Use Social Media to Brand Your Company

We know social media is here to stay. But many business owners still struggle with how to use it effectively.

It’s great when your number of Twitter or Facebook followers goes up, but is that really driving sales? Social media isn’t just about getting your name out there, but rather cultivating a relationship with your target market. That will eventually boost sales. I work with many companies on their social media strategy and execution. Here’s what I’ve learned.

• All you need is a foothold –  Claim a small piece of ground on social media, dominate it, and then expand from it. Choose one or two channels that you will be active on that work well with your brand. A consumer brand that has the propensity for visual content might work better on Facebook or Pinterest, whereas a B2B company probably is better off starting on Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Convey the right tone – Think about the tone that is right for your company in the messages that you put out. Remember that depending on the network you are using, the etiquette and purpose are different. For example, LinkedIn is much more professional and very much about business networking, whereas Facebook is much more personal – so those company vacation photos probably shouldn’t go on LinkedIn, but will serve better on the latter.
• Be proactive – If you’re not talking about your brand on social media, there’s a good chance that other people are.  Spend the time engaging in the conversation. It’s important to build your tribe, because not only can you engage potential customers, but also you can keep in touch with your strongest supporters. Some of your best customers might even address any negative feedback about your company, which is infinitely better than having someone from your company do it.
• Social media should lead to results – If you have a website, you should be using a small percentage of your interactions on social media to drive people to the website. You should then use Google Analytics to measure how many visitors you’re getting. You can also set up Goals in Google Analytics to assign monetary value to a certain action. This allows you to tie in revenue to traffic from certain social media channels. If you are a bigger company, there is also a way to link social media to your favorite CRM and track the progression from social media into your CRM.
• Use social media for market intelligence -You can gather information on your competitors and potential clients from social media. One of our new offerings is to do just that for our clients. We gather information from social media and other sources on what competitors are up to, which events they go to, or if a potential client released information indicating they might need our client’s services. We’ve gotten great feedback because the sales teams can now use this data to bring in revenue.

This has been a small digest of some of the best practices for your company presence on social media. If you have any thoughts on the strategies mentioned above please let me know in the comments below.