Hey party people oaf12 here and welcome to The Man Den!
Those of you that read my blog recently in response to the ‘in-focus’ article in The Metro may remember that I said I would do I follow up blog to help people get started with social media….well here it is.
This blog is mainly based around social media for business, so if you are looking for tips around personal branding this may not be the best place to look, I’d still say it’s worth a read though as some parts may overlap.
Before starting with social media you need to ask a question…..what do you want to achieve? You also need to ask yourself what is realistic and what you consider a good ROI (return on investment).
If you think that social media is going to have an immediate impact on your business and that you will reach thousands of new customers without much effort, it is quite likely that you will be mistaken. While this is not impossible, it is extremely unlikely.
Social media should be seen as an additional (and potentially a very strong one) tool to aid an organisation along with all the other marketing channels, I personally consider its main strength to be in building brand image and awareness – Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube (“down with YouTube!” I hear you yell haha)
It can also be used as a customer service tool, you should consider the fact that it is highly likely that your customers are on social media and if you are not, your competitors will be.
This leads us nicely to a starting point regarding social media – where are your customers? What channels are they using? If you don’t know, then simply try asking them… Nowadays it is more surprising when organisations DON’T have a social presence; this can harm perception so time to get moving folks.
Another potential way of finding out is by looking at what your competitors are doing, where is their highest engagement happening? Is this something you could replicate & improve on?
These two simple, yet important pieces of information should give you a good starting point and hopefully avoid you spending unnecessary time and effort on a channel for no or little reward. While it would be useful to keep an eye on emerging tools and building a presence, before even your customers do, it is important to get the basics right first.
I would also advise caution if you decide to employ the services of a (usually self-proclaimed) ‘social media guru’. A lot of these people are generally self-taught with minimal experience, while this isn’t always bad I would say it is worth checking their history – have they trained before, do they have testimonials, etc. Looking at their social media channels isn’t always reliable – it is relatively easy to get thousands of followers on Twitter if you promise reciprocal follows or join things such as #teamfollowback meaning all or most of these followers won’t be relevant anyway!
The recession has built (and destroyed) many companies and encouraged many entrepreneurs but not all of these have / will succeed as they are not all workable ideas. Believe me, many of these individuals would have you pay for the information already contained within this blog…..damn I missed a trick there 
My advice is, if you really want to contract someone, lookout for the free bits of advice (again, like this blog) and if you like what you see check out what else they have to offer – kind of a try before you buy I suppose. A good place to start is Social Media Examiner as they have plenty of free info!
Once you are up and running you can then start to look at what your measurements of success will be – number of followers, blogs posted, numbers of comments, direct sales….the list is endless BUT just because you CAN measure this stuff, it doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
Be minimal and only measure what you need and what you will actually use. There are plenty of tools out there that will help you measure things such as click through rates, follow backs, engagement or even tools that will help you track #tags or tell you where your brand is being discussed.
Again I would advise caution here as some can also be very expensive, there are plenty of free tools out there so see if these suit your needs first, the free tool I mainly use is Hootsuite. If you do decide to then look at some of the paid for tools make sure you compare a few – read a few reviews – and make sure you get a free trial so that you can test it out. My main experience of a paid for tool has been with Sprout Social and my opinion is so far, so good.
Another cool (and free) tool to check out is visibli or as it is now known – sharedby.
I think I’ll leave this blog here for now to avoid writing another seven hundred million words, but I will continue with these social media posts as I know I would have found them useful when I first started.
Next time I will touch on some of the channels themselves, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
If you have any questions in the meantime please feel free to either post a comment or use the contact us facility.
Cheers all
oaf out
