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There are many
benefits that social media can bring to your business. It include, providing
you with more customer insight, direct
communication channels and the ability to measure the effectiveness of these conversations
very closely. However,
as social media platform grows, participating can turn into little more than a
giant time suck without some sort of structure behind it. Perhaps you may
consider the following steps to develop the social media plan for your
business. Social media is a term we use to discuss the tools that facilitate
conversations. Listening first, before your company can be a part of those
conversations. You need to know what people are already talking about so you
can determine how you can best contribute. So, step one is – listening.
Remember
that social media platforms help facilitate conversations between individuals,
not companies. The only time to identify the appropriate people inside your
organization to participate is once you have a sense of what people are talking
about. Step two is about preparation - to find the people who are expert
in their areas empowered to act on the feedback they receive from the
community. But make sure your company has a social media policy in place that
offers guidelines to your employees on the appropriate way to engage in online
conversations. You may also need to define your strategy since Social media is
comprised of many different platforms. Rather than trying to participate in all
of them, begin with one or two that seem to make the most sense
Engagement in your conversation is a vital part when
you participate in social media platforms. For example, start leaving comments
on blogs, uploading images to Flickr, building a community on Twitter or
FriendFeed or whatever else that strategy entails that helps further the
discussion and illustrates your company’s commitment to developing these online
relationships. So, step four is – engagement. But don’t forget, you still need
to go offline for your business to thrive. Use trade shows and other events as
opportunities to build even stronger relationships with the members of your
online community. This could be in the form of an exclusive session, an
informal breakfast or even a group picture on the event floor.
In social media, measuring success begins by asking
more questions like, were we able to engage our customers in new conversations
or did we learn something about our customers that we didn’t know before? There
are also some tools, for example a blog search engine that allows you to both
track and graph topics as well as compare terms- to help benchmark your company
against your competitors by running the exact same search and parameters before
and after your engagement begins.
To conclude, the potential payoff for corporate
social media participation is enormous. These companies will have a better
sense of how they are perceived by their target audiences, they will establish
a two way dialog with key stakeholders and they will empower their customers to
speak with them, not at them. But without a strategic
approach to social media, it is difficult to succeed.
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