Who doesn’t want immediate success when they try new things, but even with social media there is no magic to succeed. Instant gratification in all walks of life is what we all want, but hard work applies to social media efforts too!
The basic thought is that business will start coming out of the woodwork and avid followers will come from everywhere, plus we don’t want to have to spend a dime to get that result! Right? Wouldn’t that be a nice thought when we put social media to the test?
Social media coaches work hard to be the most effective for you and your business. They are not magicians by waving a wand and results appear. Wouldn’t we all love that one!
Keeping this in mind, they need a good plan to work with. This has to be specific to your business – resources and needs of your specific business. This process is unique; it’s a living breathing system that needs to be fed the right resources for it to function properly. Deciding to use the same tools, the same strategies and the same techniques, as someone else in that field is a start, but keep in mind that your company has to offer something a little different or you won’t be unique.
Optimistically, any good social media coach hopes that you have some kind of a marketing plan. After all, there is no one like you to know your business the best, right?. Markets, trends, news, constant repositioning, re-thinking, corporate changes, something to make it work is always in motion. Policies and positions that need monitoring with subtle changes, fires being put out to make everyone (staff included) always on alert. The name of the game is constant tweaking of your marketing plan to fit your reality.
What do you do to keep on top of the social media aspects of business requirements? If you are savvy about social media, then you could do the work yourself, or if needs be consult with a social media expert, such as the coaches on our site. With their expertise, you know you have just entered the world of the “social media expert”. In this field experts can help you and decipher which tools will work for your business and put together a package that will work the best for you. Here is a list below that might be of some benefit to you and your company to get you into the game. Making a strategic plan is half the battle.
First of all, evaluate all your resources. How much time can you give to get your game plan working? Will your staff, interns, volunteers, or out sourcing staff, be able to help to get the progress started? What do you have to get started: videos, knowledge, white papers, expertise? Do you have a messaging down so that you can rattle away the value of your position in 140 characters or less?
Secondly, evaluate your market by researching in SocialMention.com or Search.Twitter.com. These two sites can give you some insight into your brand or some of your competition, thus giving you an idea as to what networks might work best for your company.
Thirdly, defining goals is very important to make all things possible. It is said that if you don’t have goals you can’t set high standards for things that you want to accomplish in life, as well as business. This gives you and everyone a chance to set goals and soon you will see great results. This is especially true of social media goals and how they affect your business. Establishing clear precise goals gives you a head start, instead of flailing, you will certainly have an efficient way of marketing your company — clear definitive goals is very important!
Fourth, explore the social networks because each network has their own characteristics. Making these networks fit your needs is also important, because by fitting your needs, the marketing concept is much easier. Picking a few and leaning them is a must, so you can ask yourself a few questions to make this effective. Several questions that need to be answered are: Does this make you comfortable with the user experience? Are the users engaging well with each other? Is the voice appropriate? Fun, relaxed, informative, engaging, etc… or does it fall somewhere else? Does this network meet your needs and will you be comfortable with it? Listening is a key factor when you want these questions answered. Get to know and listen to who’s talking and on what subjects, always learning from people that are of interest is really important.
Fifth, what’s your plan? Making intelligent decisions, which of course, aren’t etched in stone, more likely in pencil so revising is easy. Change is good for tweaking, hiring, and opening your eyes to new potential is making intelligent decisions.
Sixth, planning where you want to go. Planning should include what networks you want to work with, who is going to do a lot of the work, what subjects and how often. By taking control you can tweak or carefully put together the message that people will be hearing when you first are doing the social network. Filling out bios and telling us why we are listening or even care. Sharing something your network finds interesting and useful makes it interesting for people to return too.
And finally, get used to doing some reworking of your ideas and giving things a new spin. Do this whenever you think this is necessary. There is no perfect answer as to how the social media will work for you. Trial and error, like most things, will show you what is working. If something really stands out and working great, how you can do it again without playing the same old record and not repeating? This is all part of the learning process and it takes time, but give you valuable insight into the world of social media.
Listen and listen some more. Gathering information will take up at least 60% of your time, in regards to social media. Learning the strategies and listening to what people are really saying takes up the rest because you never know when or if your market has shifted or becoming aware of an opportunity that you weren’t aware of at the time. You will be amazed at what you can learn by fine-tuning your listening skills.