We were recently approached by a client who was being
pressured from ‘the powers that be’ to get cracking with their social media
marketing. On the face of it that’s not a silly thing for them to be pursuing,
however, this particular client have trouble keeping their own website up to
date, let alone providing content regularly for tweets, blogs and Facebook
posts. Unfortunately they are not unusual, as is so often the case, the
day-to-day business of running a business gets in the way of good
communications with clients and prospective clients.
When considering social media as part of your marketing
strategy there are a number of key things to remember:
- The first thing that
companies often fail to understand, yet every blogger & tweeter knows,
is that the social platforms prove beyond ANY question of a doubt that the
quality of the content is the thing that sets you apart.
- Secondly, commitment HAS
to be unwavering – have a look and see how many company twitter and Facebook
accounts/pages have had a few entries made and are then just forgotten
about
- Engaging a social
media agency isn’t an answer in itself, and certainly won’t make you
a success – if you don’t feed them, the dissatisfaction spiral will kill
the relationship:
- If you don’t provide them enough raw material to
create the social media ‘chatter’, they start to get dissatisfied with you as a
client (remember they only want to talk about successes!)
- You don’t see the ‘massive upturn’ in whatever you
decide to measure as the success criteria, and feel the social media agency
isn’t ‘doing its job’
- At all costs avoid the
pressure from the parts of your business that want to use the social media
platforms as direct sales tools (“Buy a widget from us for only £10”). If
you don’t you’ll very quickly alienate your users as they realise you have
no real interest in bringing value to the community but just want to ‘sell
stuff’.
- And finally do make sure
that your CORE audience uses the medium! For example, if your clients are
typically aged 55-65 it is unlikely that social media is the right medium
to engage with them.
You need to take a strategic approach to ALL these things
and should be considering these as part of a cohesive online and offline communications
approach. That means a concerted effort in formulating a plan, implementing it,
managing it and refining it. Overall this means ensuring your company to takes communications via the web SERIOUSLY!
As long as you consider these core points then social media
platforms can certainly be a key element of a successful’ joined-up’
communications strategy.