Heads up, companies and small businesses: just in case you haven’t heard, Facebook will begin limiting the number of promotional posts starting this January, meaning you’ll have to pay to get your advertisements posted on their site. This is part of their aim to improve user experience after surveying thousands of people saying that they were already tired of seeing promotional posts on their feed.

Facebook might have been an effective medium in promoting your business, but Kimanzi Constable, contributor for Entrepreneur.com, says that relying too much on social media might be detrimental to your marketing strategy rather than beneficial:

When you build a large social media following, you have to realize that those people are their customers, not yours. They may be following you, but that social media platform has complete control of what they see and do. Building your business on someone else’s platform has led to the downfall of many entrepreneurs.

Since these social media platforms are businesses themselves, it might not be wise to rely too much or solely on social media marketing. Instead, Kimanzi Constable has suggested a diverse online marketing strategy, which you can utilize in the coming year:

When SEO started to decrease, savvy entrepreneurs pivoted because they weren’t too dependent on any one strategy. These same entrepreneurs will also weather the changes on social media and whatever is the next “big thing.”

 

Putting all your eggs in one basket is recipe for disaster. Social media marketing should be one part of a unique, and diverse marketing strategy. If that part of the strategy starts to decrease, you pivot instead of feeling the effects financially. Successful entrepreneurs are trendsetters, not followers of what used to work.

Also important to consider are the projected trends in 2015 when strategizing your online marketing in Greenville, SC. In a separate article, Forbes listed down mobile optimization, content marketing, and e-mail marketing to be among the trends on the rise for the coming year, and more brands humanizing their images and leaning more into relevant content rather than promotional ones. Moreover, the lines between search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media will begin to become more blurred.

With a new year fast approaching, it’s vital to review your online marketing strategies in the coming months, keeping in mind that marketing your business online requires an ever-changing strategy to keep up with the trends. If you’re a small business just beginning to explore the wonders of internet marketing in Greenville, SC, this is the perfect time to consult online marketing specialists like Spark Local Marketing to help you keep up with the times when it comes to advertising and establishing your brand.

(Sources: 3 Reasons Why Relying on Social-Media Marketing Is a Losing Strategy, Entrepreneur.com, November 24, 2014)