Social Media Communications Platforms

When most people talk about Social Media Marketing, they are generally talking about what we have called Communications Platforms. You’ve probably heard of most of them, even if you don’t currently use them yourself. You might also think that they are only for talking to your friends? In actual fact, these platforms are a great tool for your business.

Marketing via social media is all about sharing and engaging with your customers. That is what all these platforms allow you to do. They might not all be appropriate for your business, but we’d be amazed if at least one platform can’t be valuable to you!

What is our objective here? Pretty much the same as everywhere else on this site, which is to generate more quality traffic to your site. These platforms achieve that objective by getting your content out to a wider audience. When you write a post on your Blog, you really want people to share that article, perhaps posting a link on their own blog. This generates an additional back link to your site and also the possibility of actual traffic from the link itself.

Another BIG advantage with these platforms is that they are all User Generated Content (UGC) so this means that Google loves them and will in all likelihood list them far faster than a page on your website.

How you use them will vary from business to business. We can help you in choosing the best methodology. We can also either train you on what you should be doing in terms of posting content and distributing it, or we can manage the whole process for you – even down to writing the articles!

Social Media Marketing – Blogs

Whole books have been written about Blogging, but in reality your Blog is simply a different way of communicating and engaging with your customers. Your website may perhaps be very corporate and your blog may be written in a friendlier tone. You might use your blog for News about your company, a channel for expressing your opinions or a repository for useful information.

Any of these are valid – it really does depend on you and your business. There is no absolute best practice way of writing your blog, so just go ahead and dive in is our advice!

We are often asked how often you should contribute to your blog. Again, this will depend on how much you have to say and how much time you are able to allocate to the task (if we are managing things on your behalf it is how much budget you allocate to the task). Our answer will tend to be “Regularly” – this is not a glib answer but a truth – if you start posting articles every day your readers will expect an article every day and if they don’t get it they probably won’t come back – so be realistic, but at least a couple of times a month we’d say.

Remember that when you post to your blog it is there forever, so do be a tad careful about what you write! What you write also brings us to the thorny issue of who should write – we always suggest that you should empower as many people in your organisation as possible – more people should mean the load is shared, but also gives you the benefit of getting more involvement from your staff in the business – which has to be good news!

We do quite a lot of blogging. If you’d like some advice, give us a call on 01743 244204!

Social Media Marketing – Facebook

No doubt you have heard of Facebook. It is the most popular social networking site in the world with over half a BILLION users! With that many people on the system it is surely an audience you can’t ignore!

We are often asked whether it is really relevant for a business though? Our answer is a qualified yes. If you supply military hardware it is unlikely we’d suggest that you’ll pick up an order on Facebook, but if you sell wedding dresses the game is completely different.

Why are wedding dresses different? Because they are something people will talk about, they are something that people will share information about – because it is interesting to other people who are looking to buy a wedding dress. Therein lies the nub – you need to distribute useful and informative content that will be shared.

That content might be posting a link to a blog article, or it may be that you post the article in Facebook itself. You then want the people who “Like” your page to share that content with their friends, who share it with their friends etc etc

In addition to getting people to share your content, Facebook also offers a way of advertising to a very tight demographic. This is great news, as it makes your ad really targeted . The other great thing about Facebook ads is that they are a lot cheaper than Adwords. They are certainly worth a look and we can help you in how to best utilise this advertising channel.

Facebook is almost another Google as it eats up all us Internet users! We feel that Facebook is only going to get bigger. We are seeing an increased uptake in F-Commerce – selling via Facebook – and feel this will get bigger and bigger … this is good news for users such as you – you may not even need an e-commerce website in future, but in reality we feel that you will continue to need to use most channels if you want to hit all your target audiences.

If you don’t think Facebook is for you, I’d have to ask you “Why not?”. It is an ever growing community where you can target your proposition very precisely – surely that is every marketers dream!

Social Media Marketing – Twitter

Twitter is actually a micro blogging site. You get 140 characters to tell your “followers” what you are up to, your thoughts or anything else you deem relevant! The last word is really key in our opinion.

Twitter, like all the other social media channels, is all about engaging with your audience. If your audience is interested in the fact you just had a nice cup of tea, then by all means tell them. From a personal point of view though, I am not the least bit interested in whether you have had a nice cup of tea! I am interested however if you have a special offer,can inform me about something I am interested in or can help me out with a question I have!

Marriott Hotels use Twitter for late deals, Dell use it for special offers – there is a place for it, but much like everything else in this space, you need to establish your objectives or you will waste a huge amount of time.

What to say, who to say it to and who to really engage with are your big questions when it comes to Twitter – we can help you with this process.

Social Media Marketing – Linkedin

Linkedin is a business networking tool, where you post a profile about yourself and your business. The idea is to “connect” with business colleagues thereby building up a greater network because you are then also loosely connected with their contacts.

You can keep your profile fresh by linking your blog to your profile for instance and the other tools mentioned.

Linkedin provides a further channel for you and your business to garner enquiries, but it also gives you a route to discover prospects. If you want to approach a particular sector in a particular area Linkedin is a great way of gathering prospects.

Summary

By now you should be realising that Social Media is all about engagement with your customers and responding to their needs and wants. All of the above channels allow you to do that in varying degrees. The trick is combining the channels in the most efficient manner for your own business. That is where we can help. You may want us to run the whole shooting match for you, certain parts only or you may want to run it in house, in which case we can train you in the best techniques.

Either way, why not give us a call on 01743 244204 to see how we might help you.