things slowly, and always stay focused on your customers. Most of all, follow the precepts of guerrilla marketing: Target one niche market at a time, grow that market, and then reinvest your profits in the next niche.

Foolish Assumptions

We visualize our readers as savvy small-business owners, marketers in companies of any size, and people who work in any of the multiple services that support social media efforts, such as advertising agencies, web developers, graphic design firms, copywriting, or public relations. We assume that you

 Already have or will soon have a website or blog that can serve as the hub for your online marketing program

 Are curious about ubiquitous social media

 Are comfortable using search terms on search engines to find information online

 Know the realities of your industry, though you may not have a clue whether your competitors use social media

 Can describe your target markets, though you may not be sure whether your audience is using social media

 Are trying to decide whether using social media makes sense for your company (or your boss has asked you to find out)

 May already use social media personally and are interested in applying your knowledge and experience to business

 May already have tried using social media for your company but want to improve results or measure return on your investment

 Have a passion for your business, appreciate your customers, and enjoy finding new ways to improve your bottom line

If our assumptions are correct, this book will help you organize a social marketing presence without going crazy or spending all your waking hours online. It will help you figure out whether a particular technique makes sense, how to get the most out of it, and how to measure your results.

Icons Used in This Book

To make your experience easier, we use various icons in the margins to identify special categories of information.

These hints help you save time, energy, or aggravation. Sharing them is our way of sharing what we’ve figured out the hard way — so that you don’t have to. Of course, if you prefer to get your education through the school of hard knocks, be our guest.

This book has more details in it than any normal person can remember. This icon reminds you of points made elsewhere in the book or perhaps helps you recall business best practices that you know from your own experience.

Heed these warnings to avoid potential pitfalls. Nothing we suggest will crash your computer beyond repair or send your marketing campaign into oblivion. But we tell you about business and legal pitfalls to avoid, plus a few traps that catch the unprepared during the process of configuring social media services. Not all those services create perfect user interfaces with clear directions!

The geeky-looking Dummies Man marks information to share with your developer or programmer — unless you are one. In that case, have at it. On the other hand, you can skip any of the technical-oriented information without damaging your marketing plans or harming a living being.

Beyond the Book

You can find an online cheat sheet on the book’s companion website. Go to www.dummies.com and type Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies in the Search box. The cheat sheet contains secrets for social media marketing success, online resources, and more.

The website also has a Downloads tab you can open to download copies of the Social Media Marketing Goals and Social Media Marketing Plan forms, which you can use to develop your own marketing plans. In addition, the website is the place to find any significant updates or changes that occur between editions of this book.

Where to Go from Here

As always with All-in-One Dummies books, the minibooks are self-contained. If there’s a topic you want to explore immediately, start with the detailed Table of Contents or index.

If you’re just starting out with social media, we recommend reading minibooks 1 and 2. The chapters in Book 1 act as an overview of social media and will help you figure out how to integrate social media into your online marketing plan, which in turn is part of your overall marketing plan. Remember, social media is the tail — your business is the dog! Book 1 will help you establish reasonable expectations for a return on investment and structure an appropriate allocation of time, personnel, and funds to achieve success.

Book 2 offers an overview of tools to manage your social media marketing efforts. You’ll also learn how to leverage your existing search engine optimization approach to maximize the value of social media postings to earn better ranking on search results pages.

The six minibooks that follow focus on popular and niche social media services, with detailed how-to descriptions for putting together a content marketing strategy, marketing with social media, and advertising on social networks. The final minibook is a deep dive into social media analytics, so you can gather the information you need to make data-driven marketing decisions.

We wish you a fun and profitable experience going social!