Social Media
Using Social Networking to Drive Your Business
Developing a Social Networking Strategy
Before opening an account and becoming active, it’s important to consider what each site offers and how you can benefit from their resources. Take some time and really analyze what your existing social media strategy is. Figure out which tools are best for your demographic. Without a fully developed plan for your social networking activity, you could end up meandering throughout the sites and wasting a lot of time.
Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself when forming your social networking strategy:
1. What are the needs of my business? Hopefully, you’re not putting your company name on a social networking account just to send messages back and forth to former high school classmates, so there has to be an impetus. Figure out what your needs are. Are you short-staffed? Is your advertising budget running thin?
2. What am I using the site for? After you’ve established your needs, consider the primary goal of your social networking strategy. Do you want to recruit employees for a certain department? Do you want to market a new line of products? Do you want to connect to more people in your industry?
3. Whose attention am I trying to get? Okay, so you want to market that new line of products, for example. You still need to know your target audience for that product, and with more than 300 million users on Facebook, you'll need to narrow your focus.
Got those answered? Good. Now, consider these questions:
1. Which sites do I want to take on? If you have enough staffing power to handle multiple social networking sites, that’s great. If not, it’s important to focus on one or two, or you could spread yourself too thin and fall victim to the “gaping void” perception, where you end up going days without activity. Your followers will notice.
2. Who’s going to manage my page? Would your social networking activity fall under a current employee’s responsibilities, or do you need to bring on new talent? If you ever find yourself without the staffing resources to manage your page, don’t stick your head in the sand, find some interns.
3. Who has access to my page? What type of trust level do you have established at your company? Will all of your employees have access to the social network account, or a select few? Take the time to assess the skills and character of those who can log into your page, or you may run into unsavory situations down the road – especially when dealing with former workers.
4. Who’s going to be the personality of my page? Does your company already have a public representative that usually handles speeches, press, etc.? It may be beneficial to rein in that person as the voice of your social networking site. People buy from other people, not from other companies. In order to solidify trust, pick someone to reprsent your brand.
The Facebook Fan Page
The companies that are most successful at converting followers into dollars are those who interact most with the users and frequently post content related to their brand. Facebook’s Fan Page is probably the best example of how you should be marketing you company through social networking sites. The page acts as an upgraded user profile for brands, companies, and organizations to be as involved as the users, and has plenty of tools to help you do so. As users become “fans” of your page, all of your activity appears in their News Feed each time they log on. There’s also a useful feature called the Insights tool, which allows you to analyze page views, the demographics of your fans, and the number of people who view (or stop viewing) your News Feed posts.
'Fan' features your company should be using:
1. Comment on other users' content or profile posts. By responding to what your followers post to your profile, you show them that you appreciate their interaction. If they know they have your attention, they’ll keep coming back.
2. Ask questions on your wall. Facebook users love to be heard. It can be surprising how many responses one question can elicit. “It starts to snowball,” says Safko. “What you’ll find is that the conversation will branch off and start another one.”
3. Posting links or threads. “One thing fan pages lets you do that Web pages don’t is encourage viral spread,” says Tobin. If you have any content that you want to circulate quickly, the fan page is the perfect tool.
4. Posting relevant events. By posting upcoming events your company may be part of or hosting, you can help drive more attendees to the function. And for those who can’t come, they get a glimpse at how active your business is within the community or industry.
Source: http://www.inc.com/
Twitter Finding conversations Building your presence
Getting started
1. Twitter is half mini-blog, half conversation. Read what others are writing and respond...or retweet ("RT") inspiring/useful comments.
2. Dive in by creating a personal account and following at least 50 people (you need at least that many to get a decent volume of content.)
3. Don't rely on Twitter's web interface. TweetDeck (a free app) transforms the Twitter experience by making it easy to follow conversations.
4. Watch, listen and learn before you post. See what kinds of updates feel appropriate for you...or like too much disclosure.
1. Read or contribute to a specific conversation by following a "hashtag" -- related messages grouped by including the #topicname.
2. Find people to follow via MrTweet. It suggests people to follow based on who you're already following.
3. Find hot conversations and hashtag topics on Twitscoop. It's a great place to start finding people to follow.
Watch and learn
1. Search.twitter.com (or search from tweetdeck) helps you find who is writing about you, your industry or your customers.
2. Follow other businesses to see how they are using Twitter. Learn from your competitors, and from forward-thinking companies in other fields.
3. Follow your clients or potential clients. What problems are they working on? Offer to help, or develop services to address their needs.
1. Use multiple Twitter accounts for different purposes. Use @yourcompanyname for business promotions, @yourpersonalname for networking.
2. Do more than brag. Share insights and useful tidbits that create value or build your reputation. Generous and helpful beats self-absorbed.
3. Give people a reason to follow your company updates. Special promotions, contests and news updates (not too many!) provide tangible value.
4. Get your customers to do your marketing for you! Run a contest people enter by sending a tweet about your product to @yourcompanyname
5. Post updates when you write a new blog post, and include a shortened URL. You can set your blog to do this automatically.
6. Loosen up. Let people get to know your personality and interests...but keep it interesting. Nobody cares what you're eating for lunch.