It may be slightly scandalous to say that social media is not enough anymore. What is even more is that it never really was enough in the first place. Social media has always found its identity within marketing as A tool, not THE tool. While social media is an extremely important avenue, you simply cannot rely on it to do everything.
Relational
Social media is all about relationships. When someone follows your brand’s accounts or connects with your brand they are developing a relationship with you. They have an emotional connection to your brand because of social media. Take it a step further, and make the connection directly. While this has more personal applications with platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, you can get to know your followers and connections by engaging with them through messages and responses. Once you have established that level, a phone call or face-to-face is much easier to suggest. When you are trying to build specific contacts, this can be an extremely effective way to meet new people. Social media can be a sales tool to help you in the door, but you can’t expect the relationship to stay virtual forever.
Sales
Posting and participating on social media requires walking a fine line between promoting a brand and being, well…social! Your audience on social media does not want to be sold to all the time. That isn’t why they are using social media. However, appropriate and strategic pushes for sales or other calls to action can be effective. For most industries, the close of the sale doesn’t happen on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, but rather, those platforms direct their audience to the place they can make the sale. As a result, you had better have a killer website, etsy site, or follow up system that allows for the sale to actually close. Social media can help, but it can’t do it all.
Branding
In a developed branding strategy, the social media aspect is simply a piece of a larger puzzle. The branding must be cohesive across all channels, but it has a specific funnel to share the brand message. We all know that certain demographics tend to use certain social media channels more than others; some do not even want to use social media. A diversified approach to branding can allow social media strategies to shine, while driving home the overarching brand message to that audience.
Informational
For many businesses that want to simply look legitimate, having social media accounts are a burden. They may rely heavily on other means to promote their company and the social media profiles are simply meant to be a way for people to find their web link, phone number, and other basic information. While this is not an encouraged strategy, it is highly common in small to mid-size businesses today. Of course, if you are employing this strategy, it is obvious that the website, referral network, and other marketing strategies must be highly developed.
Social media is not a magic genie that will magically convert sales all on its own. It is an integral part of a whole marketing strategy. While it has immense opportunities, you need to look at your business from a bigger perspective and see how social media can support your other efforts.