Unkind Realities of Social Media Marketing

Many social media marketing article would describe the task of marketing via social media as a “walk in the park” and that you should start learning the basics and jump right it. Well, social media marketing is all that and more.

In some ways, it is true that social media marketing is easy. Signing up for various profiles on popular social media sites is easy. Learning the basics of social media marketing is easy (if you’re really interested in it). Producing quality content can also be easy if you put your heart into your chosen niche. But there’s more to social media marketing than just the easy part.

There’s going to be the reality of things that you’ll have to be aware of.

Social media is not about selling. Well, not directly. Even though you’re trying to use social media to market your goods, doing it point blank will get you nowhere, fast. There are ways for you to drive sales than just blatantly blabbering on a product or service that people should buy. You have to remember that direct sales pitches automatically get blocked or reported as spam. That is, unless you’re a trusted go-to person in that field. It takes time to build trust and reputation enough to merit direct pitches or sales offers.

The opinion of others weigh more than yours. You have to keep in mind that no amount of quality content will work to the success of your social media marketing strategy if your reputation sucks. If people don’t like you because you’re a jerk, people will tell on you and all your efforts would have gone to waste. Social media is about building good relationships with people. Invest on that and you’ll get a good reputation. Aside from that, it’ll give your social media marketing efforts a higher chance of surviving.

No one’s paying attention to what you’re saying. Take a blog, for example. With the many blogs popping out left and right in the social media universe, writing a bunch of “me too” posts will get you nowhere in the race. Who would want to read something they’ve read someplace else already? People want fresh content. Unless you can bring something new to the table, or at least give people a reason to read your blog, then you might as well be running last place in the race. If you want to get around this, blog hop and pick up tricks to making more effective content that people would want to read.

Sometimes you have to give stuff to get some back. In the case of a blog, you got to share some of your best works to get people to come back and read your other stuff. Think of it as pro-bono work you’re doing for a prospective client. You got to show them what you can do so that they’d come back to you with other jobs that would pay, this time around.

Social media can consume you. It takes time to cover all your bases in social media marketing. But you have to remember that it’ll eat up your time only if you let it. If you know how to effectively manage your time, you’ll be able to do as much work as you can yet still have enough free time to deal with the important things in life, such as spending time with loved ones or just chill out.

Don’t get discouraged by these harsh realities. They’re not meant to disillusion you at social media marketing, but rather aimed at leveling you so that you’ll know what to expect once you do get serious with your social media marketing endeavor.

Do you think these realities are too harsh to accept for a budding social media marketer?