Do You Have Time To Be Sociable? (Managing Your Social Media Strategy)

The social media revolution has most definitely hit. It was never more confirmed to me than when an older new client started asking me about Facebook and Twitter. I'm not being ageist, it's just that this gentlemen doesn't even really do email, so I was amazed at his social media enquiry!

Another factor is the growth in use of social media by businesses. If you asked 10 small business owners if they use social media, you would stand a good chance of at least 3 or 4 of them saying yes. This is in stark contrast to a year ago when you'd be lucky if even one of them was on LinkedIn.

What has fuelled this growth is the relative ease by which someone can create a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr/Blogger/Wordpress, YouTube, Slideshare account and start uploading information. But this article isn't about that, it's about the fact that there are more and more businesses using social media; but extremely poorly!

A case in point was another client who called to ask how she could improve her Facebook page. When I reviewed what she had done so far I found that she had created an account and put in her business details. There was nothing else. My advice therefore was to simply begin.

What seems to be happening therefore is what used to happen, but on a smaller scale, with email newsletter systems. Companies would begin with good intentions, but when they realised the amount of work involved, most smaller businesses without the resources to manage it correctly, would simply stop. The difference here is that social media is free so everyone sets up an account. The problems come in afterwards when they realise that setting up the account was the easy part, now they need to fill it with interesting information and news, but they simply don't have the time.

So think carefully before starting a social media campaign. Do you have the time to spend on this? The return on social media is not instant. In fact you probably won't notice any difference for at least 6 months or more, so think carefully about your resources. Running a poorly maintained Facebook/Blog page is worse than not having one at all!

So what can you do to ensure that you deliver a decent social media presence? Well firstly you have to realise how social media can help your business (for the purposes of this article, let's say you own a hair salon):

1) It allows you to engage with potential customers before they ever meet you. It helps build trust and opens up your "shop-front" to them before they walk in your door.

What You Can Do : Provide useful tips and info on different hair techniques, styles and treatments and Do's & Don'ts of hair care.

2) It helps you to engage with a community of people who are out there and want to find each other as well as you.

What You Can Do : Connect people to each other; perhaps run small hair treatments events for people with damaged hair to attend.

3) It helps you promote special offers.

What You Can Do : Pretty self-explanatory, but if you tie in a message about colouring techniques and options with a special offer on all colour treatments, you may get better traction.

4) It allows you to create links to various parts of your website

What You Can Do : Google loves links to websites. The more links you have coming into your website the better. So linking blog and Twitter entries to various parts of your website is really good for long-term ranking.

With this in mind you start to realise that having a Facebook page means you have to think about delivering content in these 4 areas.

My main advice therefore is this: Think about whether you have time to be "sociable". If you do have the time, don't try to do everything but instead pick one or two things and do those well. Then plan out at least 1 month's worth of content so you don't have to think about it when the time comes to create it.