I realize that a lot of opinions exist around this subject. In fact, a day after I recieved an email about this and decided to write a blog about it, Hubspot wrote a blog titled "Please Don't Start a Social Media Marketing Agency" that got a lot of people talking. But here's my thoughts:

No one should be relying completely on social media to get the marketing job done.

Yes, social media has a lot of value. As pointed out by the Hubspot article I mentioned, social media can help build SEO, it can help build a following with people who could help spread your message, search engines have started to look to social media to refine search results, social media is starting to be used for targeted advertising, and sales people can use social media to connect and nurture prospect relationships. But, social media only accomplishes these things to a degree, and it will not accomplish any of this unless done correctly.

My point: social media marketing can not stand alone. There is inbound marketing of which there are several components that includes social media. Relying completely on social media to market your business online will cause you to miss integral opportunites that lie with using social media in conjunction with other online tools as part of an inbound marketing strategy.

The internet opened a completely new can of worms in the marketing world, but social media is only one of those worms!

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