Social media becoming a viable marketing tool

CEBU, Philippines -  Micro, small and medium enterprises should utilize social media as part of their marketing mix, a social media marketer says.

Fleire Castro, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Third Team Media, said that social media is a very powerful tool to leverage the word of mouth in marketing which adds to the potential of businesses to grow and prosper.

Compared in Manila where there is a vast improvement on digital marketing and boom of progress, she noted that in Cebu, lesser players are involved in digital space since some of them are still eyeing the advantages of social media.

In the advent of technology and the presence of social need, she said that business owners can benefit from social media in various ways such as marketing and sales, human resources, product innovation, public relations, and customer service.

To get started, Castro added that entrepreneurs must identify their social media goal to have an idea of productivity. In coming up with a certain goal, they have to listen, know their customers, and get their impression for them to be able to determine what platform to use whether it may be Facebook, Twitter, online local forums, websites, blogs and other social networking sites.

She further noted that instead of making a business page, business owners create a profile account wherein they have lesser control and more limitations in their advertising strategies.

After the creation of a business page, Castro said that it is also a must to respond to positive and negative feedback based on their product knowledge along with open-mindedness and humane intention.

“If you know that the customers are there, why not include it in your marketing mix? But if you’re not doing anything about it, that might be negative on your part. Maintaining them is way different in just creating them. You’re not just until the set-up process,” she said.

In attending to the customers’ needs and comments, there will be a rise of influencers who can affect other people’s preferences and can result to a more productive health of your brand.

Establishing rapport with customers through social networking, loyal customers will be the end result for the business. Castro said that if an entrepreneur has loyal customers, they will continuously talk about his product, build awareness and gain more customers. Moreover, personal recommendations from family and friends are given more weight than hardcore advertisements.

However, she said that there may be a concept that social media is for free but the maintenance of those profiles in the platforms, considered to be business enhancers, demands ample time and regular attention.

“The platform is free, creating the profile is free but the question is do you have the time to manage those platforms? If you don’t have much time since you’re busy with your core business, that’s when the Third Team Media enters to help you,” Castro stated, encouraging local entrepreneurs to engage more in social media.

To those brands that need to outsource social media marketing, entrepreneurs can give the responsibility to Third Team Media which offer social media management services such as planning and strategy, profile creation and customization, content creation, community management, ongoing updates and campaign execution.

Founded in 2010 and based in Lapu-Lapu City, Third Team Media is a digital agency providing proven and emerging digital marketing strategies to offer channel planning and implementation services to its clients from United States, United Kingdom and HongKong. (FREEMAN)