As a business owner, you’ve no doubt been told that you need to have an online presence; including a website and social media. Grab a domain name for your company, pick a logo, put up a website and create your social media presences and you’re done. Not really.
Often times people who are looking to do business with you will look at your online presence to learn more about who you are and what you do. Your website and social networking sites say a lot about how you operate your business. Having a presence online, but not doing anything with it will leave your customers and prospects wondering.
For starters, social networks don’t just engage with other people by themselves, it doesn’t work that way.
If you started by creating your profiles on social media and are now wondering why they just aren’t working, chances are you’ve started from the wrong place.
An effective social media presence begins with creating a strategy – what goals are you trying to reach? Sales, leads, branding, donations? From there you need to determine where your customers and prospects are hanging out and go to them. You can’t expect that people are simply going to gravitate to your social networking sites – particularly when you aren’t engaging in any conversation! Your research should also include being prepared to talk about and share events that are happening relative to the industry you are in. Nobody visiting a company’s social networking site wants to hear them talking about themselves on a constant basis.
Engaging in the conversation is critical. People are coming to your social networking sites to learn more about you, your company, your products and your services. They are not coming to your social networking site simply because you created an awesome profile. If you are not engaging in the conversation or even starting a conversation, now would be a good time to simply delete your social networking profile and move along – nothing to see here (and we mean that literally).
Many business owners understand the necessity of having an online presence and they mean well but they are simply over their heads when it comes to developing and implementing an online marketing strategy.
Look around at your online footprint; if you have your profiles in place and all they are doing is collecting dust, ask yourself why you are out there to begin with. It’s never too late to take a dormant social network and bring it to life.
Still looking for a little help with your social media strategy, shoot us an email, we’re happy to grab a cup of coffee and have an informed conversation with you!
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