Social Media for Companies
Which social media is best for your company? The answer to this question depends very much on the type of business you're in, and mostly on understanding how your target audience uses it.
You need to be where your customers are, and because that's sometimes determined by customer demographic SM may not be the most appropriate tool for your company to use.
For example, an optometrist I visited recently commented that social media was irrelevant to her outer-suburban shop, but very relevant to her inner-suburban shop.
The key to deciding which SM tools to use is to have a good think about how your business relates to how its customers use social media.
Traditional media: If few of your customers use social media, then maybe its not well suited for use in your business.
Forums: If your customers hang out in forums, then forums should be your primary SM hang-out.
There's big potential to find opportunities here.
Use forums to gain a better understanding of the types of problems that people need you to help them solve.
Forums are basically discussion sites where each topic has a thread.
There are many examples, and two of the more sophisticated ones (in that they incorporate a Social philosophy) are Quora and LinkedIn.
Facebook: Businesses that involve people's social lives (eg.
a pub, coffee shop, bowling alley, etc) should use Facebook.
So many people use Facebook on their smartphones that these days a coffee with a friend can quickly turn into coffee for a group.
Google Places: Local businesses should claim their Google Place Page.
Although not strictly social, I've included it because I firmly believe that it's the best bang-for-buck that any local brick and mortar business could have.
Twitter: Some small business have had great success tweeting last-minute messages such as "food van will be at the corner of Smith St and Jones St at 11 am.
" LinkedIn: For business-to-business LinkedIn might be more appropriate.
For a friend of mine, connections to around thirty people on LinkedIn have made a noticeable difference to his business.
Whatever you do, you should avoid spreading yourself too thin.
If your time is precious then choose one social media tool and do it well rather than working with many social media tools and doing none of them properly.
And you need to be patient because the returns on your social media investment can take time.
You need to be where your customers are, and because that's sometimes determined by customer demographic SM may not be the most appropriate tool for your company to use.
For example, an optometrist I visited recently commented that social media was irrelevant to her outer-suburban shop, but very relevant to her inner-suburban shop.
The key to deciding which SM tools to use is to have a good think about how your business relates to how its customers use social media.
Traditional media: If few of your customers use social media, then maybe its not well suited for use in your business.
Forums: If your customers hang out in forums, then forums should be your primary SM hang-out.
There's big potential to find opportunities here.
Use forums to gain a better understanding of the types of problems that people need you to help them solve.
Forums are basically discussion sites where each topic has a thread.
There are many examples, and two of the more sophisticated ones (in that they incorporate a Social philosophy) are Quora and LinkedIn.
Facebook: Businesses that involve people's social lives (eg.
a pub, coffee shop, bowling alley, etc) should use Facebook.
So many people use Facebook on their smartphones that these days a coffee with a friend can quickly turn into coffee for a group.
Google Places: Local businesses should claim their Google Place Page.
Although not strictly social, I've included it because I firmly believe that it's the best bang-for-buck that any local brick and mortar business could have.
Twitter: Some small business have had great success tweeting last-minute messages such as "food van will be at the corner of Smith St and Jones St at 11 am.
" LinkedIn: For business-to-business LinkedIn might be more appropriate.
For a friend of mine, connections to around thirty people on LinkedIn have made a noticeable difference to his business.
Whatever you do, you should avoid spreading yourself too thin.
If your time is precious then choose one social media tool and do it well rather than working with many social media tools and doing none of them properly.
And you need to be patient because the returns on your social media investment can take time.