Six Simple Tips for Social Media

Getting your social media marketing right is not easy. There are so many sites to join, so many people to follow and so many potential opportunities to promote your business that you may not know where to start or, if you have started, where to focus your attention.

As relative newcomers to social media at the HBP Group we've put together some tips which we've found have helped us get to grips with using sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

1) Don't Do It All

I know we made this mistake and I'm sure lots of other people have too. When you decide that social media is the way forward you set off and set up a Facebook business page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile and countless other pages which you think will give you excellent coverage. A week down the line and you're wondering how on earth anyone has time for all of this. Be realistic - if you're short on time then just set up one of the three (whichever you feel is most appropriate to your audience) because it's better to manage one social media campaign properly than to lots of them badly.

2) Get Involved

Social media is all about engagement and getting involved in the conversation. If you can find an opportunity to offer your expert advice, your opinion or even to ask for some help yourself then social media is the perfect platform for this. The more involved you become the more "human" you will appear and who knows, you could end up speaking to your next customer.

3) Keep It Regular

You don't have to be Tweeting or updating your profile every five minutes but you also don't want to be simply making a token effort once a month either. Try to keep it regular by posting updates whenever you can and whenever they are appropriate. News about your business activities, win stories or any events happening at your office are all worthwhile shouting about.

4) Don't SPAM

If you've said something once then you've probably said it enough. You might get away with twice. Any more than that and you're risking annoying your audience and potentially losing some of your followers/subscribers. Make sure you mix up your messages and rather that repeating the same message over and over again think about the best time to reach your audience - when are they most likely to be online? If you are using Twitter you can get a free report which tells you the best time to tweet from whentotweet.com

5) Understand Your Audience

The three main social media sites, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, are very similar in their premise but each has differences that you have to be aware of which affect how communications take place. LinkedIn is primarily a business site which means promotion of goods and services is part and parcel of the site whereas Facebook is a lot more personal so any news or offers you promote should give genuine incentives to visit you or buy from you (as you are probably interrupting personal time. Twitter is somewhere in between and allows you to mix business updates with personal but with limited space for messages available (140 characters) you'll have to make them short and snappy.

6) Remember the Point

Whichever social media site or sites you choose to use make sure you remember why you're there. If you're there to create new business opportunities make sure you're monitoring how that works and that you're recording your opportunities in your CRM system. The CRM solutions we provide at the HBP Group (Sage CRM, Sage 200 CRM & ProspectSoft CRM) are used for exactly this purpose so make sure you don't waste all of your hard work by missing out on some golden business opportunities.

If you'd like to know more about Social Media join us for educate2011, where David Beard, Sage's Social Media expert, will be presenting a seminar on how to use social media as part of your marketing and customer strategy.