The economic recession has been one of the invisible forces driving the growth of social media for businesses. The explosion of social networks is a response to the desire to find new routes to a more competitive market. The decline in performance of traditional SEM and e-commerce in general and the seduction in the perception of “free” marketing helped fuel the social media revolution. These were by no means the only drivers of this change and the confluence of technology and a critical mass of users were also important factors. Social networks are here to stay and companies must make good use of them. However, it is a complicated prospect and for the new entrant, daunting. There are a few easy steps that will help you develop a social media strategy and prioritize it as a route to market.

To build a strategy, you need to ask yourself a series of questions.

Step 1 Do my customers have a footprint on the social media landscape?

This is a fancy way of asking if I’m likely to find my target market using social media. Well, it tends to vary by sector. Social media is well suited to companies that have intellectual capital, so consulting, finance, and to a lesser extent accountants and lawyers are good examples. Social media is also a great platform for selling products to consumers and small businesses.

So what is not suitable? Well engineering and manufacturing are obvious candidates, as are companies that sell large quantities of business items, whether they are capital goods or, say, software.

Social media works best for markets that have a short sales process and low-cost items where you can get immediate access to the decision maker. Geographic concentration is also an important factor, the greater the geographical distribution of potential customers, the better they will adapt to social networks.

Step 2 What are my goals?

Brand recognition, customer service, sales, customer feedback improvement, new product development/verification, development expert status.

Many companies use social networks to improve their relationship with their customers and have a more conversational customer service relationship, so let’s not prejudge and say that sales is the most important or indeed the only objective for network marketing. social.

I accept that much of the hype revolves around the incredible selling opportunities that social media presents, but let’s not forget how at the turn of the century the dot-com boom got so out of control that even seasoned entrepreneurs became They forgot the basics. In other words, behind each model there must be a solid business case.

Step 3 What is my best Social Media Mix?

The social networking market is a complex topology that covers Wiki, major social networking sites, microblogging sites, forums, blogs, article sites, photo sites, podcasts, video sites, social bookmarking, and many more.

Faced with this bewildering array of options, how do you proceed? There are two things that are important, first, you need to consider where your customers are most likely to reside in the social media landscape and, especially if you are a smaller business, what areas of social media you find interesting. If we remember that a lot of social media is about building trust and developing a community, it’s very, very difficult to do it through a medium you don’t like.

Step 4 How do I manage my resources?

What resources do I have available? How much time can I dedicate to this effort? Is this for internal and/or external networks? How much maintenance effort is there?

Maintenance work is one of the real hidden costs in social media, which is time consuming. Since most people and indeed businesses are short on time, this is a major problem.

Now I know particularly with Twitter that there are “bots” you can use to automate a lot of your posts that you need to spend “face time” to build conversations and relationships. A simple idea is to create a social media journal that states which social network will be accessed, what day(s) and how much time will be spent on each one. Don’t think about now, when you have the first flurry of ideas, but rather 1 year from now, when you have your 50th blog post and 1000+ tweets or Facebook posts.

I regularly see companies overinvest in social media only to have to pull out because they have significantly underestimated the ongoing effort required.

Step 5 How do I measure progress?

What metrics work best? Access by site? Follower growth? Complaint reduction? Higher conversion rates? Feedback process to change what doesn’t work?

Any type of strategy implementation needs a cycle of review and change, so it is with Social Media. However, the advantage is that online activities are relatively easy to quantify and the results of your efforts. This makes managing your social media strategy much more effective since numbers don’t lie, 50 hits are 50 hits, not as many as we optimists would say; Well, I think it’s almost 100.

This precise measurement allows you to take quick and appropriate action to improve your performance. This, in turn, leads to you having a much better chance of success, which is, of course, what we are all trying to achieve.