Social Media is the marketing buzz word just now and it is hard to escape the constant articles of how social media can benefit your business. You might have set up a Facebook and/or Twitter business page or taken a few videos and put them on YouTube, set yourself up on LinkedIn, set up or considered a Blog and taken a look at Pinterest. You feel that you have considered social media and taken action for your business.
Bright Light Marketing would argue that as effective as social media is (and we see the benefits for business on a daily basis) you do need to consider some key questions before you get started. We thought it would be useful therefore to give you five key tips to consider before getting started on your social media journey that will ensure that you get the most out of social media and are not left wondering what all the hype is about.
1. What do you want to achieve?
Before you set out you need to consider what you want to achieve from social media it could include:
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Daily communication with existing customers.
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Raise awareness to new customers and new markets.
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Communicate with potential customers so that when they need your product or service they think of you.
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Drive more traffic to your website.
- Convert enquiries into actual business.
It could include all of the above, other objectives or just one or two of the above. The important thing is that you know at the outset what you want to achieve, that way you can measure social media effectively and also communicate with other members of the team why you are using this communication tool.
2. Which Social Media platforms will you use?
This is why point one is so important, if you don’t know what you want to achieve it is easy to set up a Facebook Page when your key goal is to raise awareness to new markets. Facebook may do this over time but Twitter would be a more effective tool or LinkedIn if you are looking for business to business customers. If you know what you want to achieve it is much easier to decide which social media tool to use. It also allows you to prioritise if for example your key objective is to communicate more with your existing clients you can then concentrate on using Facebook first and then look at your other objectives on other platforms second.
3. How much time can you devote to Social Media and who within your company is going to do it?
At Bright Light Marketing we see social media working on a daily basis for our clients achieving all of the objectives and more set out in point one. However like any marketing communication tool you need to work at it and results won’t necessarily happen instantly, you need to work at it and give it time. It is important therefore that you allocate responsibility to someone within the company and give them the time daily to update social media. If you don’t have a suitable person or don’t have the time to update your status on a daily basis you could consider outsourcing the activity to a company like Bright Light Marketing who could deliver your social media for you.
4. What are you going to say?
The first rule of thumb is don’t say anything on social media that you wouldn’t say to someone face to face or you wouldn’t 
want associated with your business. But it’s more than that, you need to know what are the key messages that you want to say about your business. Social Media is a communication platform, it isn’t a selling platform. To repeat, social media is a communication platform it is not for you to sell, sell your products. If you do that people won’t engage with you and you will fail. Instead you need to give people reasons to engage and communicate with you on social media. So consider what are your areas of expertise, can you give people tips and advice? Can you talk about the area that you live in and even sell other businesses locally? Communicate by letting people know about your great service via customer testimonials; use photo’s to sell your product. There are many ways to communicate on social media and we would advise that you sit down once a month and write down a list of themes and messages that you can talk about in the month ahead.
5. You need to know if it works?
As we said in point one you will only know if social media is working for you if you know what you are wanting to achieve at the outset. Social Media will take time and as with other communication tools it is likely you work quicker with your existing customers than new ones. However if you give it time and devote time to it social media can be one of the most effective marketing tools that you use for your business. But you need to measure it. Bright Light Marketing would advise sitting down each month just spending half an hour and looking at your original objectives and considering progress in that month. You will be amazed as the months go by how much progress is made!
In summary Social Media does work for business. But don’t just launch into it, carry it out for a few weeks and then deem it a failure. You need to sit down and consider these factors first so that your social media journey can be a rewarding one.
That's what gets results!