Should I use social media for my business?

Yesterday, a friend of mine became a client.  She owns a small business and we’ve talked about marketing a few times in the past.  One of the reasons she had never considered Facebook as a reliable source of B2C or B2B marketing is because she constantly thought of social media as something that was only shared between friends.  This was a HUGE hurdle for her to overcome, but yesterday, we had a breakthrough.

During our discussion, I explained the types of posts we make for different types of clients.  I also pointed out that part of our daily work is to ‘like’ appropriate Facebook profiles so we can connect and interact with them and their fans.  She never thought about her business making comments on the profile of another business before.  She never thought about her business liking the comment of some person that they have never known before either.

While speaking she also mentioned to me she did not want her employees “wasting time on Facebook” when they should be working.  At that point it occurred to me that she thought we would build her profile, create some customized apps for her page, then create some Pay-Per-Click ads to drive traffic to her Facebook profile, leaving her and her staff to build the personality of her page through content they would need to post.  WRONG!  We absolutely NEVER advise a client to handle their own profile, even though we do encourage them to be involved.

A BIG part of building your social media presence is creating the personality and character of your company for others to see.  This is not so easy to do, no matter how awesome your salesperson, secretary or CEO is!  Do not leave your Facebook profile in the hands of people who are not creative writers at heart when the goal is to present your company in a creative manner.  Why is this important? Because you should not be selling all the time on social media – some of the time yes, but not all the time.  However, you should be presenting the personality and character of your company ALL of the time.

The bottom line was that my friend did not want her assistant “presenting” her company.  Nor did she want her assistant to “surf the web” when she should be working.  My friend was completely in the dark about what it takes to build a social media presence and enact a social media marketing (SMM) strategy.  Now that she has a professional advertising/marketing company handling this for her, she has seen the light about what social media can do for her business – Gain exposure and thus generate leads from people far and wide – potential customers that she would never have reached before!