Social media is not purely about sales, it about branding, bringing value to people and building a community around your products and services. The simple reason why social matters is because people’s attention is on these different platforms.

So, to be able to sell something, you need to reach those eyeballs first. However, nowadays customers are savvier and won’t jump at an ad or commercial straight away.

I can guarantee that first they will do their full research about it. That means checking up on your website, reviews of your products/service and absolutely how you interact on your social channels.

This new breed of customers does care about what you have to say about your business. Unfortunately, businesses don’t treat these customers with the respect and gratitude that they deserve.

Recently, I attend a seminar about digital marketing, or rather digital confusion in Phuket, and though there was some good insight, we can clearly see that there is certainly plenty of confusion.

Why the confusion?

Because we know for a fact that digital and social media marketing works, however, everyone expects to solve their sales issues immediately.

As one of the contributing panelist noted, just because you post or are active on social, social media is not a magic bullet that will bring you direct revenue. It will take time, effort and resources to get some traction on social media channels.

I even asked one panelist what the ROI was in social media and they stated that the ROI are the likes, shares and comments from people on a post – clearly, he is confused too!

There is no exact ROI in social media, and that is why it does not tend to excite too many businesspeople, as they treat it as a short-term sales solution rather than a long-term investment.

However, don’t get me wrong. Social media marketing does bring sales, as long as your company is willing to put in the effort. The key for a successful social media and digital campaign is in the way you tell your brand’s story, whether it is through written content, photos or video.