Be strategic about being social

30 November 2011

Social media is a powerful tool, helping level the playing field between big and small businesses. Everyone can set up a social media presence, but the businesses that stand out will be the ones that use it best.

Speaking at a Business Spectator webinar on how to apply best practice for social media in your business, Kate Carruthers, digital marketing consultant, emphasised the need to be strategic in your approach to social media if you want to be one of those businesses that stands out.

Getting Started

What do you want to do? Kate emphasises that this question is always the starting point when it comes to social media. Are you trying to publicise? Or respond? Or interact? And what content to you want to share? Photos? Videos? Detailed content? Newsflashes? These questions will help you decide which social media platform you should use or whether you should be using social media at all.

And it isn’t just about what you want to do. Do you know what your customers doing? What social media do they use? Do they use it to hear about sales? Or share experiences with others? Or interact with brands they like? Before delving into the new-tech world of social media you should use old-fashioned marketing and audience analysis to make sure you match your strategy with your target market.

It is important to think of your social media presence as part of an ecosystem. Think about how to coordinate your social media presence across each platform that you have a presence on. A good social media strategy should indentify how they all work together to support what you are trying to achieve and how it drives traffic to your business.

Measure your effectiveness

Just like you track your sales volume, store traffic or customer loyalty, you should be tracking the effectiveness of your social media presence. And not just how many ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ you have. For example, you can use the bit.ly service to track how many people come to your website from links on your Twitter account. Or you can see how many people retweet your Twitter messages. Kate’s tip is to decide what you want to measure as part of your initial planning, as it can be very hard to retrofit metrics.

Social media pitfalls

Kate identifies four key pitfalls that many businesses experience when it comes to social media:

People: Do your staff really know how to use social media effectively? It is important that your people have the skills to post interesting, relevant and effective content and that you set clear boundaries of what can be said in your business’ name.  

Process: Do you have a process of how you will manage your social media presence? Who can post? What do you post? What is your response time? What approval is needed? You need to set clear, documented and repeatable processes to ensure consistency in your message and your customers’ experiences.

Technology: What technology are you using? What technology do your customers use? Do the two match?

Policy: Have a clear documented policy that sets out what your staff and customers can expect and how they should expect to be treated. Be explicit and transparent about what you will and won’t do on social media.

The key message is that doing the ground work before you start is critical to a successful social media presence. Manage the expectations of your customers and make sure your staff are clear on what you expect from them. And don’t treat social media as an island. Ultimately, it should always tie into your core business plan.

Learn more about social media and how you can use it here on the Digital Business website.

Have you fallen victim to any of the four social media pitfalls? Or have you done things in your social media strategy that have proven very effective? Let us know by sharing your comments.

By Natalie, DBCDE.