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10 Important Questions in Social Media Today

Social media itself is a hot topic today. However, within this broad category there are subcategories that are of specific interest to people who are studying and utilizing social media. If you’re on top of these hottest social media topics then you’ll be at the top of your game when it comes to using social media to better your business.

Here’s a brief look at 10 of the most important questions that businesses are asking about social media today:

1. How necessary is social media? We keep hearing that social media promotion is an absolute must for all businesses but is that really true? Do we need to use every social media outlet available to us or can we use just one or two social networking sites and still get enough online promotion? The question of just how necessary social media is to a particular business is on the mind of nearly every business owner who is exploring this area of online marketing today.
2. Should social media be done in-house or outsourced? Businesses are trying to determine whether it makes sense to hire someone to do their social media marketing in-house. If so, should that person be a part-time or full-time employee? If not, should the social media work be outsourced to a freelance individual or to an SEO company? This is a tough question that different businesses are each answering in their own ways today.
3. What role does video marketing play in social media? Video has been hot since YouTube blew up and it continues to be hot today. Businesses need to determine how to integrate video marketing with social media marketing for the most effective online marketing campaign.
4. What’s going to happen with mobile social media marketing? This is a very young area of an already-young aspect of marketing and yet it’s highly relevant and important today. Smartphones, geolocation services and mobile social networking sites are all increasingly available and popular. Businesses are wondering what the mobile social media marketing trends are going to be in the next year or so and how to jump on those trends before everyone else does.
5. How should we integrate social media marketing with traditional marketing? There is certainly still a role for traditional marketing practices for most businesses. The question is how to integrate them with social media marketing. Should these two divisions be handled by one marketing team? Should they be separate? How should money be delegated between the two? How can they compliment each other without being redundant?
6. What type of budget should be allocated for social media marketing? Businesses are ultimately concerned with the bottom line. Figuring out how to budget for social media, where the money should come from and how it should be distributed across different types of social media are things that many businesses are still trying to determine.
7. How should we analyze the results of social media marketing? Corresponding with creating a budget is the need to analyze the financial results of your social media efforts. Figuring out your Return on Investment (ROI) is tough when dealing with social media. How can you tell if your campaigns are working? What analytics tools are best to use for tracking social media efforts? These are questions that businesses are still trying to find answers to.
8. How should we deal with customers and competitors using social media? One big issue that’s come up is the fact that customers and competitors can do a lot of damage to a business very quickly by using social media to spread negative rumors and reports about the business. Businesses are struggling to figure out how to monitor and respond to such issues in an effective manner.
9. What’s the next big site for social media? Right now the hottest social media sites seem to be Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. However, these trends change quickly. Businesses want to get an idea of which new sites (or new types of sites) might blow up in the next couple of years so they can get in on the ground floor of using them.
10. How do we structure a social media strategy? Ultimately all of these questions boil down into one bigger question: how do we make a plan for using social media? Business plans and traditional marketing plans are a good start as templates for creating a social media plan but most businesses are discovering that they need to add some new facets to this template to make a solid plan that really works for them. Determining how to do that is a key issue for businesses dealing with social media today.