Choosing a Social Media Services Package

It now seems that Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, a blog and a YouTube channel are effectively mandatory for any brand wanting to keep in touch with its customers. Use of these sites can improve brand awareness, but it is a double-edged sword and needs the same planning, care and attention as does any other form of marketing. Companies offering suitable services and expertise have sprung up over the last few years. The first question for a brand is to consider whether to buy-in expertise and products, or to use the free tools and the efforts of their own staff. The main sites now have many free tools available. These provide facilities to analyse activity, manage postings and allow some degree of content moderation. A study released in January 2013 found that nearly ninety per cent of advertisers are using these free social media services and products. This is partly because the perceived value of paid-for products is not sufficient to sell them, and partly due to continued skepticism about the effectiveness of these websites for generating business. Continued bad publicity, such as the ارخص موقع بيع متابعين Twitter password-hacking problems, can produce reluctance to spend on this form of marketing due to concerns about security and credibility. Free products certainly have their place, particularly when starting a presence on Facebook, Twitter and the other sites. However these products require all the expertise to be in-house, and will have very limited support provided. The paid products come with the expertise of the company concerned, and so there is no need for a company to 'reinvent the wheel' by having to build its own strategy and train its own staff. The improved business intelligence alone can result in recouping the costs several times over. The range of services available varies between providers, and there are various packages and combinations. The main areas that should be covered are fairly standard, and are discussed below.