It’s September and time, after the distractions of summer months, to fully re-engage with your business. For many businesses September is the beginning of a new sales cycle and that means securing present contracts and customers and seeking new opportunities. All of them have their traditional marketing initiatives in place or ready to go, but how many are about to launch, or at least believe they should launch a credible, comprehensive and effective social media marketing strategy?
There are four social media tribes
- Large and small companies with Facebook pages, (a main page and a series of others for specific products, services and marketing programs), twitter accounts and blogs actively building or engaging with their audience.
- Companies that have set up a social media strategy, have a blog, twitter and Facebook account but have not used any of them since that first week of good intentions
- Companies that intend one day to getting round to setting up a social media strategy
- Companies that believe social media is simply ‘not for us’, ‘a waste of time’ etc
Tribe 1. Well done! If you can send comment below on how social media has helped you improve and/or build your business we would be delighted to receive them.
Tribe’s 2 and 3 are virtually the same. Tribe 2 has taken the first step but dormant Facebook and Twitter accounts are as good as nothing at all and make it no better than its procrastinating neighbour Tribe 3
Tribes 2 and 3! What are you waiting for?
Q. What do I tweet? What do I blog?
A. The first thing to appreciate is that social media is not a place for straightforward advertising of your products or services. Social media such as twitter work more like conventional networking groups where you have the opportunity to introduce yourself to like-minded people, or people who share your aspirations and interests. From there you build a reputation of expertise and innovation in your chosen industry it technical, service or sales my or may not result in future sales or work.
The content of your social media determines the kind of networks you will join, attract or create.
If you write knowledgeably and interestingly on the subject of bicycle manufacture or real estate in Spain then Google search is likely to deliver individuals interest in these subjects to your social media be it a Facebook page or blog. From these sources you can also link readers to your Twitter and Youtube accounts.
Here are a bunch of ideas on the kind of things you might tweet! See if you can’t add some more in the comments. If I like them I’ll put them in – Business tweets
If you want some ideas on what you might blog a look at these articles dealing with specific types of business but all contain advice with relevance to all business.
Q. Do I have time to do social media marketing?
A. You should make time, and I don’t mean add hours to your working week. Find a way to rearrange the hours you already work. There will be conventional chores in marketing that good social media will make redundant.
All that time you spend at the printers arranging the publication of expensive brochures? Replace it with some intelligent blog posts and syndicate them across the web, alert followers to them through Twitter.
That trade fair you visit every autumn despite the small return on investment? Save money on a stall and drop in for the day to gather the contacts you make followers of your various social media channels.
Those days and that money spent seeking new staff? Tweet all vacancies so that the people in your industry who have found you in a category search or you have found on twitter see them.
Get a social media dashboard that enables you to access all social media accounts quickly each day from one screen on your computer. Check my dashboard solution here
Tribe 4 is the same tribe that eschewed telephones when they came out over 100 years ago. Luddites of today.
Either they’ll catch on in time, or they will wither and die like Kodak.
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