If you are in business today and struggling with this new pphenomenon you are not alone. Econsultancy states that only eight percent of companies say they can determine Return on Investment (ROI) from their social media spending.
So what’s so ‘social’ about social media? Simon Sinek says: “In this age of omni’-connectedness, words like 'network,' 'community' and even 'friends' no longer mean what they used to”.
Networks shouldn’t only exist on LinkedIn. A community is not something that happens on a blog or on Twitter. And a friend is more than someone whose online status you check during the day.
For businesses the attraction of social media marketing is that it appears to be free yet a creative or clever post on Facebook or LinkedIn can potentially reach millions.
According to a recent study by Constant Contact small businesses spend around 20 hours per week on marketing, most of which is now online.
So at an average hourly rate of $150 for a service based business – what appears to be free marketing is now costing you the equivalent of around $3,000 a week. Yet 87% of marketers want to know how to measure their ROI for social media activities (Social Media Examiner).
So is social media really a complete waste of time? Well no – as long as you follow a few basic fundamentals first.
1. Choose wisely
Social media channels can appear as attractive as lollies to a boy in a sweet shop – even the icons have a kind of novelty feel about them. You need to choose the best platform for your business as each social media site plays host to a specific audience - while some overlap, it's generally easy to associate a each site with a particular audience.
LinkedIn is known as a professionally-oriented social networking hub, hosting an audience that’s geared towards any business-related content, making it perfect to branch out to viewers or clients with similar interests and focuses.
Facebook is an anomaly with over 1.2 billion users as of April 2014 and without a specific audience. As such, the best way to figure out who uses it is to go through a trial-and-error process. Use your Facebook page/website to trial original content and track the likes or more importantly, the interaction and sharing your posts generate.
Twitter with its use of hashtags and the specific 140 character limit Tweets targets a main audience generally aged between 18 - 29 years, according to Tech World. As with Facebook, see which Tweets get the most replies and re-tweets to interact with your audience on a direct, more personal level.
Google+: According to a survey conducted in 2013, this audience is self-employed or hold managerial positions in their respective fields.
YouTube last month surpassed Facebook in popularity with 167,848,349 visitors in June. For a business users on YouTube are significantly more engaged than those using Facebook. Facebook is often filled with the clutter of annoying content from hundreds of versions of the same photo of someone’s pet to the endless stream of ‘what I am having for dinner’ photographs. YouTube on the other hand offers a more highly engaged audience due to a commitment to watch videos as opposed to reading snippets of information.
2. Personalise your content
Social media is like ‘real life’ with just one step removed. Build a ‘buyer persona’ for your target market so you know who you want to talk to and then customise your content to suit. Remember, social media is personal – according to Adobe 71% of people use their mobile access their social platforms. Keep your content relevant, entertaining and newsworthy – if it is worth reading then people will not only read it, their comment on it and share it. In order to break through the clutter, messages need to not only be relevant to your brand, but meaningful too.
3. Measure your performance
If you are going to invest 20 hours a week in building your brand socially then you want to make sure you set some goals so you can measure the return on investment you want to achieve. Be careful though how you use these powerful platforms - Wall Street bank JP Morgan invited Twitter users to send questions to an executive using the hashtag #AskJPM. The Twitterverse opened up with a storm of abuse generating more than 8,000 responses over a six-hour period, with two out of every three comments quite negative.
Getting the right content, to the right people, at the right time via social media is a science that, if your budget permits, should be left to the specialists. Working with an agency or consultant that really understands the digital environment and what your brand stands for could be the best partnership you could form.
Don’t be tempted by offshore specials from India promising to manage your social channels for you – consumers today are smarter than ever before and will soon see through your fake persona.
If you can’t afford an expert to help you then invest in technology that can do some of it for you. Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot and online solutions like Hootsuite bring your Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn profiles together with one single login to assist you to at least see how effective or not your social media investment is.
For more information about the Social Media Revolution watch this video; http://youtu.be/QUCfFcchw1w?list=PLcawQLNnXDU8Kng12USU5xboznJ4BqKMJ - or for Marketing Automation, this one; http://youtu.be/t28DD3IW_18
You can contact Tony at: tony@thebrandmanager.com.au
