(Image Source: BCG Connect)
Every day it becomes more evident that the use of social media (SM) will benefit businesses integrated marketing communications. If you have not yet looked into using SM for your business, or have had little experience, I recommend following the first few steps listed below to help you decide which SM sites you should try out:
1) Look up examples of other successful businesses, in the same vertical, using SM.
2) Determine your desired goals for your business using SM.
i.e. increase brand awareness, generate leads/sales, add to community, educate, entertain, increase traffic to your website, increase reach, implement customer service, etc.
2) Research which SM sites your target demographic uses the most then, if needed, research how to use those SM sites. Further more it’s good to know everything that is online about your business i.e. negative reviews.
TIP: Many SM sites have help centers where you can find information on how to use it. Also, video tutorials and articles can be found on the web, especially for business.
3) Determine who will be in charge of, or help with, collecting, creating and publishing content.
5) Determine a budget for how much you want to spend on paid SM ads throughout the year. You will also want to think about the cost of time.
The items listed above are a few examples of what SM plans include. Other parts of SM plans set the stage for monitoring and measuring the progress. While doing these initial steps, you will learn things about SM and get ideas of how you want to use it to achieve goals. For a free consultation from our Ad Agency call 800-398-3029 or email [email protected].
