Social media networking is widely used by the masses for 2 main purposes: 1. For entertainment 2. For solutions Entertainment is quite straight forward. You only have to look at the stats of popular social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook to realise that everyone loves to be entertained.

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Social Media Networking: Start Solving Problems
Social media networking is widely used by the masses for 2 main purposes:
1. For entertainment
2. For solutions
Entertainment is quite straight forward. You only have to look at the stats of popular social networking sites like
YouTube and Facebook to realise that everyone loves to be entertained.
Businesses and marketers often try to find an entertainment hook to their campaigns. Doing so successfully is
influential in creating positive emotion and communicating actionable business messages. People like, people do.
Creating effective entertainment-based marketing campaigns is difficult though. Comedy and humour are
sometimes hard to scale outside of a niche. And there’s a fine line between genius and disaster when
entertainment is forced.
The more realistic and straight forward tactic for adoption in social media marketing is providing solutions. Social
media networking is great at facilitating problem solving.
The medium is instant and highly responsive, positioning businesses in places where potential customers already
exist. The rich features and functionality in various social media platforms allows numerous ways to effectively
display business content and communicate value. And because the main attraction to social media sites is usually
personal networking, marketing messages that understand social etiquette can penetrate the buyer perception of
being marketed to – overcoming an initial reluctance barrier.
Quite simply…

2. Are you active in social media to solve problems?
You will find that this underlying approach to social media and content marketing is commonplace. In fact, they go
hand in hand almost as well as a bride and groom.
Student Block helps students in London find the right accommodation for them. Thinking Forwards helps
businesses create the perfect website for their online presence. This social media blog helps people learn more
about social media marketing and how to improve their practices.
Did you notice how none of these explanations of what each company provides focuses on their specific product
or service? That’s because the product or service isn’t what makes a lead want to be a customer – it’s a solution
to a problem that people care about.
A business is successful because it provides a solution, but if your digital marketing campaigns seem to be flailing
a bit, it may be because you haven’t applied a problem-solving principle to your efforts.
How to Start Solving Problems With Your Marketing
1. Leverage communities. Being part of a helpful, solution-oriented community like Quora allows you to
connect prospects with content that solves their problems. Surround yourself with people who have data,
research, insights, and experiences at their fingertips about your audience and start forging relationships
and strengthening social media networking capabilities. Tap into that brainpower and be the one to share it
with the rest of your community.

3. 2. Create solution-based content. Content is king in online marketing, so start creating content that solves
your audience’s problems. When providing problem solving content, focus on detailing actionable advice.
There’s already a mass of content out there that is simply re-purposed jargon and doesn’t add anything
unique to a particular problem. Your social media networking efforts should be angled at providing content
to solve problems that also gives you credibility and authority. You can achieve this by making sure your
readers leave your content with at least one thing they can do better than before.
3. Create problem-solving lead
magnets. Use content-based
high value free gifts (also known
as lead magnets) to attract and
convert readership into leads. If
you’ve produced compelling
content, your readers will
probably want to learn more
from you. Providing access to
your very best content in
exchange for data, usually an
email address, is a proven
strategy for lead generation.
Email marketing could then be
used to nurture leads and
convert to paid customers.
Are Your Social Media Networking Efforts Solving Problems?
If your social media networking efforts are not based on providing solutions, then they should be aimed at
entertaining your audiences. If they fall under neither category, then you likely have a problem that ensures you
operate well below your peak performance levels.
By understanding how your business objectives can be met by solving problems, your social media networking
efforts will not only maintain focus and direction, but be useful and helpful to your readers.
How do you incorporate problem solving into your social media networking efforts to find, solve and convert
prospects?
Image credits: Hubspot and GraficaComunicazione.

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