The expert in Digital Marketing and Social Networks Juan Merodio shares this week his perception about the use that companies give to Social Media and how they can take advantage of them for the development of “a profitable and sustainable business”. Merodio believes that companies do not give “real value” to social networks and are present in them “without having defined a strategy”.

Juan Merodio (@JuanMerodio) is currently one of the most influential figures in social networks, as well as a reference in the development and analysis of interactive applications. This expert in Social Media ensures that we must socialize the company and break the gap that separates it from the client, but always weighing the actions and starting from a previous planning.

In a recent interview forWebpositer , Merodio considers it essential to design a Strategic Plan for Social Networks to determine in “which” we are interested in being present and its “why” before plunging fully into the Social Media adventure. A planning that will contemplate the objectives that the SME wants to achieve; the tools offered by each of these networks; the target audience to which it will be directed; the concrete plan of actions that will be carried out, with a 12-month timeline; and the analysis of the results indicators to confirm if the actions are effective.

According to the expert in Social Media, companies should not underestimate their presence in technological media because they offer “the possibility to communicate directly with your customers and get feedbackabout your company and its products, which translates into valuable information to constantly improve the business ».

However, he adds, companies miss out on their potential without taking full advantage of them. “One of the main mistakes made is not to give social networks the real value they have, and often they are present in them for being, without having defined any strategy for it, basic step to achieve the goals you set,” says the founder of the inverteMe social network.

From his professional experience, Juan Merodio points out that achieving successful actions in social networks requires inexorably to coherently integrate the different marketing channels. «The first thing is to define an action plan in which you have clear your first objectives in social networks, and these should not be selling, but should be objectives focused on your client, such as listening to them or creating a new way of communication with your customers, and all based on a content marketing strategy , where the company generates quality content on a topic related to your business and that is of interest to your potential customers ».

The analyst of APP in Social Networks indicates that the development of an application by brands should seek to make the interaction as impactful as possible to “generate brand recall” among its users.

Pinterest, the boom of 2012

Merodio believes that each company should bet on those networks that best fit your business and where your customers are, but for 2012 bet on a horse that already sounds the winner in many pools: Pinterest. This new platform comes “hitting hard” after the US is being a “boom,” he concludes.

SEO and SMO: A relationship with the future

Juan Merodio indicated that, in search engine rankings, “it is increasingly clear that quality content will be given more value”, especially since Google has informed that it will “penalize” web pages that have over-optimization. in SEO.

For the founder of the Marketing Surfers Agency , the tendencies in the sector point towards the strategic union of the web positioning and the Social Media Marketing: “to day of today I do not conceive an SEO strategy without a strategy of Social Media”.

Self-taught tireless does not relent in his effort to learn every day and sharpen every sense of the news that emerges from the Internet. All this despite the fact that it is already on the other side of the board, with his work as a speaker and professor in congresses, business schools and universities.

In his blog he dissects each one of the APP that Facebook, Google or Twitter launches to search and capture its application in the company. In fact, one of his great confessed pleasures lies in keeping us informed of the latest developments and disclosing utilities that only experts like him can discover in his incessant immersion through the depths of Social Networks.

He recently presented a new book , “Marketing Ideas 2011”, a must-read for all followers of this expert. In its pages we can find a compilation of the posts published on his blog during the last year, with the information that Merodio considers most relevant around marketing 2.0. As a novelty, the book can be downloaded for free in audiobook format and from a QR code.