Social media has changed the way that people interact with businesses online, no matter if your company works in the B2B or B2C sector. If your business hasn't done so already, it is time to engage your existing and potential clients on the main social media forums. The form this will take is dependent on what your company does, but just getting a presence on social media is no longer an option.
If you are looking into how your company is going to be best served by social media, we have some simple ideas for you to think about, based on the strategies we adopt at JDR. There isn't going to be a one-size-fits-all social media plan, but there are some common themes that will help any company get up and running on social media outlets.
The social media scene is growing all the time, but that doesn't mean that your company needs to be everywhere at once. Actually, many of the misconceptions from the dial up days of the internet still plague social media planning. One of the last things you should do is try to hit a broad audience that probably isn't going to have the level of interest in your product that you want them to.
Today's social media isn't a spammy email list from 2002. Don't start off your social media campaign by embracing tired-out online advert techniques that won't produce results. Although putting together a solid social media campaign will take some work, it isn't difficult at all. Learning about how algorithms have changed the way people see information on social media will help you to craft great content, and make sure your company gets noticed for what it does best.
Unless your company already has a huge brand identity to draw on, you will need to start with a focused list of who your potential clients are. Don't cast too wide a net to begin with. Social media today favours businesses that actually get people to pay attention to content. Think about it as the opposite of spam emailing. Your strategy should isolate the demographics that will rave about what you do, and forget about the rest. You are wielding a sniper rifle, not a shotgun.
Your company's image will be far better served by having ten or twenty die hard followers on Twitter or Facebook with real interest in your brand than a mountain of users that couldn’t care less about your message. In fact Facebook uses an algorithm that will block your content if people don't regularly view your posts. This means that you need to focus on quality, and forget about numbers. It is another reason why you should never, ever ‘purchase followers’ on social media. It serves no purpose and is actually counter-productive. Social media marketing is about how many people share what you have posted, not how many people you reach directly.
Today there are many options for your company when it comes to keeping track of how your social media campaign is working, so you can know where to put your efforts going forward. Not every idea you have is going to be a winner, but they will all take up similar amounts of your time. In an SME you are far more likely to use existing employees to begin your social media campaign, so make sure that you get the most from their time. It is important to see the social media sphere in a holistic sense, and engage your customers across all the outlets that make sense for your market sector. Once you learn how to use a social media scheduling service like Hootsuite, you will be able to effectively manage your social media content with ease.
People want to connect with the companies they do business with online, and for SME's this represents a great opportunity to shine where larger corporations struggle. No one is ever going to feel a deep personal connection with H&M, no matter how much money they spend on clothes there, but if you have an SME that makes lamb’s wool apparel by hand, you have a great company persona to bring to social media, to build long term customer loyalty.
What matters is making your customers feel like they are in contact with a company that isn't just a flat logo, so creating interesting content that shows what your company represents is very important. This is where working with an agency like JDR comes in handy. Working with us from the beginning of your social media engagement means you can go in with all guns blazing, and not build up incrementally like many SMEs. With JDR you have the resources and experience of over 30 marketing specialists, ready to bring their knowledge to bear on your social media engagement strategy. Give us a call to find out more.