Basic Social Media Strategy Part 5
Previous installments in this series have dealt with audience and their needs, business model, and goals for using social media. Once a business has answered these questions and established there basic strategy for social media, there is a final component to consider, namely what social media tools you are already using and what ones you will need to integrate into your marketing, as well what skills you will need to learn to use social media effectively.
Many people, for example, are on Facebook. But being on Facebook doesn’t automatically mean you’ve incorporated it into your business. You may be using it to stay in touch with friends and families, but may also need to look into creating a fan page for your business, as well as determining how to keep your clients separate from your friends and family.
And being on social networks isn’t really enough. Many business owners think of social media as Linked, Twitter, and Facebook, without realizing that these are just examples of social networking sites sites. They don’t even begin to encompass what social media or how to use it. They are popular and to some degree necessary in developing your strategies, but business owners should spend some time learning what social media is, as well as how all of it can be incorporated into their marketing.
E-newsletters are another example of social media that some businesses already incorporate into their model. I include e-newsletters as social media, because increasingly the technology is bring brought into social media, where you can share your e-newsletter with social networks, and even feed your blog into e-newsletters. Business owners should still use e-newsletters because they reach a targeted audience and are an excellent way of retaining existing clients. At the same time, those same businesses will want to also incorporate a blog into their social media strategy, because it will allow them to reach out to an audience that otherwise may not know they exist.
Effective social media strategy recognizes the value of all social media technology and actively integrates it into the business model. This integration may happen in steps, but social media can’t be ignored for too long, not only because of how the technology will continue to change, but also because more and more people will use it as they discover its usefulness for helping them research services and products they need. And when people can’t find you, they will find your competitors.
When integrating social media into your business model, focus on one area of social media at a time and make sure as you learn it, you also ask yourself how you will apply it to your marketing and customer service. Don’t be afraid to experiment to see what you can learn and do with social media, and don’t hesitate to ask others what they are doing and what works for them.
For further information about social media strategy and what social media is, please go to my site and look at some of my videos.
