Using Facebook & Twitter Alone is Not a Social Media Strategy

I recently came across a speaker and coach who during a recent seminar stated that all business needed to participate in social media was a Facebook page, now this coach is well known in the real estate industry as a motivational speaker and sales trainer, he is also a working real estate agent operating a very successful office, so the business owners who attended this session will believe what he says, unfortunately for them his advice is not only wrong, it is totally misleading.

So lets state for the record, a Facebook page and Twitter account do not constitute a social media strategy, in fact it is far from it.

This again highlights how you can be misled by so called social media experts who run around the country spruiking advice like this.

Facebook and Twitter are only part of a broader overall strategy and these are tools, which you use to communicate and socialise with your customers.

This raises the other big issue that companies have, and that is they don’t know how to be social, in most cases business gets involved in social media becuase your competitors are doing it, not because it opens up communication channels with your customers and allows your business to be social.

Today everyone of your customers is a reporter and every reporter is a customer, so being able to directly tell your story to your customers is a very valuable component of an online corporate communication strategy.

Before you start using a tools based strategy, which is what you have if you are just using Facebook and Twitter, think about what sort of relationship you want with your customers, connecting with them is a very valuable asset to your business in building lead generation, sales and loyalty.

Social media is fuelled by passion, so work out first, who you are, what you are and what you are trying to communicate, before you start. Most companies take elements of the business that are not really passionate and try and make them social, elements such as features and benefits etc.

Creating your own unique content is really important with social media, content and  passion become the king. Translating that into other mediums is also very important. Creating blog posts for example and then turning those posts into Podcasts and Video and distributing via YouTube and ITunes.

Video is a massively under utilised tool in business, and I predict in the next 12 months will have far greater influence than it does today. You now have the potential to have a streaming TV channel at your disposal, every piece of content you generate can be transferred to video. 

There is more to creating your social media strategy than just Facebook and Twitter, stretch the boundaries with social media, remember it’s about passion, it’s about you, it’s about your brand and most of all it’s about your customers.

Reach out to them across all the channels available to you, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.