There are five generations working in the business world right now and social media is king for many of them. To reach these users, first define your goals and target market(s), then ask yourself if you can reach them with one or more of these platforms and if are you are willing to put in the time to learn how to do it. Whatever your goals, including social media will help you move your business forward.
LinkedIn is a professional site with over 75 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world. Most users are ages 25 to 55, with an average age of 44. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members. For a long-term strategy, you will need to build out your profile making sure that it is at 100%. Then work on growing your network and joining groups that compliment or support your business. For your short-term strategy, set up your own group, share information via status updates and sponsor a LinkedIn event.
Facebook boasts more than 800 million active users with more than half of them logging on in any given day. The average user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. For your long-term strategy, build your fan page, use custom tabs for branding, and start building relationships with your followers. Short term, begin sharing news and information via status updates, offer special promotions, “like” other fan pages in related areas, and host a Facebook event.
Twitter enables users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. Twitter has over 300 million users generating over 275 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Your long-term strategy should include following influential individuals in your industry who may be interested in your topic, learning how to use the hash tags, re-tweeting others, and growing followers. For your short-term strategy, offer a contest or special promotion and use event specific hash tags.
Blogs can provide product and service feedback, counter negative publicity, and recruit brand advocates. 77 million+ Americans visit blogs and there are 346 million blog readers worldwide. You can communicate with your customers and create a more personal voice. Your strategy should include creating informational blogs to position yourself as the expert in your area and should involve someone to monitor the interactions and be ready to respond to comments.
YouTube allows you to include video in your marketing plan. 2.6 billion people search YouTube every day for products and services. Your action plan could include uploading recordings of presentations, sharing slides from presentations that were not recorded, creating short videos of tips of interest to your clients, conducting an interview with an expert, and engaging with the YouTube community by leaving comments and uploading video responses on topics related to your industry.
Next week: Using Social Media to Build Personal Relationships with Your Followers