Social media marketing is a complex beast. Businesses that use this marketing strategy have met with a mix of success and failure, as evidenced by news stories as of late. The great part about social media marketing is that even small businesses that were considered too small to participate in some marketing mediums are able to take advantage of social media, when done effectively. Advanced strategies are available to businesses that have the ambition to use them. With a little knowledge, perhaps some social media consulting expertise and a little luck thrown in for good measure, any business can crate an effective online presence through advanced strategies for successful social media marketing.

An advanced strategy usually goes beyond the usual social media presence that you are used to. In most cases, it is a strategy that is driven by nothing but good ideas. But how do you arrive at those good ideas? If your business does not comprehend what social media marketing is all about, it may not be possible to reach the target and get more traffic to the website. Even employees of your organization have to understand what online marketing is all about and often times, an expert consultant may be necessary to provide a strategic advantage.

Multimedia Use in Social Media Marketing

It is no secret that most of consumers are now using websites to look for videos and pictures. If someone wants to buy a product, he or she can take a look at the picture in order to make a more appropriate decision. With advances in digital camera and video camera technology it is now easy for even a small business to produce high-quality photos and videos in a short amount of time. What better way to highlight the culture and nature of a company, its products and its people than through multimedia?

The inclusion of videos in social media marketing enables your products to nearly speak for themselves. If the videos show a step-by-step procedure on how to use the products, the benefits realized by using them and their real-life performance, you customer’s potential doubts will melt away as their confidence in your company’s products grows. Multimedia, in all likelihood, can be the difference between a social media campaign falling flat or going viral.

Online Can Also Be Offline

Another strategy is to ensure that you integrate both online and offline advertising. Offline advertising includes print, radio and cable as we as store displays and even product packaging and presentation. For example, are you providing potential customers viewing your television ads with your Facebook page address? Likewise, you could encourage your Facebook fans check out your commercials and provide feedback on new products or services much like a movie studio would do for a new movie trailer.

Adapt Your Message Appropriately

Message adaptation is also another equally important advanced social media strategy. Some message adaptation is perfectly evident simply based on the platform being used. For example, Twitter messages only provide for 140 characters, therefore, your message on Twitter would be far different than that on Facebook.

It’s also important to pay close attention to social media sites’ specific terms and conditions. Each site is effectively its own unique ecosystem and each operate with different rules. For example, what is acceptable on Facebook might be viewed as spam on Twitter. The best thing is to customize your message and understand that each and every social site is different. Customizing the messages helps to avoid customers receiving multiple communications that they consider to be unwanted.

This article was written by Daniel Ruyter, co-founder of the digitial marketing startup Alpha Tree Marketing.