So your a company seeking the wisdom of a third party for your impending entry to the world of social media, the question is Does your potential provider get it?
Looking at organizations around here (Halifax, Nova Scotia) and the general opinion is no. There seems to be limited understanding in this space with a lot of companies learning about social media, testing the waters and learning from their mistakes (well, one hopes they learn anyways). Like Internet Marketing in this region companies are flocking to Social Media and adding it to their stable of offerings, it is the new bandwagon for the next few months and more jump on every day.
How do you find a company or consultant that can effectivly lead you into the world of social media? Well there is nothing like seeing how these companies operate in the space, get the potential provider to go through their plan of action for their own business. If they can’t do it for their own business then they probably can’t do it for you.
Some areas of interest, targets and outcomes or really just something to think about.
Community Outreach- Putting your business out there and talking with the Social media community to build awareness of your message through communities, bloggers and create relationships with the influencers in related social networks. Think about it, everyone online is involved in social media in one way or another.
Content optimization – Optimize existing web-pages and content-including video, press releases, inter-actives and web content- to maximize re-distribution and discussion. Keep people up to date, notified and give them the chance to be involved. An involved community could lead to product or service improvement, leading to increased revenue.
Monitoring and Reporting- Managing all campaigns takes diligent monitoring to maintain the quality of information and effectiveness. Its all about listening and reacting. One misstep could be costly, listening could be the difference in a good year and an amazing year!
What are the advantages?
Increased Revenue- The more eyeballs that see your message and the more often they see it, the more opportunity there is for them to hear you and get engaged.
People are listening- Focused interest and increased user engagement returns in user loyalty and higher traffic as well as increased revenue.
This is just a basic overview, it gives a rough idea of the pitfalls and the benefits to social media if executed properly. Find a professional that can design and execute an effective social media strategy that works and will provide measurable benefit to your business.
For more info on what I do and the Social Media Consulting we offer visit our website.
should we also look to see how that company and its officers represent themselves online? how they use social media themselves could be a great indication of whether they should get one’s hard earned dollars.
is ‘submission spamming’ every one of your own blog posts to digg.com via an alias like ‘wasabinut’ proper behaviour?
what about using a labyrinthian system of shell sites that cross reference each other in order for you to appear bigger than you are?
engaging in twitter flame wars with bloggers who disagree with them, including name calling?
joining an organization only to lobby for it to be disbanded?
decrying the existence of multiple monthly networking events for various interest groups and then arranging multiple such events that you can control?
all these things can be found in a few moments by using a (released) search enging like Google. would you consider those important in the quest for the right company?
Limitbreaker what sort of chemicals are you on? In regards to how a companies officers represent themselves, I am quite open and don’t hide behind the comments I make. If I have an opinion I share it.
Submission spamming, lol. Wasabinut is not much of an alias given its my user name on quite a few websites and most carry links to my sites and a photo of me.
Shell sites, really? They Just happen to be domains I have owned for quite some time. Might as well use them for something. And actually I don’t have that many “sites”.
Twitter flame wars, I’ll assume your talking about amandachapel on Twitter and well you’ve missed the mark on that one.
Joining ITANS to try and do something positive, unlike yourself who complains and refuses to do anything. Try and do something positive and affect change instead of whining and fabricating stories.
Don’t believe I decried any meet ups and I don’t control any, I get involved. You should try it sometime. You have to be involved to make a positive change.
You really have issues that you need to address with yourself before I’ll continue to have you participate on my blog. You continue to make unfounded assumptions and pull random baseless facts from your ___ (3 letter word starts with “a” and ends with “s”).
ah, LimitBreaker; how about posting something constructive and informative. Back up your negative comments with proof and evidence. You’d only be good for debating Palin.
good Social Media is about engagement and discussion. By bringing issues to the forefront, they can be better debated and aired. Such discussion foments positive change. We don’t make senseless arguments and often solutions or discussion around solutions is presented. Openly, not hiding behind gambling monikers.
Why not be constructive in your criticism? Offer solutions or express opinions with evidence. Why are you afraid? As the old saying goes “if you don’t have anything useful to say, don’t say anything at all.”
Now everyone is talking about the American economy and eclections, nice to read something different. Eugene