Social Media Marketing. What’s your Presence?

Does your company have a social media marketing presence?

Here’s the thing, at some point soon – in the next few years – if a company doesn’t have an interactive, responsible, monitored social media experience they won’t exist to an ever-expanding, highly motive group of potential buyers. And existing buyers will be being lured away by competitors with an active social media marketing strategy.

Adding social media marketing to your marketing mix can start small and be built over time into a large product / service experience. It’s really not so hard to get one once you’ve defined why and how you’re going to move into social media marketing.

The important thing when planning is for your strategy to be fully integrated with your brand, core values and mission. Once that’s locked down, be as active and flexible as your company can in one or many social media marketing forums. For example, you can:

• Share knowledge / Get feedback (Blogs, Comments, Questions)
• Be active on facebook, LinkedIn and countless other networking sites – this lets you network and expose your profile / company specifics to online search engines
• Add Video (Company Website, YouTube Product Demo, On-line Training)
• Run Contests (Expand client base – be a good corporate citizen)
• Advertise (Connect with customers and prospects – on others blog sites, or networking sites)
• Respond to customer questions and complaints

Two Social Media Marketing, fears companies have:

• It costs a lot
• What we and our customers say cannot be controlled

My Advice:

Businesses have been unleashing sales people onto the world for years – sending them to conferences, giving them cars, phones and expense accounts – why is social media seen as so expensive and uncontrollable? In reality, social media marketing should be less expensive and the potential is greater. Social media can easily target prospects in your preferred market area.

The added value of social media marketing vs. people go to a conference or on sales calls is that in the social media world everything is online – you can see and track the conversations. You can see where your customer & potential customer interests are… and you can see where your dedicated staff are doing a great job of conversing with them… and where they could use (and want), additional training to be even better.

Training for your social media marketing staff  (and your sales people), is one of the best investments you can make. Make sure they know what your product/service is (sounds obvious – but you’d be surprised), and what value it has as well as the corporate values and mission statement. If your social media marketing staff  are well-trained in customer service and problem resolution – they may be your best – and most public investment in years. Like an online ombudsman.

Social media marketing and social media advertising are places where you don’t have to apply large budgets but can reach a larger audience.

Conclusion:

1. Social media is just one part of the marketing mix and should be coordinated with other marketing activities and your brand.
2. Train, prepare and support dedicated social media representatives so they have knowledge and skill in customer service and understand corporate brand, values and their expectations.

It’s important to leverage social media by connecting and engaging with your customers. This isn’t a sprint – it’s a marathon. It takes time to establish a presence and build credible relationships with your connections… so start today.

Other Interesting BMC Articles: Core Competencies Working Definition

and Effective Business Email Writing.

Give us a call. We’ll listen.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting is  Strategic    Branded   Relevant.

www.brucemayhewconsulting.com