Today’s blog post comes from Kirsten Wright of Wright Creativity. Through training, assistance in content creation and the set up of monitoring tools, Wright Creativity will make social media a valuable part of your marketing strategy. Thank you, Kirsten, for sharing your valuable insights with us!
We’re all looking to build a stronger business. And many businesses believe that the key to success is through social media channels. The truth is, social media tools can be extremely powerful when used properly. In fact, I believe that most consumer products businesses should be utilizing social media. With that said, if you choose to utilize social media and fail to properly plan is worse than not using it all.
The problem is, rather than researching the tools to determine what would work best or considering combining them with a traditional strategy, most businesses just jumped headfirst into an unplanned strategy. Social media is more like traditional marketing than we give it credit for. Social media should be planned and strategized just as much if not more than a traditional marketing strategy. In social media, a single tweet or Facebook update can be detrimental to your brand just like a poorly planned postcard or magazine ad. The difference is a status update can be spread through the web world a whole heck of a lot faster than any form of traditional media. We all know the good news travels fast but bad news travels faster. Poor planning for social media strategy means you’re headed for disaster.
Luckily, through proper planning and a well-thought-out strategy a social media campaign can be extremely successful. When you put together your strategy you should:
Consider the proper channels for communication. Not every tool out there is right for every business. Just because Twitter and Facebook are two of the most popular social media tools doesn’t mean that those are the two that you have to use. Your business may be better off using YouTube or LinkedIn. The only way to know what’s best for your business is properly understands your customers and your product lines.
Develop a communications strategy involving messaging and imagery. As I mentioned last week with branding consistency, your messaging should be consistent as well. If your company is a Fortune 100, suit and tie, corporate atmosphere, telling jokes and being sarcastic through social media is not the way to win your audience. On the other hand if your product is designed for children to play with, having a little fun and humor is expected.
Determine how to deal with questions concerns and e-mails. as with any campaign, there will be questions concerns, praise and a lot of e-mails. Understanding how to a properly deal with these situations will make the difference in a successful social media campaign.
Allocate the appropriate amount of time to spend on each tool. While you may have more fun sending out tweets, if writing solid blog content brings you more traffic, then that should be where you’re spending the majority of your time. Social media is fun, and I enjoy spending time using the tools. However, if they were to cease being successful I would spend less time there and more time doing something that brought me clients. Social media is a time waste when it stops being successful.
Determine what success looks like and how you plan on measuring. ROI. Three letters that everyone wants to know. ROI in social media isn’t just about a financial return. Social media is used as a communications strategy which means you’re opening up the door to conversation, not just focused on profit margins. Of course, when social media strategies are implemented successfully, profits will increase…just not overnight.
Do you actually have a social media strategy or did you just jump in head first?
Originally posted on Wright Creativity on 2-15-11. Reposted with permission.
The process of creating a product is always exciting and often can lead to additional profit centers for your business. When you develop a product you ALWAYS make something else! Thats right, be observant and creative and you will be able to develop additional by products and new opportunities. The cardboard box industry does this extremely well. The scraps and materials are reprocessed into all kinds of secondary market materials in this industry. Filler for packaging, materials for other applications are often repurposed into additional profit centers for this industry. You need to do the same with your products or services.