Why is social media so important for your business

2011 is going to be the year that the penny drops for the majority of business on how important it is that they embrace social media. Every business depends on marketing.If your customers don’t know you exist, then you might as well shut up shop. Traditionally, marketing was a push model. You’d come up with a clever proposition and send it out into the world, hoping that it ‘spoke’ to some of your audience. You might have even commissioned some tests to see which message had the best conversion. But this model still relied on your sending and the audience reading….one way traffic.

 

With platforms such as twitter, facebook, linkedin and even foursquare, that traffic is now two way. Your audience now becomes your community. The community interacts, not only with you, but with each other in a manner that you can listen to.

 

GiffGaff based their whole business model on this ideal. Before they had a product, they created a community with the idea of being the ‘Wikipedia of mobile’. The team went out to the community and asked what sort of mobile service would suit them and then built the service around the feedback they received. This immediately gave them the confidence that the product would be excepted. But they didn’t stop there, They are constantly engaging with their customers with ever they may be. They listen to criticism, they reward them for new ideas they even asked them how they wanted to be compensated for service downtime and surprisingly the majority wanted the money, all £10,000 to go to charity thatthey the community agreed on.

So what can you be doing in 2011?

 

If you don’t already have one, setup a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn account. All 3 of these are must haves for most businesses. Blogs are usually beneficial for most businesses as well. You can start a WordPress blog for free.

 

Develop a marketing plan to formalise your goals and objectives. If you have no goals and objectives you will have nothing to measure your success and learn from.

 

• CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT: Now the tricky part… what are you going to market? What are you going to promote, email, talk with your customers about? What are you going to tweet, share on facebook or discuss with LinkedIn business members?
• LISTEN: Before starting social media you need to listen. Listen to your customers, partners, mentors and most importantly your customers. What are they saying about your product or similar products? How are your customers using social media? What social networks are they “hanging out on”?? You’ll probably be surprised how many of them are using it effectively. Take notes of what you learn, and how you can contribute content to the social platform to inspire them to read, listen and respond to your content.
• EXECUTE: Now that you have some content it’s time to just go for it. Start Tweeting the content you developed in your message platform. Post a Facebook post and share it with your friends. You’ll be surprised how many people will respond, become fans of your Facebook page, join your LinkedIn group, take your survey and respond to an offer.
• ENGAGE: It is important you don’t just blast out “noise”. Listen to what your customers have to say. Respond when somebody posts on your Facebook wall. If you see a new Twitter Follower who has a common interest, send them a message. Social media is about conversations and relationships. Inspire your audience and they will follow you, listen to you and engage. Engagement leads to conversation which leads to a relationship built on trust and value added. It is not until after you have INSPIRED and CONNECTED with your target audiences that you will ACHIEVE the business goals and objectives you are seeking.