Is Social Media Ready for Your Business?
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 5 years you should be somewhat familiar with social media. The question is; are sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube an appropriate place for you to focus your marketing efforts? Are you seeing results?
Time to Reevaluate
If your social media effort to date have returned less then stellar results, here are a few things you should consider.
- Are you using the right network? The size of some social networks may be impressive (Facebook has over 750 million active users), but if your audience isn’t represented there you are doing your business little good.
- Are you trying too hard to sell? You should supply useful information to your customers. Daily specials, coupons, or upcoming events can be helpful. However, blatant advertising is frowned upon and often ignored.
- Are you actively participating? You should have someone on your staff devoted to maintaining your social network profiles. Outdated information or static profiles can hurt your company brand.
How Social Media Benefits Your Business
Marketing has changed more in the last five years than in the previous 100 years combined, and social media has played a huge roll. Here a few quick tips to help you get the most out of your foray into social media.
- Social media sites can help your search engine optimization (SEO). Links to your site, keywords and phrases, followers, site views, and much more all boost your search engine results.
- Word of Mouth. 90% of consumers trust product recommendations from personal acquaintances. Get you product and business out there so satisfied customers can tell their friends.
- Claim your profiles! Some sites such as Yelp! or Google Places may already have a profile for your company, regardless if you want to be involved or not. Claim these profiles and fully update them to take advantage of the situation.
How To Succeed
In order to determine if your efforts are paying off you need to consider tracking a few things.
- Make goals specific and measurable. Do you want to increase traffic to your site? Do you want to decrease phone calls? Setting these goals and keeping track of them will help you understand the impact social media can have for your business.
- Avoid half-hearted attempts. Managing social media takes time, and if you can’t assign a dedicated individual to the task you should wait until you can. Incomplete profiles and a lack of involvement can hurt your brand.
- Stay Informed. Technology changes daily. Part of your strategy should be to stay up to date on the latest developments within the social media outlets you are using.
If you would like to learn more about social media you can contact Informatics, or attend the next Informatics U session on this very subject. We are always available to discuss your company needs and we have a fantastic social media implementation strategy package that can be tailored to your specific needs. Contact us today!