‘Social media’, often a phrase that has a ring of skepticism to it when mentioned within a business. The reason for this is that people can be unaware of the benefits this particular medium can bring to their business. However, social media is best for the two-way communication it gives to businesses and their customers. Social media, similar to traditional communication techniques such as promotion or advertising, enable organizations to talk to their customers via online platforms such as social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.) video sharing (such as YouTube), and many more. Secondly, social media offers increased interaction, communication, and collaboration between organizations and individuals. Below are 5 reasons to make the most of social media.
1. Inactiveness
Not being active on social media is a big issue. You may think the answer is to offload this to a specialized agency. It could be a social media agency in Manchester or social media agency in Hong-Kong, they will tell you the same: staying active is a major key to success. The reasons for this is because a customer may visit one of your social media pages after looking at your website and if they see you haven’t sent a tweet in 7 months this could place a bad image in their head that the company doesn’t seem too responsive and they could lose trust. So it is very important to stay active on social media. A very easy way to do this is to create a timetable of when to log on so there are regular updates.
2. Engagement
Engaging your customers on social media is imperative to get the best out of the medium. Where companies often go wrong is posting a series of tweets or pictures pumping out special offers and company information. However, to make the most of the two-way communication more needs to be done. Try start a conversation with one of the customers, ask them what special offers they may want, what they’re doing this weekend etc. The point is that you need to entice them to reply or comment. The type of content you post will differ on what type of business yours is. For instance, a car dealership may ask about people’s favorite car, whereas, a clothes site could ask what people’s favorite summer outfit is.
3. Hashtags
This relates mainly to Twitter and Instagram but since the emergence of these two platforms hashtags have become key to any posts on them. Often correct grammar is not required when trying to get a message across via hashtag but it is important to use capital letter at the start of every word. For example: if you wanted to add social media Manchester along with one of your posts #socialmediamanchester can be hard to read, whereas #SocialMediaManchester is more clear and concise and a customer would be able to easily read it. This can have a strong affect (especially for a social media agency!) when a customer is scrolling through their timeline they do not want to have to struggle to read. Ease of use for users of social media sites is key.
4. Different posts for different sites
This is an area that gets easily overlooked because businesses do not want to take up much time with running their social media accounts. However, a fundamental aspect of using social media is that customers use different social media sites for a reason. This may seem obvious but let’s compare Twitter and Facebook. A large number of people go on Facebook to look at pictures and videos of family and friends on holiday or just see what their Friday evening consisted of. The same person would use Twitter to get a quick 140 character update of what their friends been up to, possibly with a relatable gif to go along with it. So if your business is posting the same thing on both sites it is essentially a waste of time because it will be over looked for something they actually want to see.
5. Branding
Social media can the give most obscure business type the ability to create and portray a strong brand image. An example of this is Paddy Power, the betting agency. The way they run their Twitter account gives them a huge competitive advantage over other betting agencies because they add some personality to the strongly structured and regulated world of betting. A business may use social media to simply churn out information and news regarding the business but this does very little to the strength of their brand. The business could instead try and evaluate their target market and see how they can best interact with them in a way which will improve their brand, as Paddy Power do.
To conclude, these are the five key areas why your business isn’t making the most of social media. If any of these relate to your business it will be hard to change overnight but if these areas are taken on board then there is no reason why your business won’t get everything there is to get from social media.
