James Cope

Social media has been on the radar for businesses for sometime now, now adoption and use of the media as a marketing tool is on the increase. Many businesses struggle with how this can benefit them and ultimately lead to increased traffic or sales. I was kindly invited to attend a really useful seminar yesterday which was primarily to add value for clients of a local developer Intergage, the session had some great tips which are the inspiration for this post on social media – get involved & increase traffic.

If you are struggling with questions such as those below this post will hopefully give you a starting point

• what is social media?
• should I be on Facebook?
• what on earth is twitter?

As with all marketing it helps if you can profile your target customer, you may have more than one type of target customer, but the key to getting to grips with social media is being able to work out who your audience is. With a profile in mind you can then start to identify how to engage potential online communities. Business Link Advisers can help with thinking on how to profile a customer, so if you have not undertaken this exercise and want to build a marketing strategy, that may or may not include social media, I would suggest getting in touch with your local Business Link.

Armed with that essential information you should now be ready to look at the world of social media and if it can work for your business. Generally speaking there is an online community for every businesses target market somewhere. The tricky bit of course is finding it, and determining the cost benefit of engaging.

Considering the growth in social media all predictions for the future that I have seen, and many other experts are in agreement, is that social media will play an increasingly integral role in businesses marketing strategies. In an era where businesses battle to get their message heard, and customers increasingly control the adverts they let through reaching them is getting harder. Research shows that customers are more likely to trust the opinion of a friend or colleague than that of your marketing material.

So how do you go about engaging with social media? The presentation delivered by Luke Williams of Social Tech Solutions and Rich Watts of Intergage, gave some really useful tips. Luke’s structured approach is similar to the advice I give basically, Look Listen & Think (or is that how to cross the road!). A link to Luke’s social media presentation and Rich’s case study on how his company did it are both on the Intergage site for anyone who is interested.

Step 1. Look – where are my target customers having online conversations or discussions, where do they come together in a similar interest group. There is a list of social networking sites available at wikipedia, this includes information on their focus. There are also communities and interest groups/forums to consider, tip from Luke here – get a google search going with your target search term and add ‘community’ or ‘forum’ to it and look a the results, visit those sites and see if they are appropriate.

Rich’s presentation gave consideration to which tools were appropriate for the job and Intergage chose not to use Facebook. I would suggest that generally speaking if you are a Business to Consumer company then sites such as Facebook are worth creating a page for – Luke’s tip is a page not a group, and for Business to Business then its LinkedIn. Visit my LinkedIn profile for an example.

Also are any of your employees engaged in social media, forums or communities. Do they look to certain sites to get technical information or industry knowledge already. Are any of them considered experts in those fields.

Step 2. Listen – join the forums or communities, or networking sites and look at the conversations taking place. Are these relevant conversations that you can possibly add value to when you do go on to engage, are they appropriate sites. Also monitor activity on sites such as Twitter, there is a really good guide to twitter online. I set up searches for example on ‘Business Link’ and other terms, pulling those into my iGoogle page. That way I can see who is posting using the term ‘Business Link’. Visit my James Cope twitter page and also Business Link’s.

As you are listening jot down typical post frequencies popular topics or the key influencers in those communities, study their posts and learn from their style.

Step 3. Think – plan your activity, make sure the amount and content of posts are in keeping with the community, it is easy to offend and you dont want to be considered to be involved in spam as this is the quickest way to damage your brand.

Think how you will deal with negative comments people complaining online, make sure you have a strategy if you see negative entries about your company. Also what is your internal policy, most companies now have an email and internet usage policy, if you are going to encourage employees to help they should have guidelines of your corporate style, the technique to use. One of Luke’s tips consider Facebook linkage, do you want your employees Friday night activities being shown to your customers? You might consider a decision not to mix personal profiles with business contacts.

Now it’s a question of trying it, put what you have learnt about tone and content into practice and start joining in. If you’re doing it right momentum should start to build. It can take time so bear with it and measure your results using your analytics as to how much traffic that particular group or forum is sending to your site. Hopefully by now you will have made it to the other side of the road, dodging the odd car or lorry along the way.

There are loads more resources and help online and people to talk to if you need help getting there. Business Link can help find companies similar to Luke’s to who can guide & train or even manage your social media presence, or its advisers such as myself can talk you through the process above.

If you are a business based in the South East and you think you would benefit from a seminar on this topic let me know, either contact me through LinkedIn or leave a reply here.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.