How Do You Choose Which Social Media Tools to Use?
As a small business owner, it is very easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to planning your social media marketing strategy. There is a tremendous amount of information out there regarding social media, and there are plenty of opinions on the best tools and techniques to use. The tools themselves can be extremely time consuming, and you want to make sure you are investing your time wisely, in order to get the greatest return on your investment (ROI) in social media marketing. A lot of this goes back to your social media strategy. It's extremely important to decide how you will position yourself in the social media arena before you do anything else. What are your objectives for investing in social media in the first place? After all, there are many things that social media can do for your business:
- Increase brand recognition
- Gather/respond to customer feedback
- Find new customers (find out what potential customers are looking for)
- Find out what your competitors are doing/saying (and what their customers are doing/saying)
- Identify new market trends
- Drive traffic to your website
- Find well-qualified employees
- Etc.
Depending on what your objectives are, this will help determine the social media tools that you should use. If you are trying to drive web traffic for example, find out what social media tools others are using to drive traffic by searching blogs with specific keywords, asking other web marketers, and networking with others that have similar goals to your own. If you are trying to collect customer feedback, Twitter is a great place to start, but there may also be social networking sites devoted to your customer base. I recommend that you take some time to observe what tools others in your industry/field are using. Talk to others. Join groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, and ask people what social media tools they use, along with how it’s working for them. It’s the very rare company that needs to use EVERYTHING that’s out there. Unless you have a huge budget to invest in using all these social media tools appropriately, you are much better off targeting a few, well-chosen tools, and using them effectively, than in spreading yourself too thin. Social media tools are only as good as the person that uses them, engaging people and developing relationships. So find the tools that make the most sense for your business, and then spend the time to make those tools work for you. It is very important to understand that social media tools are about NETWORKING. It is considered bad manners to meet people through the use of these tools and then immediately began spamming people about your business. Develop relationships FIRST. Get to know people, solve problems, share information, learn. Once you have engaged people and they know you, THEN you can begin to share info about your business as openings present themselves, but with GREAT restraint. But be a giver FIRST, and then you can share your business later. I have been training consultants in the direct sales industry for years, and have spent a lot of time identifying those social media tools that help a direct sales consultant accomplish the three primary objectives in a direct sales business: Book, Sell, and Recruit. Before you plan your tools, however, it is important to check your company's policies and procedures, so that you understand what your company allows in terms of online advertising. From what I’ve observed in the direct selling industry, the tools that make the most sense are:
Facebook is a great place for consultants to connect with family and friends, build relationships, and post the occasional product update and party invitation. Business owners can have a presence through fan pages for your business and for best-selling products, posting event information such as vendor events and opportunity calls, pictures of your company’s work and events, etc. Facebook Groups are a great way to connect with people in your market, so find some groups made up of your potential customer base, and get to know people there. Facebook is also ideal for potential customers and distributors to relate to your business on a personal level.
Blogging
Blogging is a great way to share information with your customer base, and gives people a chance to get to know you. I personally have a blog through http://www.wordpress.com, but there are several free services out there. If you can write decently, and can share information related to what it is you have to offer, it's a good idea to start a blog. For example, if you sell cookware or spices, you might want to blog about new recipes. If you sell hand-crafted goods for children or children's clothing, you could blog about topics related to raising children, online deals for kids, or games and activities for children. Be sure to include a good About page as part of your blog, that gives information about you and what you do. That personal touch is so important in social media marketing. It gives people a chance to get to know you. Then post new content to your blog at LEAST 3 times per week, to keep people coming back to learn from you. Once you have a blog with some good information, you can invite people to come to your blog through other social media tools. You can also invite people to subscribe to your blog through email or an RSS feed (Wordpress.com and Feedburner provide these options), so that people who sign up are automatically notified when you write a new post. This keeps you fresh in your readers' minds.
LinkedIn is a great way to connect with serious-minded direct sales consultants. These are the business builders that take themselves seriously as professionals, and want to connect with others that are successful in direct sales. The number of groups devoted to the subject of direct selling, and the excellent flow of information being shared, is a great resource for the consultant that wants to make serious money in her direct sales business. By finding out what others in the industry have to offer through talents and experience, the industry as a whole is elevated. I have personally experienced a great deal of value through the connections I have made in this industry through LinkedIn.
Twitter is perhaps the most misunderstood tool in the direct seller’s arsenal. Let me begin by telling you what Twitter is NOT. Twitter is NOT a tool that can be used for a quick sale, to force people to go see your latest hostess specials, or to broadcast advertisements. Twitter IS perhaps the most brilliant networking tool ever invented. By investing time in developing relationships, finding people that value what you have to offer, and by offering value through the flow of information, you can create a great deal of loyalty to your business. Let me be clear: this is NOT a quick tool. It takes time to develop relationships. However it is an incredible way to reach a large number of people more quickly than you could if you only tried to network exclusively face-to-face. It also gives you insight into what people are saying, and how you can help. Direct sales distributors should be using Twitter to identify people that need what they have to offer. They should provide value to these customers by answering questions, providing information, and sharing (with GREAT restraint) how their businesses can meet customers’ stated needs. The most exciting part of this new social media explosion is the fact that we can FINALLY get a much clearer picture when it comes to what our customers need and want. We can also more easily identify our customers through searching public profiles and conversations. We can identify the keywords that our customers most commonly use when looking for our products and services, and then make sure that our websites, blogs, and other online presences make use of these keywords regularly. By defining a clear social media objective first, you can then craft a strategy that makes use of the right tools for the job. If you don’t know or understand which social media tools are available, then hire someone that does to help you craft and implement an effective strategy that positions you well to take advantage of all the benefits that a Web 2.0 interactive experience offers. You can also check our Get Social. It's includes everything you need to know to get found online.