Now that your company uses social media to interact with current and potential clients, do you know if you are saying the right things and whether you are using the correct tone to get your message across to the other side?
If you already use Twitter or Facebook personally, you know they can be a soapbox for everyone’s personal opinions, and flights of fancy. When tweeting for your business, it is a good idea to have a plan in place for what you want to say about your company. You want your tone to be consistent, your message to be clear, and your intent transparent.
1. Always have something interesting and useful to share. Some ideas would be product updates, whitepaper announcements, and general advice. In the world of B2B, chances are your followers would want to hear what you have to say about the subject you are an expert in.
2. Give extra care to the grammar and the language, as that will indicate the image that you’d like to give to your company.
While it may be tempting to hire a family friend or delegate social networking to an intern, you should use caution when lending the voice of your company to someone who is not the CEO or the owner. Hiring a social media expert is an option that some companies have employed, and with many business owners being too busy to regularly update things like blogs, Facebook or Twitter. This option can be expensive for small to medium sized operations, but there are alternatives available as well.
Now that social media has been established as a significant marketing medium, software developers have stepped in to help out those senior executives and business owners who don’t have the time to be tweeting. Apps like Hootsuite can schedule and automate the process so you can spend an hour or two on Friday afternoon to bank a week’s worth of tweets and updates. Be prepared to do this regularly and once a week at least.
On Twitter, other users will be able to find your account through your mutual followers. This means that following your competitors can be very beneficial to your business. You may get more followers by following some celebrity, but the chances of them interested in your product or services is very bleak. If your focus is more local then consider following prominent local politicians and charitable organizations, and showing your support for them can be a good PR engine as well.
Tragically, all of this advice has its downside and is subject to change rapidly. The main caveat of social networking is the social aspect. People can be unpredictable, and your actions may have dire consequences even if you make every attempt to be neutral and politically correct. This is why it is important above everything else to have a plan in place before diving into the social media shark tank.
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