Many companies have employed successful social media strategies, allowing them to engage and interact with their customers like never before. Some strategies have also crashed and burned. Like traditional media, it’s not a sure bet—you have to deliver the right message, the right number of times, with the right response and level of engagement over and over again.
Social media has forever changed the way we communicate. For businesses, the use of social media as a platform for marketing messages is particularly helpful and cost-effective. However, businesses often don’t understand which tools to use and how much time and resources to devote, resulting in some amount of wasted time and fruitless labor.
In this column, I’ll be offering advice on how to use these and other social media platforms for your business. You’ll be ready to start communicating with your customers, prospects, and competition in a whole new way. Keeping your overall marketing strategy in mind, the first step toward creating an effective social media plan is to identify which tools are right for you.
Networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ are all great places to influence and interact with your customers and their spheres of influence or connections. Twitter, blogs, and YouTube are excellent tools for creating a personality for your company or brand and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. The potential for building awareness and generating leads is huge—you just have to figure out your special recipe for success. We will discuss these and other tools in more detail in future columns.
Jessica Clark is an eight-year marketing veteran in the optical industry. She has led successful social media campaigns in line with overall marketing strategy for VisionWeb.
