A business is all about marketing. Even the best products and
services fail if they are not promoted in a proper manner by reaching
the customers. Social media helps build businesses gain responsive and
highly targeted customers, while building rock solid relationships with
potential customers and other entrepreneurs. A company’s brand through
social media reputation is beginning to have more weight in the current
day.
For many businesses, social media still remains a big question mark.
Many are not sure if social media constitutes a medium that is largely
untested. They wonder how a good brand can survive in the unpredictable
environment of the online communities.
This is the reason why many companies are still not capitalizing on
the huge opportunities those social media offers, such as connecting
with high-quality business consumers. The advantages of social media
far outweigh any disadvantages companies may be worried about.
Social media marketing is considered to be the future of online
businesses. There are several social media available today for business
people, such as blogs, audio, video and social networking sites. Companies can leverage the power of social media by becoming a part of the online communities.
Social Media Participation
Becoming a part of the online communities involves participating in
discussions. However, companies must first understand what people are
talking about and determine how best to contribute. Since social media
platforms are used to facilitate conversations between people and not
companies; once it is clear as to what people are talking about,
companies can identify employees within the organization to participate
in these conversations. People usually prefer talking to company
representatives that are experts in their field. Companies should give
these selected employees the power to implement any good ideas they
obtain from the community. This holds true in every social media
platform. Employees should also be trained on social media
participation.
Creating Guidelines and Strategy
Companies should have a social media policy with clear guidelines on
how the employees should engage in these community discussions. The
do’s and the don’ts become important as employees are brand ambassadors,
projecting the image of their company. Since there is a lot to social media and it has numerous platforms,
it is important to identify the ones that are relevant and worthwhile
for the company. Participating in a few of them by following a planned
strategy for participation, will give a clear picture to the employees,
as to how much time they will need to spend in social media
communication and what the actual aim of participation is.
Increasing Social Media Participation
After the initial getting-used-to period, companies usually start
furthering their social media participation by leaving comments on
blogs; uploading videos of and about their company to the relevant
social networking sites, such as YouTube and Flickr; participating
actively on either Twitter or elsewhere, to further the discussions and
gain people’s trust and belief in the company’s commitment in wanting to
provide good services or products, and developing relationships in the
community.
• Blogging – The blogosphere is an excellent place
to start. It is for a reason that there are millions of blogs out
there. Posting on the blogs about the business and being a source of
information in the way of sharing knowledge and answering questions
demonstrates immense value for potential clients. A good example is
Matt Cutts of Google, who supposedly blogs as the GoogleGuy, where he
discusses about Google and gives tips to visitors on SEO and other
things.
• Videos – While blogs are just text, there are
other forms of social media, such as videos. They are very easy to
create and upload, and it does not have to be a large video, just a
quick few seconds video of the office should do. Even a simple video on
YouTube under the company name can prove to be extremely useful. The
video brings people to the company website and is a wonderful social
media tool to getting great results.
• Social Networking Sites – Companies should ensure
that their marketing messages are highly relevant and appear at moments
when community members are considering buying a product or service.
LinkedIn and iTtoolbox are more business oriented and professional when
compared to MySpace, and they provide companies the opportunity to reach
consumers at workplace. Several businesses report good results, in
terms of getting high quality business leads by making connections and
being findable.
Taking the online relationships offline
Although, social media is a wonderful tool, it still cannot replace
face-to-face meetings. Combining online with offline could work wonders
for a company. They can arrange events such as trade shows to build
stronger relationships with the members of the online community. It
could be in any form, such as an informal get-together for a breakfast
or even a semi-formal discussion group. The success of a company lies in learning more about their customers
and making the customers understand the company better and this can be
achieved by utilizing the power of social media. It may sound like a
time consuming and difficult task, but the payoff for companies is huge,
as long as the company approaches social media with a well-planned
strategy in place.
https://www.elance.com/q/startup-cloud/5-social-media-strategies.html
http://www.jonathanmacdonald.com/?p=4042
http://www.jonathanmacdonald.com/?p=4042
http://www.sitepronews.com/2011/05/23/the-power-of-social-media/
No comments:
Post a Comment