Social Media is gathering great pace and many people say it is here to stay. With this in mind, we look at some important facts that need to be considered when using Social Media platforms such Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest etc.
- Social Media is about building relationships and offering quality engaging content. Of course, your return on investment is important, but this benefit of Social Media will take a while in coming. Trying to be an approachable social business will not occur if you do not appreciate the importance of building relationships before trying to sell – The basis of your Social Media should be about Educating, Entertaining and Engaging your target audience.
- Hang around the Social Media platforms where your customers are. There is no point stretching yourself too thin when it comes to which Social Media platforms to choose for your business. Research is key in establishing if your current and future clients use Social Media and which is their preferred platform. Study competition and see how their interactions are going and the quality and size of their followers, likes etc.
- Social Media can be monitored and needs to be! With more and more relevant software out there, we are now able to monitor Social Media to include reach, productivity and even ROI. Studying your weekly / monthly progress on Social Media will help you to understand if your efforts are being rewarded with such statistics as growth of following / likes, click throughs to blogs / website and also with enquiries and sales by monitoring their source. Lots of companies are now creating specific promotions for Social Media like special discounts upon redemption of Twitter / Facebook code.
- Involve the topic of Social Media with your whole team. Many companies outsource Social Media management to carry out mainstay daily updates to build target audiences and social interaction, but it is widely recommended to embrace Social Media fully throughout your whole team, asking for ideas and thoughts, sharing relevant content and even looking at the viral side of marketing by studying recent national and international trends within your industry sector. A whole teams effort towards Social Media marketing will increases chances of success as gender / age etc make highly different appraoches towards using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
- Sharing in what being Social is all about. Using Social Media for your product or service offers endlessly or repeating your marketing messages over and over again will not gain you success. Being on Social Media is all about engaging with other users and this means sharing relevant informative content, helping those who you associate with by sharing or reTweeting content. A general rule for Social Media is that 80% of what you put out should be educational content with only 20% towards trying to directly sell your products / services.
- Keep up with changes in Social Media. The world of Social Media is rapidly changing and adapting with new platforms and apps within platforms changing frequently. You must be prepared to adapt your usage of Social Media at the speed of change as the digital marketing scene doesn’t remain stagnant for very long ~ To be successful online you must willing and able to change.