By M. Isi Eromosele
Stay Relevant
If you are only focused on
how you can take your current business model, current services and stuff them
in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and your blog, then you are destined to fail.
Your must instead focus on how can you integrate social media into the DNA of your business. You must also focus on how your business model must
adapt to better leverage and benefit from social media.
Every business goal and
objective cannot necessarily benefit from social media. You must select business
goals and objectives where social media can have the greatest impact on your
business to produce relevancy.
As a business or organization participating in social media,
you want to stay relevant to your business. The
days of interruption marketing are ending. You can’t bust into their Facebook
page and expect them to move all attention to you and your needs.
You will have to first earn
their trust and inspire them to connect with you. The more you can be relevant
and earn their trust by them knowing that your top objective is to help them
meet their objectives, the quicker you are going to earn their friendship.
Inspire your audiences to connect with you. Nurture and
build real relationships with them, built on trust. Help them achieve their
goals. By default you will achieve yours if you first focus on the needs of
your audiences. Don’t just do social, or be social, be relevant!
Be Engaging
Social media networks and by extension, social media
marketing tend to be more conversational in tone and approach. People gather on
sites like Facebook and Twitter because they have common interests, because
they want to be part of a larger conversation or because they want to be in the
know.
If you really want to derive
value from social media, you need to engage with people. Like any
conversational interaction, listening is the key to being effective. You need
to listen to what people are saying to you and about you. When appropriate be
sure to respond.
Social media marketing is
also about sharing your expertise, news, and even promotions. You can show your
followers that you know your business and industry by posting links to related
articles, notes about other complementary businesses and by interacting with others on the networks
in which you participate.
Don’t just post information; ask
people what they think of the article you’re posting. Ask thought-provoking questions
that will encourage a dialogue. Post photos or videos that show what’s going on
with your business or organization, and encourage your friends,
followers, and fans to do the
same.
Social media is a two-way
dialog, not just a one-way communication. Make the most of that whenever and however
you can.
Stay Active
How often you post is very important
in social media marketing. Do it too little and followers may not notice. Post
too often and they may get annoyed.
When posting something to
Twitter, such as a link to a new blog post or special deal, you may want to post
the same information more than once in a given day. Twitter feeds can be a fast
moving stream, so if a customer doesn’t see your original tweet, he may miss
out.
While it’s alright to post
something a couple times a day, it’s important to change up the wording a bit
each time to freshen up the content. Otherwise, you’ll look like a spammer and
people may unfollow you.
For Facebook, a single link
to a blog post or deal of the day is enough since those posts tend to have a
little more stickiness in a user’s news feed. The same goes for LinkedIn
updates.
Generally, you can post
multiple updates to Twitter, one or two to Facebook, and one to LinkedIn over
the course of a given day without the risk of annoying the followers on each
site. There are even ways to link your Twitter feed to Facebook and LinkedIn, which
can help you populate all three sites with a single update.
Just keep in mind that if
you’re updating Twitter quite a bit, you may inundate your followers on the
other networks with all your tweets.
Respond In A Timely Manner
You can and should reply to
people’s questions and posts as often and as quickly as possible, particularly
when they mention a problem with your business, organization,
product or service.
If you’re tracking your
company name, Twitter handle and/or key product terms via Twitter Search, you
can easily spot complaints and respond. (NutshellMail from Constant Contact is
a great tool for monitoring Twitter Search results without having
to constantly sit at the
computer.)
Respond to complaints within
a single business day if possible. Any longer and your response could fall on
deaf ears. When you respond, nicely ask how you can help the person, then
attempt to take the conversation offline, or to another channel like email or
an instant messaging client to deal with the nuts and bolts of the issue.
Two things to keep in mind
when it comes to using social media for customer service issues:
- You’re going to run into negative comments. Don’t
take them personally and try to turn that unhappy customer into a happy
one.
- Respond to positive comments as well. If someone
gives you a glowing review, respond with a thank you. It shows that you’re
paying attention to all of your customers.
Give Credit Where Credit
Is Due
It’s a best practice to share
links to relevant articles, blog posts and other content with your audience. Social
media networks make this an easy thing to do. One thing to remember though, is
to cite the source of the link if it’s not your own content. This is
particularly important with Twitter, where shortened URLs can obscure the site
being linked to.
The best practice here is to
add the person or source’s Twitter handle (if known) when linking to third-party
content. Doing so offers two benefits: One, you’re not pulling a bait-and-switch
by passing someone else’s content off as your own (yes, the person clicking the
link will realize it soon enough, but that doesn’t make it right).
Two, the person you’re
crediting will see that you’re sharing his content with your own customers/members/followers
since the tweet will show up in his “Mentions” timeline.
Do Right By Your Business
With social media marketing, it’s
good to remember that it’s just another but very
powerful tool in your
marketing arsenal and not a cure-all or replacement for other strategies that are
already working for you.
Hopefully, these best
practices will help you improve your social media marketing, but ultimately
it’s about doing what’s right for your business or organization. You know your customers
best and what they expect from you. Delivering the content they want and
engaging with them, no matter what the channel is imperative.
M. Isi Eromosele is
the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme
Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance
Copyright Control ©
2012 Oseme Group
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