Marketing and Sales Guru

Social media is a great tool for any company. It not only helps to reiterate to your customers that you are more than just a company, but it can also help to create lasting relationships and dialogue with your buyers. Smaller companies seem to be hoping on the social media bandwagon faster than larger companies, which can be seen through numbers like this:
Percentage of Companies by Size using Social Media:

• Small businesses – 44%
• Medium businesses – 36%
• Large businesses – 23% (source)

These numbers are perhaps a result of the monetary savings only, but there is much more that social media can do for a company. They include:

1. WOM (word of mouth). Social media can be used as a PR or marketing tactic. When others talk about your company online and can link to you there, you can generate some positive PR and WOM.
2. Crisis management. In line with being able to monitor WOM, you can also respond. You have access to the people who are saying things about you (for the most part) and you can reply to them, even, at times, remedying the situation with solutions and answers they were looking for.
3. Brand Management. Being online makes you more aware of what’s being said about you. You are familiar and comfortable with the applications available to you, and you’re more likely to pay attention to what’s floating around cyberspace (also referred to as WOM).
4. Customer Engagement. Not only can you help to encourage positive WOM, you can interact with the people who are talking about it. Reward them for being your customer! Make them feel important and involved! These are crucial aspects to successful social media use, and you can greatly increase the good will customers can feel for you.

If you do use social media, be sure to measure the results and to keep an eye on things that are going on in different areas online that you may not be involved with. More importantly, however, is to first establish is social media is the right set of tools for you to use. Are your customers online? Can you see the benefits that social media can have for your company? Is everyone else in the company on board? Have you consulted with PR or marketing professionals about this step?

While there are a lot of companies online and partaking in social media, there may be reasons that others are not doing the same thing. If social media use (your tactic) doesn’t fall in line with what you’re trying to accomplish (your objectives), there’s is really little to no reason for you or your company to be using the tool. You will be wasting your time and resources on something that is not working toward a goal you’ve set as a company. Are you using social media because everyone else is? Are your customers even online? Answer these questions before you hop on that bandwagon; there may be a reason some of your competitors haven’t made the leap online either.

Are you using social media?

Social media can be a useful tool for most companies, simply because a large majority of consumers are online and using social media already. What better way to connect with people than to go where they already are? More important than your customers being online is the opportunity that social media presents that is two way communication. You can go online to communicate one-on-one with your customers when they have a question, concern, or feedback. You can share things with them that are useful and valuable.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you can use and abuse social media as an outlet for your advertising. It works a little differently than that. In order to be successful online and in social media, you must be personable and personified. Social media isn’t meant to be used to spam your customers or to share your latest product, but rather it is meant to be used as an outlet for your educational marketing.

Educational marketing can be a great way to instill trust and to position yourself as a leader. More importantly, it shares with your audiences your expertise and gives them something of value that they can actually use. Social media, then, should be a place where you can share your educational marketing, but in a manner that avoids over advertising yourself and avoids advertising your products. There’s a fine line between too much self promotion and just enough, so be careful and pay attention to what works and what doesn’t.

The most important thing to getting social media right is that you know why you are using it. What is your main goal, your objective? This should then help you to identify if social media is the right path for you. If your objectives are to raise more awareness in your community offline, than social media may not be the best tool to use. Instead, events, press conferences, media pitches, etc., things that will affect the physical neighborhood around you, those should be your best bet to meeting your objectives.

Really evaluate how social media will benefit you and your customers; their benefit is the reason you’re in business, after all. Ensure that using social media makes sense, and that it fits into your overall business and marketing plans. If your objectives don’t line up with the use of social media, you will rarely get results that are positive or worthwhile, and your using social media will have been for not. Don’t waste your time if it doesn’t make sense to use it. You can actually damage your brand by using social media if your customers don’t want to see you there.

Lastly, know that social media is not something you can set-up once and then sit back and relax. Like any business venture, it is something that you need to monitor, manage, and adjust as things change. More importantly, it is something that you and your company should be doing everyday. Update your accounts, post to your blog, and respond to your customers regularly. If that means every other day, do so every other day. Consistency is key. Customers get bored and will move on to something new when your information is no longer interesting or if your rate of updating is lacking.

So, the moral of the story: make sure social media is appropriate for your and for your customers and that you can maintain its use.