B2B Social Media Action Points

In our third and final installment on this series on Social Media, we’re focusing on what to consider in order to run a successful social media strategy. After telling you it’s time to take social media seriously and then telling you more about what sort of content to use and how to measure it, wouldn’t it be really mean if we didn’t give you some useful tips on how to do all of that properly? We thought so too.

Use what you can, and all that you can

Social media is ever changing and technology is constantly updated. This means that you should make sure that your strategy is flexible and can go along with the changes. This also means that you have to try and stay abreast of these changes and therefore, it may be a good idea to appoint a Social Media Champion within your business who takes responsibility for this and flags up good opportunities and ways to utilise them. Be prepared to allow for a degree of experimentation as well.

Establish boundaries, goals and resource limits

Social Media can be very powerful, but it is imperative to ensure that it contributes to the overall marketing strategy and helps the company achieve its goals, rather than becoming a thing in its own right. So look at setting goals that are in-line with your marketing strategy and company objectives, and do ensure that you set aside enough resource (usually man-power) to ensure these can be met. At the same time, though, be aware of “resource creep”, where the social media efforts suck up more and more of your marketing people’s time. Outsourcing can be an effective solution. (Is now a good time to mention that CMA Marketing can help with this and do an amazing job? Yes? Oh, good.)

Chat relevant

As social media is fast moving, certain platforms and channels may creep in and out of fashion (hands up who remembers what MySpace is) and it would serve you well to ensure that should your audience move platforms or preferences, you follow them. Also continuously be on the lookout for groups/pages that are relevant to your business and join them.

Don’t be a lonesome ranger

Consider your audience and usage of social media and think about whether they would want to interact with fellow human beings representing a company or receive branding statements from a corporate voice. You may find that you have several people in your company who would be excellent ambassadors for you on-line, so allow them to be that. Do establish guidelines on who is allowed to represent you, and what they can and can’t say, however, as it is essential to ensure your brand’s integrity on-line.

Oh and another thing: do some research into which programmes and platforms work best for you in terms of executing your social media strategy as well as monitoring results. There are quite a few out there, so find the one that works for you.