Social Media for Business: Not a Marketing Diet. It’s a Lifestyle Change.
Social networks have changed our human DNA when it comes to communicating. In no time flat, they have severely altered our lifestyle and changed the way we live and breathe. It’s easy to fatten up and get bloated on too much social networking or gorge ourselves on so much indecision and overwhelm that we fail to eat right and stay within the “body mass index” for your business and it’s effective use of social networks.
Learning how to get the most out of social networks is not too dissimilar to understanding the latest diet craze. But successful brands and businesses that are getting positive results with their social media efforts know, this is not the next “Atkins diet craze.” Like any healthy living success, long term success comes from making a “lifestyle change” to how you market and communicate your business. If you look at this effort like it’s a diet with an end point and time to get lazy and bloat out again, you will lose to your faster, leaner, and better disciplined competitors, who have figured out that they needed to make permanent “Lifestyle” changes.
Social networks are beyond the computer and the middle-class.
With mobile phone ownership above 90% in the United States (and higher in many other countries) and with smartphones and social media apps social networks reach everyone. Not everyone contributes content, but everyone absorbs content.
Nearly anyone your organization needs to reach will be online or on their mobile phones engaging social networks. Everyone from teenagers to grandmas; soccer moms to football dads; from blue collar journeyman to Fortune 500 CEOs and senior executives use social networks.
Everyone uses them to get referrals, find business partners, find quality products and discover the best local restaurants.
And the business imperative is to know how to engage each of these communities effectively in order to develop relationships with target customers and build trust for your brand.
However, each social network has its own culture and rules of business etiquette. These rules can and do change overnight.
That’s why you need a professional partner. FossMG knows these networks, which are best for your business and the people you want to connect with. We understand these rules and we know how to get your business engaged effectively.
And we know this is not an overnight success method. This is not a diet. To build the brand, to commit to your communities, build trust and show your true colors, you must commit long term.
Businesses Must Take Social Networks Very Seriously.
Social Marketing and SEO require consistent, weekly communication between FossMG and you or the product manager/marketing manager we’ll be communicating with for content.
FossMG requires content ideas to be generated from the client through a myriad of easy channels. But your online marketing success will depend upon how much content you and your team can help generate, either through bullet-point ideas/thoughts, previously written content, brainstorming sessions, customer satisfaction data, customer feedback, employees/staff input, employee/staff contributions, employee/staff blogs-Twitter-Facebook accounts, etc. Content (the written word primarily) is the secret to online marketing success. The more that is written, the more the search engines have to find and index.
We encourage our employees to blog, Twitter, Facebook and we encourage you to do the same with your employees. If you don’t have a story to tell; if you don’t think there are even 100 people that will care to know more about your organization and why you are better; if you come from the school of thought that one advertisement in a newspaper is enough or that PR does not work; if you don’t understand that making social networks work requires a small but consistent commitment; if you don’t want to partner with an expert to get this done; then social media is NOT for you. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste ours either.
If you know that you have customers that want to know more about you. If you have a story to tell and don’t have time or don’t know how. If you want to be perceived as a 21st Century company. If you are excited to connect with new prospects and brand fans that truly want to be engaged with good content so they can be smarter and refer you to their families and friends.