Modern brand promotion means more than just sending out a few fliers and running some print advertisements.  Today, more and more brands are making use of an online marketing company or a social media agency to help them promote their brand to interested consumers online.

Social media marketing is a complicated issue.  Many companies make the mistake of assuming that online marketing is simply a case of placing a few ads, setting up a Facebook page, and creating a Twitter account.  The truth is that such steps are just the start.  An unused Facebook page, or a misused Twitter account, can do a lot of harm to your brand.

An online marketing company can help you to work out your social media strategy.  One of the first things that a good social media agency will do is work out what networks appeal to your target audience, and help you to establish a useful presence on there.  This will save you time and effort over a less targeted, scatter-spray approach.

For some brands, the right network is Twitter, for others it may be Facebook, or Bebo, or even a more esoteric network such as Identi.ca.  Finding out where your customers spend most of their time is vital.
Once you know where your customers like to hang out, you can start interacting with them.  You must remember that not every message needs to be a sales message.  If you offer your audience useful content - at no charge - then they're more likely to think positively of you and will be more receptive to your message.
Hiring An Online Marketing Company is Not a One Time Job

Hiring a social media agency or an online marketing company should not be a one-time thing.  The work done by an online marketing company goes beyond just setting up the accounts.  A good social media agency will come up with regular campaigns to encourage your users to spread your message, and will also manage your social media accounts - that means talking to people, answering questions, promoting your product or service, and responding to questions from users of the service.

To keep your users engaged, you will need to make sure you update your profiles on the social media sites regularly.  That could just be updates about current events, the occasional funny video, a quiz, or a competition, or it could be re-tweeting messages from your followers, or joining in a conversation.  The trick is to make the communication look natural and sincere, rather than having it appear to be advertising.
A good social media agency will help you by managing these communications, or by helping you to learn how to engage with your community yourself.  The skills that you learn from a social media expert will pass over to other areas of online promotion, and hopefully help you to build a brand that has a good reputation, making future promotion more likely to go viral and reach a much wider audience.

This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Boom Online Marketing. James is an SEO professional who enjoys writing about online marketing.


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