How’s Social Media Being Used In Your Company?

Summer’s over, the fourth quarter’s arrived – it’s Sales meetings all this week! Time to step hard on the online marketing pedal. The MD is again demanding that he wants to be Google No.1 – can you double the number of marketing tweets every 10 minutes, blah, blah…!

Sometimes, integrating social media into a company’s everyday marketing strategies can be a long journey into understanding the new rules of customer engagement! The MD has become fixated with his shiny new social media toy, thinking it’s the latest internet fast-track to eCommerce nirvana now that the website has Twitter and Facebook buttons.

Too often the impatient desire for instant results from the instant social media take-up on a top heavy, one channel approach can lead to the hasty assumption that it doesn’t work because sales figures are unaffected.

As with organic website SEO and the long game of consistent quality link building, so too with social media engagement. Your niche market consumers must be exposed to your message multiple times before they notice you, let alone trust you enough to respond. Social media does not replace established channels such as email marketing or online newsletters. It is an interactive means to reach people by their various, preferred channels.You must learn how they wish to engage so they might truly focus on your message!

Directly seeing your company ad may barely register on their radar! But a thumbs up recommendation or retweet via a reader’s social network is the ‘quality referral’ link that operates like an offline introduction to opening up the doors of your brand identity to an intrigued enquirer.

Integrated marketing does not mean obsessing over using every single available channel but seeking those that are relevant, valuable and will work for your segment because you have an intuitive understanding of its’ reach and can consistently communicate naturally through the medium. Adoption of different techniques will invariably be based on whether you are a b2b or b2c company, and their key demographics. Different age groups opt to use different platforms for different applications.

Remember - a powerful CRM presence is one of the most cost efficient marketing tools to increase business. A loyal audience will themselves broadcast and share your intrinsic content value, thus performing invaluable marketing. By simply ensuring your message and brand are always recognisable from channel to channel, the connections can be made.

But most of all, the results of sustained quality endeavour will eventually yield positive feedback, increased traffic and the much desired PageRank elevation the MD now loves to check every morning alongside his emails.