Perspectives & Strategy

Social networks and the social web is capable of influencing how other people look at the things that we do. This can be as true for a job applicant as it is for a brand name or product that is being marketed at least in part through the Internet. It is all about aiding publicity and building trust for the brand.

For the majority of businesses they do not have the power of a famous name to propel traffic to their website and they have therefore to leverage other tactics to build popularity. All businesses have to build relationships in order to build sales revenue; the same is true when it comes to managing your brand’s social media presence, it is a key part of relationship building, yet it is not in the sole domain of the sales force. The value of your brand having an independent presence on certain social networks cannot be understated; yet in order to drive the right value it is often important to build a partnership with an Internet publicity firm, such as P3 Social Media, which the author Peter Giblett works with, in order to maximise your presence.

Which social media tools to use is a vital question and will largely depend on the industry your business is in. Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook etc do take different approaches and it is not necessarily that a global presence on all networks is right for your industry.

Managing your brand’s social media presence takes ongoing effort. It is not like creating an advertising campaign, where once launched you can expect to reap the rewards of extra sales. Leveraging the power of Social Media takes a persistent and consistent presence. Social media tools can be a constant source of customer service enquiries, those ‘how to’ questions which need to be answered to the customer’s satisfaction yet it can also be used to discover how customers wish to see your product be developed. Customers are always prepared to critique and offer suggestions, which may benefit product development teams. An holistic approach should be taken in respect of your corporate social media presence.

Monitoring is important! Responses do not have to be made the split second after an another person’s post is published, but they do need to be timely and reasoned.

The first element here is about setting up a monitoring or listening station. How you do this can be as simple as a keyword search in Twitter or it can employ more complex monitoring software. Your Internet publicity partner should be able to guide you to cost effectively monitoring the buzz about your brand or product and advise on how to respond in each circumstance.

The right response is crucial in all circumstances. Generally people do not want is smooth marketing talk. If they have a problem then it is better to have a product specialist respond with information on how to make the product work again; this is about being seen as providing the solution. Most responses can be made by the right expert within the business responding, yet knowing how busy people are it is often best to have someone independent monitor interactions and ensure that the right person responds in a timely fashion.

Much of this interaction is about being involved in an on-going conversation that is happening on-line. It is developing in all sorts of directions, only very few of which any corporation need concern themselves with. It is important to be focused and targeted in all communications. Ultimately each brand needs to exude its personality to the outside world through its social networking interactions.