Which Social Media experience is right for you?

Getting started with social media for marketing can seem daunting. If you’re starting out with a plan for your company, brand or client then the first step is to evaluate what social media to use - It would be wrong to just assume it has to be Twitter and Facebook.

How to tell what is right in social media?

Remember social media in its broad meaning covers everything from blogs to forums to social networks like LinkedIn and Foursquare. Based on my experiences, your customer journey or sales & marketing strategy will provide good indicators as to what’s is right for you.

Myth: Build it & they will come

Remember your first website project? And the agony of waiting for search engines and then people to visit your website. Build it and they will come is myth. How many empty websites exist in the world? How many apps go ignored? Please don’t  assume your new experience in social media will lead to hits, visitors, leads and sales. So don’t go building complex fan pages to facebook or add features like user profiles to your website.

Love great content - Love Google

The best news, reviews, comments or free content can actually work to your advantage. Google and all searchbots love fresh content. Aim for good SEO and your social media marketing will start to pay off. If your social media activities are not indexed in Google then stop now! Everything needs to work together.

Just listen to social media is not a good position

If you just want to listen to conversations online in social media, then there are tools like Tweetdeck which are free and useful to track customer sentiment. BUT you’ll find when you start listening that you’ll soon want to start to engage. So start with the end in mind. Join Twitter and talk to your customers and tell them about your new stuff.

Meet the author

Damien Saunders
An experienced management consultant and business leader interested in digital transformation, product centred design and scaled agile. If I'm not writing about living with UCTD (an autoimmune disease), I'm probably listening to music, reading a book or learning more about wine.