Social Media: Not Optional Anymore

We sort of hate to use the term “obligatory” because it takes the fun out of marketing. But when it comes to a contemporary and effective marketing strategy – you’d be hard pressed to figure an industry that can do without social media and still grow their business exponentially. We will therefore reiterate the concept of social media as part of your client retention and acquisition plan with the terms: compulsory, mandatory, requisite, necessary, essential, de rigueur.

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, there was an era when the business card was standard issue, and then the period when you didn’t have a real business if you didn’t have a website. In this decade, if you have no social media presence you may find yourself packing it in. A harsh truth, but you need to be where your consumers are…and that’s where you’ll find them…online. They’re there — comparing and recommending away and can actually serve as the best possible unpaid spokespeople for your goods and services – you just need to give them a place to gather. If you don’t, you may as well be trying to sell snowballs in the winter. Nobody’s buying.

The thing that’s SO, SO extraordinary about social media marketing is that it is comparatively affordable. If you structure and design your platforms appropriately, it is something you can support in-house; you’ll just have to commit to serious planning and sweat equity. If you have any doubt about its validity in the context of growing your business, spend a half hour, even 15 minutes and Google “social media statistics”. You’ll find yourself setting up and reviewing your accounts before you can say “Instagram”. People may lie, but numbers never do. Social media marketing increases your brand recognition, brand loyalty, and conversion rates.

In other news, a social media commitment is not a “set it and forget it” crockpot kind of meal. You can of course pre-schedule posts, but to get the maximum out of it, you need to be all over that engagement. That means responding to positive comments and getting ahead of negative ones before they spiral out of control.

Couple of apparent points that bear repetition:

Plan: The importance of planning cannot be overstated. Think about what is important to your audience; what they want to know, what they care about, what will make them get up and take action. A content strategy should be discussed. Then you should create a content calendar which tells you what to post and when during the month.

Sustain: What does your audience care about? That will determine the content. If all your audience cares about is apples, then don’t talk to them about oranges. People don’t follow your company to be swamped with information either, so keep the content flow consistent, yet relevant.

Monitor: There are many great social media monitoring tools out there that can help you keep track of what’s going on. You can use Google Alerts or Talk Walker to keep track of key words that people are using and putting into their searches. You can also use Hootsuite or Meet Edgar or Sprout Social to schedule posts along with the many great features those platforms provide.

And as we always say, you don’t have to have an account on every platform. Some businesses are best served on particular ones. Even if all available platforms work for your product or service, you are much better off if you can pick three and nurture them. Do it right, and that garden will grow. Which social platforms are your company’s best performers?