Here’s why social media has its own tab. From Seth Godin, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and founder of Squidoo:
“How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation?”
It’s that important. Social media as a platform for business continues to grows by leaps and bounds. Nick Usborne, one my mentors, well-respected online marketer, and all-around mensch says this: “We’re nowhere near a plateau in the growth of social media marketing…not even close.”
And yes, I know that “everybody” does social media, but let’s look at what that actually means. Many companies put up a Facebook page, create profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn and call it a day. Too many of them are using social media as a broadcast medium, and all they’re doing is pushing promotional material all the time.
And that, my friends, defeats the purpose of social media. Leads to complaints that social media doesn’t work. Leads to frustration and overwhelm.
But look, social media is supposed to be “social.” That means interaction, sharing content that’s of value (or of interest) to your clients and customers. It needs to be entertaining in order to be shared, passed along by word of mouth. And it must still maintain your overall core “story” of your company.
Which is why you need someone trained in creating marketing content. My approach to social media is always looking for the story behind the story, as it were. So let’s say a restaurant is featuring pork from a particular local farm. So that’s what they highlight in their social media – “Our yummy pork comes from ______.” But I can take that statement and create 10 more stories from it, expanding on the theme, highlighting the restaurant and the vendor (and the pigs!) to create interest.
So here are my questions to you about your use of social media:
- Do you know where your target audience hangs out in social media? No sense tweeting if your market is on Facebook.
- Do you know how to engage your audience, to keep the conversation going?
- Do you have a social media strategy that supports your overall business goals?
- Are you optimizing your web content for social media? (Reduce, reuse, recycle, right?)
Those are my questions to you. I think a conversation is in order, don’t you?