Getting Started with Social Media
By Corey Graham 2.0
Before you get started in Social Media marketing, there are a few things that you need to appreciate.
Social Media marketing is essentially word of mouth marketing. It’s largely about persons spreading the word about your company and its products and services to others in your market. We all would have experienced this in some form or fashion. We might have a friend who raves so much about a particular product or service that it encourages us to purchase that product or service. Social media magnifies this by giving persons to the tools and the platform to spread the good word of their favourite company to a larger audience. Instead of telling one they can tell many via status updates, blog posts etc. Social media marketing is therefore designed to make it easy for people to share the good word about your company.
Socially media marketing is all about empowering your customers. It’s your job to create an environment where your most passionate customers can be more involved and feel a part of your company. In fact, social media marketing makes them an essential part of your company's PR and marketing strategy by becoming the vehicle for your messages and offering feedback on things that affect the company. A powerful advantage of social media is that allows you to tell your stories the way you want to tell it. Additionally, it allows you to speak directly to these people who want to share the word on your company. Social media affords you a greater level control over what you put out there in the public domain. You have no real restrictions on the length of video, audio or articles that your fans can share with others. I also must say that the main challenge with social media is that it needs to be managed on a consistent basis to be effective. It will need to become an integral part of your organisation.
Now that we have established what social media marketing is about, how do we get started in building our social media presence? Start by familiarising yourself with the various social media platforms available, then approach their use as your own media channel. Use that media channel to tell your stories so that your fan base can share them via the social media platforms.
First determine the stories that fan base would want to hear and develop a schedule to publish these stories via the social media platforms. You may need to invest in the tools e.g. camera that would help you to tell your stories in an appropriate quality.
In telling these stories there are a few things to remember. You need to be authentic in what you publish, and focus on building a relationship with these persons who are in interested your business. You want to earn their trust and encourage them to be more loyal to you as you readily share the new developments in your business with them. Try to focus on being yourself and connecting with those persons who are interested in your brand. You want to empower them remember?
Finally, make sure to use the social networks that your fans spend their time on that is appropriate to your product or service. In deciding on the mix of social networks you want to use, it’s also important to also pay attention to how much effort it will take you to keep these social networks updated and to engage your customer appropriately. It makes no sense to have these networks and not have a way to keep them updated.
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