by Irene Lizarraga

Created on: October 27, 2009   Last Updated: July 04, 2011

Social media has become a very popular marketing channel thanks to its unique potential to create relationships with customers. Unlike traditional marketing, it involves engaging with your customers, talking with them and showing them that you're listening. Social Media is all about sharing, and by making your brand part of your customer's social life you will get their loyalty and they will spread the word to their friends. Clever social media marketing can be of great benefit to any company, and there are many reasons to use it:Im

Improving Customer Engagement
With Social Media marketing, you are talking to your customers and they are talking back to you. That makes them feel more involved with your company, since it's marketing efforts become much more personal. If you do it right and actually engage with your customers, you will see them becoming more loyal your brand. However, as anything on the web 2.0, this is a two ways street. If you want your customers to listen to you, they need to know they are being heard as well. If your brand doesn't feel living and your communications are announcements that could be made by a robot, don't expect the attention starved social customer to give you their time.

Increasing Brand Credibility
For many customers, companies that use Social Media seem more open, and trustworthy. Showing no fear of having a conversation with your audience is a very positive trait for any company, specially compared to unresponsive customer service and cold, mechanic press releases. At the same time, a mistake can brand your company an hypocrite and be very damaging. Information spreads faster than light on the Internet, both the good and the bad.

Receiving Faster feedback
Having an active line of dialogue with your customers means that you can ask them questions, and get much faster results than by running a poll or waiting them to answer a newsletter call. Asking on Twitter "What do you think of our website redesign" will get you hundreds of answers in a matter of hours. Many pro bloggers already harness the power of instantaneous Internet communication by asking their followers questions and including their answers on their blogs.

Saving Money on Marketing
Social Media is, compared to traditional advertising, very low cost. Even paid ads on networks such as Facebook, highly targeted at specific profile types, are usually PPC and relatively cheap. And there's many ways of using Social Media as a marketing tool for free, from creating a Twitter

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