I am forever being asked as to which marketing strategy will lead to better sales and having been in business for more years than I care to remember my bulk standard reply is to use as many marketing tactics as you can and to measure the results with perspective having given heed to your products/services and your target customer base.

So what does this mean in reality and where do you start?

Start with your product and service. Does demand truly exist? Are you sure? Have you done your research? Can you prove it to yourself?  OK so you think you can prove a demand but then comes the next challenge – how do you stand out from the crowd?

If yours is a niche product or service then you might not have much competition but also absolute demand will be lower. Contrast this to commodity products/services where there are many sellers chasing a small slice of a crowded market and it becomes very difficult to be noticed and attract new clients, unless you are constantly “on the go” and on your toes.

Social Media is a way of creating noise and if done right it will create opportunities to close business deals if your product and service is right. If your price/product/service is wrong then, whatever your activity level, conversion will be poor.

So this now leads on to knowing your target market and where and how they choose to shop your services/products and this is changing.

In parts of our business Social Media is useless because our target audience at present do not use Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin (the holy trinity of Social Networking) and we have to market to them differently.  However, SM enables us to have international reach far beyond the scale of our operations and has enabled us to find candidates for Saudi Arabia and Australia and on one occasion a Polish girl living in Denmark applied for a position in the UK via Twitter.

The inspiration for this blog entry is a story of a tweet picked up by Lesley-Anne of On The Go and referred to me for a local operation where I actually knew one of the non-executive directors but was oblivious to the opportunity. On checking it out I was sent a Facebook URL to the guy’s profile, saw he was under 35 and it clicked – here is a young decision maker, in a modern business, using today’s technology to reach out to the market place. There is no doubt this will increase over time.

As for SM strategy we’ve been at it longer than most. Initially we struggled but went back to the drawing board and redesigned our strategy which is a mix of little and often, a bit of humour, informational tips and links to articles to drive traffic towards our websites. SM is and will remain part of our marketing strategy but will create no opportunities unless our buyers want our services in the first place.

SM is a business tool, amongst others, in you marketing golf bag- use it wisely, well and sparingly. If you need to repeat messages/themes, then at least try and use a variety of words and to amuse your audience as at the end of the day SM is P to P (people to people) whether you are B2C or B2B and all those other awful acronyms used in modern marketing.

The market has changed. We need to think backwards from the future not forward from the past.

I have two teenage daughters who need to be surgically separated from “facebook and fone”.  Their generation will be the decision makers of tomorrow and  for them to be communicated with via social media you’d better get involved now while the SM market is young, immature and forgiving.

Adapt or die.

Georgina Laidlaw posted Easy Content Scheduling for Bloggers which clearly shows  there needs to be a plan.  So working from this I need to be blogging about administration, social media … er – administration, social media.  Hmm… I appear to have a blank spot.  You know what – I’ll use the templates as a guideline and go from there.  I like writing about the odd episode regarding my cat “Butch”- he keeps me entertained and would you really only want to read about administration and social media?  I think not.

Let me know if you have a structured plan for your blogs or whether you just bang them out as and when.

We all know just how important it is to build up a rapport with ones followers’ as well as keeping lines of communication open. The like – know – trust – strap line expresses succinctly the way relationships are built, the same as when we first meet someone face to face.  However, the reality is that when an advert is placed in a magazine there is no way of predicting who might look at it.  In other words you have had no personal interaction with the individuals who are attracted to the advert. Yet this doesn’t stop you from placing the advert and the magazine isn’t going to turn your advert down because you don’t know your target market.  So the key is to adopt the same strategy for your social media presence.  Simply place your posts and adverts linking to your website as you would in a magazine and thereby give your business the exposure it needs on the web.  You will soon start picking up followers, start to build up a rapport, find common interests, hopefully get to like them and eventually trust them.
 
Obviously it takes time to build up a “quality” list of followers on any network.  Don’t be tempted to subscribe to any application that promises to generate 100,000 of followers though – what is the point?  It is far better to have 50 genuine followers who are interested in you and your business than thousands of followers.

As a Virtual Assistant (VA) I look after clients who need a 24/7 presence on the web through the medium of social media.  By setting up their accounts, profiles and producing a continuous stream of posts I am able to give them the presence they require on the web thus giving them the space and time to focus on their day-to-day business.  I do, however, encourage them to spend a few minutes a day ‘personalising’ their posts so that it reflects their own personality and style. 
Sometimes though I am criticised for this approach to social media with comments like:
“You shouldn’t automate your tweets.”
“Don’t post the same information on every site.”
“Not everyone is on Twitter so don’t place an RT (re-tweet) message on LinkedIn, Facebook, FriendFeed etc.”
 
Most people involved with social media will be familiar with the most popular top sites.  Some of them are our preferred sites that we frequent daily, hourly, even every few minutes during a typical day.  Other sites we might just visit once a day or once a week. Occasionally, however, we find something of interest on what I refer to as the “dippers” and it’s often worth remaining with them, both from the perspective of finding interesting articles, potential new contacts and possibly items of general business interest. These may also open up new avenues to further promote your business.
 
In my view I don’t think anyone should say “do this” or “don’t do that”.  Each of us will try our own marketing strategies depending on what we feel comfortable with and I firmly believe that everyone has a right to experiment until they find what works best for them as individuals and as businesses. If you are in business and some of these issues resonate with you, then why not consider utilising the services of a professional VA to help you establish your own 24/7 presence? It might just be just what you need to start getting the phone to ring more often!

Don’t forget that if you want any further information on any of the above topics then please do get in touch. On The Go is already helping successful businesses implement their social networking strategies from helping them set up a consistent company profile through to scheduling their media messages giving them a 24/7 web presence.