Social media: Is your business getting it all wrong?

October 30, 2013

It seems that it’s impossible for even the smallest and most vaguely ambitious of businesses to avoid social media these days, with more and more of them taking to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and even Pinterest to promote their products or services. In theory, this is all very good – after all, social media is becoming central to online marketing, as it enables businesses to develop customer relationships through direct communication.

However, sound intentions aren’t enough if you are to avoid your own company’s social media campaign becoming a waste of time. To ensure that you get any proper return from your efforts, you need to get the right advice from the experts. It takes a lot of time and dedication, each and every day, to run a successful social media campaign, and businesses often fail at this aspect, initially signing up loads of accounts before leaving them to gather dust.

You therefore shouldn’t sign up to a single social media site unless you have the time to frequently post content. If time is limited, restrict your involvement to Facebook and Twitter, the platforms that have the highest returning traffic. We’d also advise you against copying and pasting identical messages to all platforms, as different social media sites have different audiences that you need to bear in mind when writing content.

Remember that the real point of social media for businesses is to interact with prospective customers and build relationships with them. You can do this in part by responding to any user questions and following them back, as well as asking questions. We’d especially suggest that you keep the focus on events taking place in the real world that have some relation to your products or services, rather than just something directly about your business.

Interesting and relevant content is all-important on social media – indeed, your entire online presence succeeds or fails on the basis of it. Nonetheless, when done right, social media can drive your wider online presence and bring you a real return on your investment.