As we tweet and blog our way through the second decade of the 21st century, social media is all the rage – indeed if companies aren’t using at least one form or other of social media to market their products or services, they almost certainly have a sneaking guilty feeling that they probably should be (and what’s more, they’re right!).
However, as with most things in life, moderation is a good thing. In other words, it’s wise not to throw yourself headlong into the world of (re)tweets and “likes” and “favourites” or you risk neglecting other aspects of your business in your endeavour to keep feeding the rapacious, time-gobbling beastie that social media can quickly become.
So here are three tips to bear in mind if your business is embarking on a social media campaign from scratch:
1. Identify which is/are the most important form(s) of social media for your business. At the outset, it can be bewildering as you hear people bandying around names such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Pinterest…
For my business, for example, Twitter, Facebook and blogging make most sense, as copywriting revolves around words. However, if your products are bespoke cakes, tailor-made kilts or handmade jewellery, Pinterest would almost certainly be a good choice for you, as you can pin up photos of your gorgeous creations for all to admire!
2. If you’re just starting out on Facebook and Twitter, here’s another tip for you. By all means set up your Facebook account so that it publishes all your FB posts on Twitter; however, it’s not such a good idea to have all your tweets posted automatically to your Facebook page.
Why is this? Well, simply because Twitter is a different type of forum, in that it’s more like an ongoing chat/conversation (albeit between thousands of people!) and is generally full of random thoughts, snippets of news, comments about miscellany, retweets, #FF (Friday follows) or comments on other people’s tweets, etc.
If you clutter your clients’ Facebook pages with these frequent tweets, they may well not appreciate it and promptly “unlike” your page – which is, of course, the last thing you want to happen when you’re busily trying to build up your “likes”.
3. One of the aspects of social media that often puts companies off is that it can be time-consuming. Granted, devising and finding fresh material for posts on Facebook pages and thinking up pithy 140-character tweets can begin to eat into the working day. However, there’s one way to cut down the time you spend doing this – and that’s to pre-schedule some of your posts/tweets for the week ahead.
Thanks to the Facebook scheduling facility (the small clock icon in the bottom left of your Facebook status box) and Twitter’s wonderful https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ system, you can spend anything from 20 minutes to a couple of hours (depending on how much social media activity you wish to engage in) once a week and pre-schedule the majority of your content.
You’ll notice that I said “the majority of your content”, and there’s a reason for that: one of the main points of being involved in social media is to interact with others and to respond to news/events that are happening – either in your industry in general or within your specific business – as they happen.
Consequently, you do need to be prepared to respond most days to people who leave comments or send you direct messages, and to post/tweet information that has just become available and which you know might interest your customers. That means setting aside 10 minutes or so once or twice a day to “be social”. After all, that’s what social media is all about – as the name suggests!