Social media strategy

A social media strategy is essential to success and ought to be considered as part of your overall business strategy. It is a highly powerful tool to build a business community which will, if implemented effectively, will facilitate the Meet – Like – Know – Trust process.

• Meet – This is the first time an individual comes into contact with you – this can be face to face, via your website, facebook profile, newspaper article, advertisement or direct mail.

• Like – First impressions count.We decide very quickly if we like someone enough to get to know them.

• Know – This is when the relationship starts to develop. How this progresses determines whether and how quickly we reach the next stage of...

• Trust – This is essential in order to convert interest into action. If your prospective clients don’t trust you – why would they do business with you? We trust our friends. We don't trust strangers – it’s human nature. Use social media to become a trusted friend.

From here, the leads will start to come in. People will come to you to buy rather than you have to go to them to sell.

It’s the more natural and comfortable way to do business.

And it is the future.

When formulating a social media strategy, consider the following. Rather than a sales tool, social media is most effective when used to:

• Listen and learn – by monitoring social media, you can learn an enormous amount about your industry, your customers, competitors and what makes a successful strategy.

• Integrate – it should not be a separate activity from the rest of your marketing. Include links to your blogs and social media profiles in everything that you do. And in turn your blogs and posts should ultimately engage customers and drive them to your site / shop.

• Create awareness – use social media to raise awareness of valuable content elsewhere. Link to your blog from Facebook, tweet a link to an interesting forum, share interesting or valuable content from other providers. The better reputation you can get for sharing quality information, the more successful you will be.

• Repurpose – If you create valuable content on your website, re-use it by adapting it and making it accessible in another way.

• Connect and engage – If used properly, social media will help you really connect with your target market and engage them, which leads to profitable relationships. But you will only connect and engage by adding value to them with your content.

• Generate leads – The hard sell is not really welcome anywhere – but it is a big no-no in social media. Instead you should be aiming to let customers buy from you rather than sell to them. Use social media to create awareness of your valuable content which in turn directs them to your site, which then tells them how you can solve their problems and ultimately shows them how to buy from you.

...and in that order!

Spending time networking online can have excellent benefits.

It can help you become a recognised name within your industry, answer potential customers’ questions and attract them to your website, and can give your business a great dose of publicity.

By using forums, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or any relevant platform, you should see an increase in interest and visitor numbers.

Results are not achieved overnight (though sometimes you can see vast improvements very quickly), so it’s important to dedicate regular time on an ongoing basis. This should be built into your social media strategy.