one comment | The only way to determine whether or not social media will work for your business is to decide what you want out of it.
There are a number of possibilities related to what you can expect, but you should only move forward with a social media strategy if you have a goal in mind. Provided you have a goal, then you can formulate a strategy.
Should you find yourself in the unique situation that you actually have a social media strategy (and I say “unique” because most people have no strategy and resort to updating folks on what they ate for breakfast that day), only then you will likely develop supporting tactics through creativity as well as knowledge of the tools and social media culture.
So, as an example, we have a couple of restaurant clients who are both exceptional at leveraging social media (if I do say so myself) to build loyalty and drive traffic to stores. Loyalty can be developed through engaging and interacting with fans of the brand.
Then, we can drive traffic through exclusive offers, coupons, partnerships, etc. We have even been known to answer folks when they ask, “what should I have for lunch today?” Of course, we have an opinion.
Reid Carr is a social media expert.
To have an impact, you need an audience. That is a fact. In the examples above, we can’t move the needle if we don’t have enough folks to talk to.
We have a very careful and deliberate process in developing that audience which is somewhat formulaic at this point. But, there is an element of patience that is required before you can realize the goals you’ve set.
It doesn’t happen overnight or simply because you have the accounts set up. However, if you outline SMART — specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-driven — goals and produce multi-faceted strategies and tactics to reach those goals, you no doubt will see success with social media.
Reid Carr is president of Red Door Interactive, which specializes in Internet presence management. Follow him on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Tags: Business, reid carr, SDNN, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized
Comment by: Sonal Maheshwari Posted: August 3, 2009, 12:20 am
Yes, it’s a huge gamble on how you place your cards in social media. Something that you may think, works in your favor may backfire. So being cautious using social media is need of hour. More over people now have realized the tactics being used and hence driving them to your business is even harder. It now requires some creativity on our part to drive people to business.
Sonal Maheshwari
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