Social Media for Business is an effective and affordable way to generate leads and services customers. And while the tools are the same as what we use on a personal level, leveraging social media for business does require a slightly different approach.
What works:
- Sharing how-to information for free to your friends, fans and followers.
- Leveraging social media as a customer service tool to answer people in real-time.
- Listening to what people are saying about you or your brand.
- Monitoring employee consensus about your company or organization.
- Taking polls or surveys and collecting useful, timely data
What does not work:
- Pitching, presenting or pushing the same products again and again.
- Asking blanket questions like “how’s the weather” to start a conversation.
- Trying be too hip and using techie jargon to seem “with-it”
- Running fake promotions that you will never follow-thru on.
- Posting infrequently and/or erratically, people need to see that you’re consistent.
A good social media campaign will be transparent, consistent and engaging. Most successful businesses using social media have a part-time resource helping to manage it. Many have full-time people, sometimes even teams of 3 and up. It really depends on your goals, your budget and your audience.
It should also be noted that much of what takes place on social media sites like Twitter and YouTube will get picked up by search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. This means that you are able to kill two birds with one stone. If done correctly, your website’s ranking in search engines will increase and thus create an added benefit for participating.
