Social Media For Business Marketing
On Wednesday 18th January 2012, the NOVA Committee of the Chamber will host a business conference at the Trinidad Hilton. NOVA works towards the development of our local SME sector through knowledge-exchange, strategic networking and issue advocacy. This year’s conference has been modeled around the action statement “Make It Happen: Success In Any Environment” and will deliver on all three focus areas. We hope to see you there but if not, this article gives a sneak-peek into one aspect of the conference session on “New Media & Software for Improved Efficiency”.
You have a website. You’re running a business in the 21st century so nobody needed to tell you twice how important it is to have an online presence. You’re proud of your website, too. It gives information about your company’s mission, your products and services, a little bit about you and your team and then, of course, you share the all-important contact details so customers can get in touch. Since you paid that developer to set it up two years ago, you haven’t changed anything about it. All the pertinent details are the same, so there’s no need.
You advertise. A hefty portion of your marketing budget goes towards radio and newspaper advertising every year. In this Christmas season, you up the ante with some direct mail-out flyers through TT Post. You know your Trinbagonian customer and there’s nothing they like more than listening to drive-time radio and prime-time TV. The one unfortunate thing about mass media though, is that it’s hard to figure out just how many potential customers it reaches. But that’s where your hefty budget comes in: for at least thirty seconds every day, they’re going to hear you, see you or read about you. You hope.
You’ve decided not to get into social marketing. You already have the website and you already have your ads, and they’re working for you. In addition, you want to target clients with money to spend and the young people who populate these popular sites are more interested in playing games and updating their relationship status than hearing about your company. So it makes more sense for you to channel your energies elsewhere.
Do you recognise yourself in any of the above statements? It’s likely many of our business readers have, because though traditional advertising is a given and websites are now commonplace, the next frontier of marketing – through social media – has not yet taken a strong foothold in the Trinbagonian business sector. This is so for a number of reasons but chiefly due to the assumption that social media is for pleasure, not business. This is a belief which has its root in an incomplete understanding of all that social media is. It goes beyond Facebook.
What is social media?
Social media is the term used to cover a tool or platform that you can use to publish, share and converse about content online. Given that definition, social media includes blogs & micro-blogs like Twitter, content communities like You Tube, virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and networking sites like LinkedIn and yes, Facebook.
Why is social media important to your business?
The main purpose of public relations, marketing and advertising is to reach a target market. What a company wants to happen once contact is made will vary widely, but the first step is that contact. Social media is another avenue in which you can reach your current and potential customers. Like traditional forms of advertising, it can broaden your brand awareness and increase sales. Like a public relations campaign, it can improve brand recognition and increase brand value. But where social media has the potential to go beyond the expected is in its ability to increase the level and variety of your customer connections, which in turns speeds up as well as details your business analytics and if you execute ideas out of that data, it can improve your customer service.
Know your customer more; know your customer better
When you set up your Facebook page and start interacting directly with clients, though you’re driving the bus in terms of deciding what to share and how often to share it, the immediate feedback to be gained from a site which allows comments and instantaneous sharing tells you quicker than a follow-up call to a newspaper advertisement can, what the general public thinks of your offerings.
The personal feel to a Facebook page also gives a face to your company and it is widely acknowledged that many sales are converted based on human interaction rather than written materials or professionally created ad campaigns. Though it may not be face to face (but it can be – that’s what You Tube can do), expanding your marketing arm to social media gives that human interaction that is missing from traditional advertising.
Put out the word; let others spread it
Social media is inherently a platform created for sharing information. Therefore, all tools and applications which define themselves as vehicles for social media make it easy for the user to disseminate information. This is great for your business and unmatched when compared to traditional advertising. When you put your half-page ad in the daily newspaper informing the general public about your 40% sale, you’re hitting many eyeballs, guaranteed, but how many of those eyeballs decided to use their hands to show that ad to someone else? Perhaps the cousin they know would be interested is in Arima and they’re based in Woodbrook making the physical pass-over of information impossible. Or perhaps by the time they remember to call that cousin, they can’t recall the newspaper they saw it in or the page. Social media is dominated by buttons which make every ‘like’, ‘share’ and ‘tweet’ a click away.
Look out for the conclusion next week…
To find out more about the conference agenda, the speakers and facilitators, read our blog at http://makeithappen-conference.blogspot.com or find us on Facebook at “Chamber SME Business Conference – Make Success Happen”.
To register for the conference, email or call Ms. Sharmin Boodoo at sboodoo@chamber.org.tt, 637-6966 ext 228
