Social media marketing needs to be thought of as an attitude or a business wide approach, rather than just a set of tools. Setting up Twitter, Facebook and the like is easy, and the bonus is they are free. This fact has made many smaller companies pay attention to social media marketing, and a large portion of those have started using the tools to support their website design and other marketing activities. However, few companies have changed their overall attitude, and this is essential for social media marketing success.
Firstly, companies need to understand that social media is much more focussed on engagement than more traditional forms of marketing, and the most successful campaigns maximise their engagement. This won’t be done through hard sales or a continual stream of promotions, but it can be achieved through posting about items that will encourage clients to respond – it may be asking for opinions, it might be centred around humour or customer advice; it might involve discussions of topical issues that are connected to the business. People love something for nothing, so giving away products or discounts is a good way to encourage people to respond and share. Another essential for successful social media is to involve the whole organisation – the more varied the posts, and the more individual the more likely your campaign will achieve momentum. Allow people from all departments to post and tweet – it gives a greater insight into the company, humanises the organisation and allows customers to see the people behind the logo. Even for very small organisations, there will be at least one or two who can lighten the load – even if they are the wife and the cleaner (unless they are the same person!)
Let your employees know about your social media platforms and encourage them to Like, Comments and Share posts and Tweets etc. You might incentivise this, but the best success will be to explain the importance of the social media activity. The greater the level of engagement, the better the SEO performance of the company, and the better the SEO performance the greater visibility of the company – and that should mean more sales and new income generation. If employees think that social media is just another way for marketing or senior management to fill their time, then they will unlikely to be involved. If they believe their jobs, chances of preferment and salaries are dependent on the campaigns then they might be willing to engage – and even come up with ideas that they like from brands they follow. Remember to watch this space as we will be releasing a range of social media marketing blogs over the coming months. Our readers can also find our Opace Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/OpaceWebDesign. For all the latest goings on, you can keep up-to-date with Opace on Twitter https://twitter.com/OpaceWeb. And we also now have an Opace Google+ page live at https://plus.google.com/111516148099633923012.
Image credit – Peter Ras
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