Are you ready to take your social media efforts to the next level?
Remember:
* In a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) or Business-to-Business (B2B) relationship, it’s no longer about you. Instead, it’s about your customer/client.
* “Listen” to what your customers/clients have to say in the social media space. What are they talking about?
* Contribute to the conversation. Be helpful. Offer solutions.
* No sales pitch. It doesn’t work. It’s not appreciated and it will not gain you anything.
There are several social media tools you can use to share and earn trust. These include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, and a few others.
Being on Facebook doesn’t mean you will be found, nor does it mean potential customers will flock to be your Fan. (Note: individuals on Facebook create Profiles and have Friends; businesses create Pages and have Fans).
Posting frequency is not as important as content and consistency. Fans want to learn how you can help them with information, tips, news, human interest stories about your company, coupons, specials, sales (but without being pushy). Pictures of your company’s employees; parties; lectures; trade shows and seminars, etc., are very popular with Fans. Always take and share pictures.
Use the Events section to post upcoming company events, lectures, trade shows, etc.; buy a Flip camera (or something easy to learn) and take videos to share on Facebook; create and share podcasts. Leverage everything available to you in Facebook.
A mini-blog of sorts, Twitter limits posts of 140 characters or less in which users answer the question “what’s happening?” or “what are you doing?”
Businesses use Twitter for a variety of reasons, but they primarily fall into two categories: customer service and information sharing.
With customer service, businesses follow chatter, complaints and compliments about their company, brand, products and services. Zappos and JetBlue, for example, are quick to respond to any customer questions, comments or gripes on Twitter.
Twitter offers an excellent opportunity for businesses to share information, tips, news and problem-solving with a link pointing followers to a specific long URLs so they can incorporated into your Tweets.
While some use LinkedIn as a resume shopping service, businesses should be using this tool as an Internet marketing resource.
Some keys to a successful LinkedIn strategy include having a 100% completed profile (a must); integrating targeted keywords within your profile, and participating in the LinkedIn Answers section (which you can quickly become an “expert” by answering questions in your field).
YouTube
If YouTube were a true search engine, it would be the second largest search engine behind Google. Businesses should take advantage of the traffic and search potential by creating a YouTube Channel and uploading informative company videos here (not commercials).
All YouTube videos are “searchable” when properly optimized with keywords, tags and URLs in the video’s properties fields.
Strategy
Use the social media tools wisely, but first begin with a strategy. Listen to what your customers and potential customers are saying in the social media space; be helpful and informative; share and earn trust. buy youtube shares