“I help small businesses use social media effectively and I can see its value,” said Nicastro. “But focusing on social media alone is a very bad strategy, because the only online corporate presence that you own is your website. A business owns its domain name and website content as long as it keeps paying the associated fees. You don’t own anything  at social media sites. You don’t own your Facebook page or your Twitter account. If you build your whole business on Facebook connections for instance and somehow there are complaints about your content — text or photos — they can shut down your account. Then all your investment in that social site is lost.”

According to Nicastro, it’s important to remember that social media sites belong to private companies. They make their own rules and decisions, sometimes without regard to the interests of their users. She believes that the best marketing strategy, in terms of online corporate presence, begins by imagining an octopus. The head of the octopus is the company website, where everything about the company is shown including products and services. The arms on the octopus are the social media channels that a business chooses to use.

“There are many different types of customer engagement that can be empowered through social media,” explained Nicastro. “On Twitter a business might tweet out its daily specials or new services. On Facebook, companies talk about products and services with their customers. And don’t forget YouTube. Set up a YouTube channel and video customer testimonials or demonstrate your products. Use YouTube videos to entice customers to go to your website or in some cases to your physical venue.”

Do whatever is reasonable to lure customers to your property, physical or virtual. Offer them something free with a visit. Get customers to sign up for your mailing list or newsletter at your website. Make sure that you have access to your customers directly through your own resources. That’s the foundation of a successful long-term marketing strategy.