Social Media
Social Media is online content created by people. It’s the way people share and post information. Social media has taken off lately with blogs, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, Plaxo and others providing a place for people to share content with their friends.
Social Media is extremely important for any business. People like to read reviews, post photos from their trips, review places they’ve been to, purchase products based on their friend’s recommendations and use social media networks to share content with their friends. Businesses can no longer ignore the importance of social media as part of their overall communication strategies.
I have outlined a few profiles for you to try to identify yourself with when it comes to social media. Can you see yourself as falling into one of them? If so, which one? Which one do you want to be in?
1. Novice: I have heard about social media and its importance but I really don’t know how I can use it for my business. It scares me. I don’t know how to measure it. It sounds like too much time investment. It’s just for young people. I don’t know how to sell it to my CEO as an effective way to communicate with our customers. I don’t know where to start.
2. Believer: I understand the importance of social media. I have the company buy-in. I have started to implement it for my business. I have a Facebook page and a YouTube account. I have started to use Flickr. I have a blog. I’m struggling with being able to measure my success, update my content, come up with creative ways to build more fans and followers and I’m spending a lot of time on it without being able to move the needle.
3. Enabler: I know how to listen to my customers online. I know what they are saying about me, my company, my products and my competition. I utilize social media to connect with my customers who are now my online community. I use them for quick research, my own sales force, and immediate feedback. I know how to measure the success of my efforts. I know how to create viral content that my community spreads for me for free. I save money by using social media. It’s simple, easy and effective.
If you want to become an Enabler then Out&About Marketing is the place for you.
There are 4 stages to social media marketing that are easily identified:
1. Listen – before you engage in any type of social media marketing you need to first listen to the conversation and see what people are saying about you. There are free tools on the web that will allow you to easily listen to sentiment, identify key influentials and even establish some success metrics and KPIs. (Key performance indicators).
2. Plan & Organize – after you have a good idea about what’s happening on the web and how it works you are ready to plan and organize your social media campaign. You are now ready to create your social media strategy. You will need to articulate your business case, create timeline, identify internal resources, train and establish social media policies.
3. Engage – You are ready to ignite the conversation and create your community. Get creative as to how you are going to stand out in the crowd and create some viral content. Provide value. Make sure your social media strategy works with your overall marketing and business strategy. Continue to listen and engage with your customers.
4. Measure – You can see how you are doing based on your measurements and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you decided are important to you. Adjust your strategy. Monitor your website traffic. Determine the impact on your online reputation. Measure sales leads. Improvement on customer service. Increases in Net Promoter Score. Conversation engagement. There are many ways to measure social media. You just need to decide what’s important to you and your business objectives.
Milena Regos and Out&About Marketing will help you get through these four stages and make social media a part of your overall marketing strategy.
