Here’s some brutal honesty for you, you will never succeed on social media if you do not respect social media. No one is forcing you to be on Social Media. I do think that as an Entrepreneur you should be, but no one is forcing you so if you will not respect social media and make the necessary investment it will not work for you.
Let’s start at the beginning, you have a business, either you just launched, or you have been in business for a while, it doesn’t matter. As an entrepreneur you understand that you’re always fighting for your customer’s attention, you have an excellent product but if no one knows about it then what’s the point. You also understand that one of the fastest and arguably cheapest ways to capture people’s attention is through the use of social media. Social media, because to attract people’s attention, you need to know where their focus is, today almost everyone has a smartphone, and on their smartphones, everyone has on average five social media apps on there and spend approximately 60% of their time on there. So it makes sense to be where they are. If you build it, they will not come, you have to find them, and Social Media provides you with the medium to do just that.
However, knowing you have to implement a social media programme in your business is only one part of the equation. Social media is not something you can turn on and magically transform your business overnight. Social Media is a communication channel; it allows you to communicate with your customers and potential customers on the platforms where they are currently paying attention, and it will enable you to communicate with them the way they want to be communicated with, not disrupting their experience but becoming part of the experience they are having.
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If that’s the case, if you are going to invest in social media shouldn’t you then take it seriously? I think you should. What I’ve found is businessmen and women seems to think that they do not need to spend any time on social, they believe they can hire an intern from the local college who will post to their Facebook and Instagram for them. If you want to implement a social media programme for your business, you need to understand a couple of things.
1- Social media must be integrated into all aspect of your business
It cannot be a standalone pillar of your business. It needs to be consistent with a company/organization’s overall marketing strategy. Organizations are starting to realize that communication about their cause, products or services are not necessarily coming from their media distribution efforts but from users, consumers, and volunteers talking to each other about their experiences via social.
2- Social media works best when adequately combined with content marketing
Ok, there are other pillars of marketing and business development that when integrated with social media works best for your business. However, content is what powers Social Media. It’s important to understand the nuances of each of the platforms and create content for these platforms that are native to them. In this way, you’re not interrupting user’s experiences on this platform but adding to it.
3- Organic is good, but sometimes you need to put a little money behind it
You can experience success on social media organically, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. But it’s becoming quite challenging to do, and it makes sense to invest in paid advertising to ensure your content have a greater reach.
Once you understand these things, and you start taking social media seriously and start seeing all the potential for your business. You will be in a better position to succeed and help boost your business bottom line.