Introduction to Social Media Marketing with Douglas Lim

Douglas Lim is one of the best bloggers on social media marketing. In his utube video “Social Media Marketing Explained” he gives an overview of what is at the core of social media marketing. He says that, as you probably know, social media marketing is based on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. And he continous that the main reason why companies add social media to their marketing mix is to enhance the brand value by creating a internet presence. Lim then lists the four steps a business needs to take to implement social media in their  marketing mix.

The first one is to identify the target market. So if we take the Allgemeiner Studierenden Ausschuss der HWR ( AStA) as our role model, students at HWR were the target audience.

The next step according Lim is to define the message the company would like to convey. In the case of AStA this would probably be ” Zusammen mehr bewegen”.

Lim then states that the next step is to find a strategy on how to implement your social media plan. Thinking about AStA, what Lim says about “Set-and-forget” holds true, meaning that social media has continously be updated or as Mrs Philliposa put it:

Blogs are like sharks; if they don’t move they die.

Last but not least, step number four according to Lim is to choose the right vehicle, which could be any social media that suits the target audience such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Youtube or Google+. For the AStA, the most appropriate media would be Facebook because most students at HWR prefer to use Facebook.

To finish where I started off, do you think that social media marketing is the right tool for small local companies to promote their business? Or should they leave it to the big brands?