Business and Social Media
Social media is now having an impact on the way companies are doing business. Social media is being used to communicate with customers through direct contact or through advertising."Social media has fundamentally changed how customers interact with brands, recommend and buy products, and communicate," said Tann Tueller, corporate officer, vice president at Harte-Hanks, who oversees contact centers domestically and worldwide for the company.
Business managers, including CEO's, use social media to conduct research and keep track of news. Companies are using to help promote revenue by brand name recognition and innovation. Social media could play a huge part with customer service. Today people want information fast. Customers can use social media sites to get quick responses to questions about pricing, quantities, and other related customer service issues. This type of interaction could help improve customer relations by giving instant feedback by an actual business representative. What helps make social media attractive is that there is a person on the other end communicating in real time. It is another form of human interaction, whereas looking up products on a business's website might not yield the end result desired.
Seven Things to Know About Social Media
Social Media is here to stay
It is an important tool of instant communication that businesses can use to interact with their clients. Business consultant and author of these seven things Mike Byrnes, suggests to get on board with social media.
Web 2.0 is necessary for social media
In order to have interaction between clients and companies, Web 2.0 is needed to share information from several different sources.
Social media doesn't need to be complex, start with the basics
Facebook is quite easy to use. Start there or with an online community related to your business type.
Social media helps referrals stick
It is a great way to get referrals from clients. Businesses should have strong presence because potential customers will research to get other clients feedback on services.
Social media helps with online presence
It's a free tool to help promote your business. The more exposure the greater the customer can find you. Because many people are on different social media sites, advertisement on several sites could get the word out to potential customers without costing a dime. To have that kind of advertisement through conventional means could cost a bundle.
Social media helps authenticate brands to customers
"Studies have shown that consumers now believe companies with high Google rankings are more likely organizations that they can trust… a nice benefit to have as a result of using free tools, especially during an era when the financial services industry will be dealing with trust issues for years to come," [2].
Social media connects clients to traditional media
Traditional media is being widely influenced by social media. Social media is not just for trivial chatting; it is used for advertising, customer service, research, and innovation. Social and traditional media are connecting because what each lacks the other makes up for. Since social media is not capable of holding as much information as a website, a search engine or website is needed, however, social media is instant responses to perhaps pertinent information in real time.
Strategies for managing the company social media site
- Develop a social media committee within the organization to monitor the site.
- Use several different social media sites to support your business strategy and objectives: One for content about business, such as a blog, another for networking, like Twitter, and another for interacting with the community, such as Facebook.
- Each of these sites should have someone reading and monitoring social media on your business type, post comments on other people's sites, and create content for your blog, Twitter, and Facebook.
- Posting on these sites should be scheduled to keep regular content flowing. Scheduling times for the social media sites helps keep consistency with posts and will help keep your company strategies,objectives, and name in the minds of followers.
- Pre-writing blogs and posts will help eliminate grammatical errors as well maintaining your companies integrity. By controlling the content, the possibility for misinformation or private information being posted to the public will be greatly diminished.
- The social media for business is a tool that can be used to promote the business. Make sure that each site has a brief bio and overview about the company. Use a service to secure your identity on all sites and link all sites back to main company website.
- Use keywords and known hashtags for people to follow and encourage mentions.
- Sync your sites so one time posts feeds multiple levels, such as sending blogs and tweets to Facebook.
- Use social media buttons for your blog so followers can share content within their own sites.
- Offer simple gimmicks to encourage participation.
- Attend training or webinars to continue to improve sites, run sites efficiently and effectively, and stay up on latest trends.
- Monitor how these sites are helping your business. Do an assessment to make sure these sites are helping your business create sales or increase activity, current and potential customers.
References
Brown, Mike. 20 Strategies for Solo Social Media Success.[4]
Byrnes, Mike. Seven things advisers need to know about social media. [5]
Hansen, Andrew. Harte-Hanks Expert to Speak on Integration of Social Media, Customer Service & Contact Centers on May 25 in Minneapolis. [6]
Kim, Gary. CEOs, Managers Heavy Users of Social Media for Business Purposes, Forrester Research Finds [7]
