Social media has become extremely popular in the last 5 plus years. In fact it continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. Facebook alone has been reported to have received 13 million unique Australian visitors in 2011, imagine how many worldwide!  YouTube has had 11 million and Linkedin reports having 2 million – all in one year.

Many people haven’t even heard of Facebook or YouTube, but many millions more have and they are the people who log in as much as 4 times per day to check what their 150 Facebook friends (on average) have been up to and to view video’s uploaded to YouTube.

However Facebook, YouTube and the huge amount of social media sites have much more to offer than just entertainment.  They can offer an excellent platform to promote your business.  If you know a little bit about having a website, you’ll know that search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for the success of your site.  The amount of links pointing back to your site, raise your credibility in search engines eyes.  Social media can assist you because you can attach your website address in almost every post, and also in your profile.

It makes sense to devote time and effort to social media, as it can be a huge enhancement to your business.  It works virally, so people pass or share your information with their friends if they believe it can be beneficial to them.  If you have a unique product, you may find your product or service takes off very rapidly.

However, many people are marketing similar products online, making the environment saturated, so unless you have something that is totally distinctive, you will need to put more effort in to compete with your rivals.  For example the niche of weight loss is colossal, and to make your mark and dominate online for such a niche would be a massive undertaking competing with those at the peak of this extremely popular subject.

Once you begin your social media campaign, it will require nurturing, don’t expect to make a couple of posts and have it take off like lightening, it may require quite a lot of effort to get results. Make sure your marketing campaign has a strategy – a goal and a vision and should show a return on investment for it to be a viable endeavor.

Social media can be a wonderful marketing research tool and it can assist you to keep in touch with your customers and inform them of up to date products and current or upcoming sales campaigns.  Though never rely solely on online promotions, you’ll be missing out on those customers that don’t have access to the Internet.