Social media is, without a doubt, a buzz-inducing phenomenon, but it shouldn’t be seen as the fix-it-all solution for marketing your company. Before taking the plunge into social media platforms, there are a few questions you should ask.
- Who is my audience? What key people am I trying to reach? Before you can start reaching out to your audience on social media platforms, you need to know who you’ll be talking to.
- Are they on social media platforms? If so, which ones? Different audiences gravitate toward different social media platforms. If you’re not sure where your audience hangs out, try going to a site like www.quantcast.com and looking up data on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. The results may prove insightful in moving forward.
- How is my audience using these platforms? The easiest way to monitor how your audience uses these platforms is to jump on them yourself and lurk. Search groups, profiles and pages that have keywords that sync with the services or products of your company. If you’re geographically limited, see what people from your area are talking about. By learning about what your audience is talking about online, you’re one step closer to being able to relate to them on their turf.
Now that you’ve figured out who your audience is, where they hang out online and the things that interest them, you can move into constructing your case for how social media will positively impact relationship-building for your company.
While R.O.I. for social media is still hard to track, it is getting easier. Using the information you’ve already gathered, put together a social media execution plan that gives you actionable items to track. Having this plan is vital to your success, as it will allow you to establish benchmarks for later comparisons. These benchmarks could be things as simple as the number of fans or followers you have each quarter to the average number of retweets or “likes” you receive per update.
As you move forward with your plan, don’t forget that the big difference between traditional and social media rests in the fact that social media should be used as a two-way communication outlet. If you’re not willing to listen as well as speak, it will be difficult for you to establish a rapport with your audience.
Consider utilizing a program like HootSuite, which allows you to sync various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and LinkedIn, as well as schedule future outgoing messages and updates.
Twitalyzer (a Twitter analyzer) is another good tool that collects R.O.I. data on your twitter account, makes recommendations on actionable steps you can take to extend your reach, influence and impact, and lets you set and track goals for future initiatives.
Lastly, keep track of the hours you put into the social media execution plan and compare it to the hard costs of outreach to the same audience through more traditional media such as advertising, public relations or direct mail.
