Social Media for Business

Social Media is Good for Business

Social media is putting the “public” back into public relations. Social media enables businesses to humanize their marketing efforts.

Get Involved – using the Right Focus

Many businesses immediately ask how Facebook is going to make them money and have that be their only focus. If they understood the true power of social media, they’d be trying to engage customers and provide a meaningful, authentic online experience.

Why? Because those billions of consumers who regularly log on to Facebook and other social media networks are doing so to make a connection and feel like part of a community.

Fans are looking for a reason to connect with businesses. They know you want to sell them stuff, but they don’t want to be “sold to” in every conversation or communication with you. As a business, it’s your job is to give them a reason to continue being your fan.

Actively Listen

There are still many businesses who are afraid what people might say about them on social media. Guess what? People are already talking about you on social media. You just aren’t aware of it yet. Good and bad conversations WILL OCCUR – with or without your knowledge or participation.

It’s smarter to be out there… listening to what consumers are saying. When you stay on top of these conversations, you can use these insights to make improvements.

Promote and Protect Your Brand

Now that you’re aware of the importance of listening to social media, there will be times when you’ll need to protect your brand or join conversations to resolve any problems or issues being discussed. While you might not be able to solve or directly respond to every single customer, your responses will be noticed by other consumers. It’s helpful to think of socialized marketing like it’s a public relations show being televised live.

Gain Competitive Insights

Consumers are not only discussing your products and services, they’re also talking about your competitors. Conversations make include comparisons between your products, maybe even insights into new products or a preferred customer special they received from your competition. These are invaluable insights that can turn potential threats into marketing opportunities.

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch once said:

Build Online Credibility

Search engine credibility (also called PageRank) is based on the number of quality inbound links to your web site. As long as they’re from credible, authoritative sites, then the more, the better.

Social media credibility is built on what you say about a specific topic and how you say it.

Social media performance is often measured by the number of one’s fans/friends. More value can now be placed on having greater numbers of positive sentiments across the social media streams. Every time someone “likes”, “fans”, “follows”, or “retweets” you, these actions are objective votes on the quality of your brand, services or information sharing.

The more quality information and content that you share (that also becomes enthusiastically shared by others throughout the web), the more credibility you’ll build. Your online social reputation is very valuable for many reasons.

If you have the time and passion to openly share your knowledge and opinions, social media is an excellent communication forum.

Before Businesses Get Social…

Douglas Karr, author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies made an excellent observation on businesses who decide to go full throttle on social media.

“I believe that social media is an amplifier. When you want to amplify a message, you must first have a relevant message, an audience to distribute it to and a location where those listeners can come. Get all of your other branding, inbound marketing, search engine optimization, and even corporate blogging in place before you start throwing money at an expanded social media program!”

Big Brands Using Social Media

How Do Businesses Get Started?

Fireworks Popcorn Social Media Campaign

2010 Facebook Contest – Customer Video

K-Kom Marketing created a Facebook video contest for Fireworks’ Popcorn, through which customers could submit their homemade videos via YouTube.

Besides being a fun contest, the winning video was very unique. The customer actually involved the Twitter community with the Fireworks’ Facebook / YouTube campaign. Their video (shown below) used a popcorn machine that popped one Fireworks Popcorn kernel at a time! They had programmed the popper to do this whenever someone tweeted “#popcorn” on Twitter.

Social Media Technology Keeps Expanding

With new social media tools and insights added everyday to the Internet, it’s virtually impossible for most of us to become “experts”. There are always new tools, tactics, and techniques to learn, which keeps online communication and engagement exciting. Some of the newest technologies may have a few bugs and quirks, but staying informed of new trends can keep you a few steps of your competition and well worth your efforts.

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