Leveraging Social Media
Lots of companies will say that they have a social media strategy. Do you? Do you need one in order to widen the exposure of your product? What kind of response are you getting right now?
There is plenty of debate about the value of social media in order to widen the exposure of your products and services. People around the world have embraced social media, and it has become a very popular and even a normal way of doing business. However, we don’t want you to be fooled into thinking that spending all your time on social media is the best way to market your product. Social media is simply another way to get your message out. It’s not the only way, or the best way, nor the worst. You probably need to include social media as a part of your marketing strategy (although it depends on where you live and what products and services you sell), but we have a few guidelines for you so that it works for you and your message gets heard.
Here are seven strategies for using social media in your business.
Stretch
Work with people who have a deep digital reach. Traditional marketers focus on what they know in order to help you establish a niche in the marketplace. They rely on tried and true methods for design and marketing campaigns. (Think about flyers, brochures, contest entries, or contact forms on a website.) If your usual marketing is not getting you the results that you need, make sure you increase your bench strength by bringing on expertise that gets you what you need.
Build a Community
What you really need is to get people talking about you in a way that they promote your brand independently of you. Seth Godin has written about this as tribes. The Grateful Dead, a wildly successful band for more than 40 years, focused on providing their fans with experiences at their concerts rather than selling albums. Fans (called Deadheads) went to the concerts because they knew that each one was different from the last. Think of the things that you can do for your customers that are different than what everyone else is doing.
Watch Out for Social Media Experts
Social media is constantly evolving, and it is one aspect of marketing, but it is not all there is to marketing. Marketing consultants who are also specialists in social media understand its fluidity. They can help you navigate and establish your brand in the social stream as one aspect of your marketing plan. However, make sure that they can do what they say they can do. Ask for references and look at what they’ve done in the past.
Be There
Whichever social channels that you use (and there are more coming out all the time), make sure that you participate with your community. Don’t ask a question on Twitter, for example, and then not be around or available to reply to people’s answers, or you will turn them off. Better still, give them something they have not even thought to ask for yet.
Find Your Customers
When you conduct your market analysis, be very clear about where your customers are. Make sure you reach them and their friends so that they are able to talk about you. This doesn’t mean that you need to sign up on every social platform there is, because you won’t have time. Focus on methods of reach that work for your customers.
Be a Person
There is a lot of artificiality in social media. While systematizing and pre-planning updates makes sense, you look like a robot if you come off like something that has been automated. Make sure that some of your personality and character shines through the things that you say.
Follow Others
It’s not appropriate to be a one way machine in social media. For example, if you are on Twitter and have 2500 followers, and you only follow 20 people, you will not be able to reply to people who are speaking with and about you. We know you cannot read comments from 2500 people a day, but we also know that you can organize people into categories and lists and that you can participate in that community you are trying hard to build, instead of being a sandwich board on the street corner that simply makes an announcement. If you are blogging, make sure that you reply to people’s comments on your blog posts and that those posts provide people with information they can use, rather than just writing them as a billboard for your products.