We all know that social media is a) the best way today to build your brand and drive sales or b) a sure fire way to be distracted from your core business with no discernible benefit [DELETE AS APPROPRIATE].
Truth is, engaging with social media for your business could easily be either of the above. It’s all about how valid your social media strategy is (apologies – strategy is a word we try to use in small amounts on this site, not always regarded as Plain English).
You can spend all day using social media and actually achieve very little by following these five easy steps:
1. Check your various social media accounts every five minutes for new followers, mentions, direct messages, comments, view stats and re-Tweets. Come on, get over it. Yes, you may well get some feedback from other people and new fans or followers. Whoo-hoo. That’s the idea.
But you really need to manage your time carefully to respond to things or it will completely disrupt your working schedule. In fact, you should schedule a specific time to deal with social media and stick to it. Even with the instant dialogue opportunity of Twitter, don’t always be sucked into a real time response. In all honesty, there’s very little that can’t wait at least two hours – (even if you are using social media as a customer communications channel).
Clearly there are loads of ways to set up auto-alerts for the absolutely vital stuff and most people check for interactions that may require an urgent response from a range of mobile devices. But relax a bit and get to it when you can.
2. Read far too many blogs. It’s wonderful to be able to tap into such a wealth of knowledge simply by setting up automatic feeds to deliver information to your desktop. But how much do you REALLY need? It should all be about quality not quantity. Do a quick audit on all the info you regularly read and ask yourself what actions you have taken as a result of each thing you subscribe to. There’s often more chaff than wheat.
3. Spread yourself too thin by appearing on far too many social media platforms. There are over 100 well frequented social media/networking/bookmarking platforms. How many will your business benefit from being connected with? My guess is probably no more than four or five.
Even if it could be relevant to appear on more, you need to bring some focus to what you’re doing here. Otherwise you’ll be running from pillar to post simply to keep your contributions up – which you won’t manage to do.
4. Focus on building followers or fans no matter how irrelevant they are to your business. A high number of followers does not indicate high quality of content. You’ll find yourself involved in curious conversations with people who are never likely to be customers of yours. Yes, it’s nice to chat and social media is all about being personal – but you need to be ruthless with the energy you spend interacting.
Moreover, too many irrelevant fans or followers will degrade your overall appeal to more relevant followers. Why would you do this?
5. Use social media as a advertising channel rather than a way to talk with people. Try this – don’t engage in any meaningful dialogue, simply post, publish and update details about your latest discounts, special offer or new products.
Oh, and then set this ‘news’ up as an automated feed to pump the stuff out every hour. Repeat it a lot too, you know – just like those annoying but catchy insurance ads on the radio. That works, right? Go for it!
You’ll lose followers and potential customers by the droves, but hey, you’ll look like you’ve got a lot to offer! [Resists from naming many local culprits].
So there you have it. A fool proof way to spend too much time and energy engaged with social media in a way that will bring very little benefit to your business at all.
Now stop reading this and go get some new customers.
