How Is Social Media Relevant For Business?

Twitter updates informing you that your friend is in town having a coffee; somebody poking you on Facebook; hearing that an old colleague has just been promoted via LinkedIn – what on earth can you do with this information to help gain new customers or increase brand awareness? The likelihood in these 3 instances is nothing, but behind all of the chatter and gossip are some real conversations happening about your brand and/or your industry. If you are there or not, this conversation is going to happen. The difference is if you are part of that conversation you can help control it.

It’s a common misconception that Social Media is just for individuals. There are some high profile cases of it helping increase sales and brand perception for both enterprise level companies and SMB’s. Whether your aim is to get more customers into your cafe or increase your maintenance company’s reputation within the community there are three simple rules which all business can follow to ensure you make Social Media work for you:

• Monitor – observe what people are talking about within your industry.
• Engage – if you don’t talk to people they cannot become your customers or advocates.
• Measure – define the metric by which you wish to measure the success of your campaign.
  (We will cover each of these 3 steps in detail in future posts)

The business is there for you on Social Media – approach it with an open mind and a real desire to embrace it and the results will follow.