Making Social Media a Strategy for Business

Can social media really cost a company more money than it brings in? Absolutely. Here’s how:

Social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is a communications function just like ads and press releases. However, many organizations don’t treat social media like it is a communications function. They simply jump on the social media bandwagon without putting any strategic thought into it. They start a Twitter account because everyone else has one, and just start spouting out information. This is wrong. Some companies can get away with doing this and make a profit, but many cannot. And those that are gaining revenue because of social media probably aren’t getting as much cash as they could from it.

So, what can an organization do to change this? How can a company use social media properly to find customers, engage in discussion and make money? Easy: strategy.

There are four parts to creating a successful social media strategy:

     1. Know your publics. Most companies have a good idea (or should have a good idea) of who they are trying to reach. Often we define our ‘publics’ as our customers, but this doesn’t necessarily have to be true. Our publics can be customers, shareholders, employees, government officials, media reporters, and so on.

     2. Know what you want to tell them. A social media site is a communications medium. Companies shouldn’t idle away their time sharing things via social media that aren’t going to benefit the bottom line. Messages shared via social media should be carefully crafted the same as a press release or CEO speech. Time is money in the business world, so any time spent doing something pointless is just wasting money. However, if messages distributed through social media channels are carefully considered and prepared to match the messages intended for those publics, the results can be substantial.

     3. Know what media your publics use. If a company’s current or potential publics aren’t using social media, then why would the company waste the effort? Make sure to choose media based on your publics, not publics based on the media you want to use. If your public is women between the ages of 25 and 50, then Facebook would be a great choice.

     4. Create a plan. Once a company knows its publics, knows what it wants to say to them, and knows the media they use, then it is ready to create a social media plan. All that’s required here is to combine each of the previous three points effectively to get the most response for the smallest effort.

I understand that the idea of doing these things may seem like a lot of work, but when done properly, can bring about great results. Besides, since many companies are already putting time and effort into social media, they might as well make that time and effort count.

Please feel free to leave comments about this or any other blog posts. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Parrot Tongue