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There's More To Social Media Than Building A Brand
January 31, 2012
This article challenges the social media norm, playing devil's advocate a bit and examining a few social media myths along the way.
Even though social media is still an infant rolling around the tech world playing with a rattle - as quickly as it's first diaper change came, so too did a plethora of folks preaching a right and wrong way to do things on social media as it relates to business messaging.
To keep a potentially very long blog post short, I'll just say this... In the 5-7 years that businesses have started to dabble in building an online brand via social media, it's been all about connecting via a conversation, positioning yourself or your business as an "expert" in your field, or providing solid customer experience (customer service) via increased personalized communication efforts. I'm definitely not here to dispute any of this. In fact, it's ludicrous to suggest that any of these things should not be part of your business' social media strategy. All apply to the buzz phrase Building a Brand Online.
However, on the flip-side, it's silly and short-sited to say that these are the ONLY things your company should be trying from a social media standpoint. To be clear, let me give you an example...
It's seen as "taboo" to be "salesy" on social media pages. It's perceived as worthy of being frowned upon if your company brags (or simply educates) about what they do, their products and services, or says "look at us" in any way. To me, this is not only a bit elitist, but ultimately creates some missed opportunities as it relates to what really matters - ACHIEVING YOUR BUSINESS GOALS.
Every successful business creates clear cut goals, whether they be increasing ROI (return on investment) as it relates to employee time or hard dollars, generating traffic for their website, optimizing for Google or increasing their bottom line - to name a few.
Your company's social media strategy should strictly revolve around how to help your business achieve it's goals - then and only then should you develop messaging. The more restrictions you place on your messaging, the harder it will be to use it to achieve your goals.
Many companies are frankly too intimidated to get involved with social media, and are missing out on business opportunities due to a perceived "members-only club" atmosphere.
Myth: You have to be relevant, funny or witty to get people to follow you and connect with you.
Reality: It's just too hard to be relevant, witty, funny all the time, especially when you're understaffed and most employees are underpaid as it is. Huge brands have marketing departments dedicated to social media, the average company doesn't. It's okay if you don't know what to say. Say something. And make a bare minimum of 1-2 posts every day. Don't be shy. Speak about your company and what it does. It's okay to do this because the reality is that people won't follow you or like you unless you say something. Before you can be interesting you need to exist. And remember that you are just one of hundreds or thousands of entities that your followers are following. If you don't post consistently, your messages literally will not be seen - they'll be buried below the thousands of other posts.
Myth: You can't just shout from the rooftops about deals/sales/accomplishments. It's seen as spamming.
Reality: Come on. This is why you're there, isn't it? To ultimately increase sales? People aren't stupid. As soon as they see your company logo, they know this. They expect it, and most of the time they actually follow you because of it. Don't outsmart yourself. There is no such thing as social media spam. If people don't like what they see, they'll stop following you. And this is all track-able.
Myth: Your number of "followers" or "likes" should dictate your strategy.
Reality: We all start with the same number of followers/likes - ZERO. Who will you see as a more credible source - someone with 1,000 followers or someone with 50? Sorry, but if you say anything other than 1,000, you're kind of kidding yourself. People don't have time to make judgements based on anything other than numbers. And while followers and likes can be purchased - or affected due to the number of bots crawling around - they still play a role in perception. What I'm trying to say is that your messaging shouldn't change based on how many followers you have, it should only change based on what your business goals are. However, it's important to build up a following, and you do that by posting consistently.
Myth: AUTHENTICITY is more important FREQUENCY.
Reality: This is perhaps the most important one. First of all, as I mentioned above, if your tweets get buried, then you're not seen, and then you're not really building a brand anyway - despite how "clever" your messaging may be. Secondly, what is overlooked all the time is the role that social media plays in SEO and traffic generation. The more posts you make with keywords in them, and landing pages to your website, the more traffic you generate - and this is multiplied by the number of followers you have (mentioned above). You are also building links to your website on social media pages, which is one SEO factor that Google looks at. From there, as traffic to your site increases, so to over time does your Alexa ranking, and eventually your SERP (search engine results pages) presence.
Parting shot: It's important to realize that social media is still learning to walk, and while some people think they're the babysitter, the reality is that we're all just first-time parents dealing with the same challenges (lack of sleep, not enough time in the day, increasing expenses and decreasing income). But like grandparents seemingly always reminisce about how even though they screwed up raising their kids over and over again, when it came to the finished product - they were always proud. As long as you're not offending anyone with your posts, this should be your social media strategy. Just like you can't be a perfect parent to a newborn or a toddler, you can't paralyze your presence by managing your social media messaging with too much of a fine-tooth comb, as long as your business goals are in mind when posting. You have to allow yourself to post freely, then go back and analyze what worked and what didn't, and make adjustments accordingly.
Disclaimer: Again, I want to make it crystal clear that I'm not in any way denouncing the importance of having quality messaging. What I am doing, however, is challenging the notion that it has to be done in one certain way in order to be qualified as successful.
Paul Hickey
Atiba News
