Social Media Services

There is no one size fits all approach to social media marketing for businesses. Each business can benefit from a customized approach based on their goals and the needs of their customers. For a business, social media can be a great benefit for: business promotion, customer engagement, and customer service. In the new world of social media marketing, the users market the company instead of the company marketing to the users. It’s critical to let the users speak their mind on your social media pages, but, unlike print marketing, the company has the unique opportunity to respond to the customer, address his or her needs, and have that conversation public for everyone to see that your company conducts itself with customer service as its focus.

Social media can also be a place in which managing your brand’s reputation is very important. It takes a dedicated resource and a lot of knowledge to know how to monitor how your company is being spoken about across a myriad of social media platforms and search engines. It also takes expertise to prepare a plan in case your company receives negative publicity from even one or more dissatisfied customers.

WBC offers the following social media services:

• Social media strategy

The strategy is the blueprint for the social media plan. It will include an overview of goals, identification of key performance indicators (KPI), discussion of metrics used to analyze the key performance indicators, analysis of audience and what platforms will yield the greatest reach, and assessment of overall impact social media can have on business objectives.

• Social media engagement guidelines

Every company should develop a list of guidelines for how employees should and should not conduct business on social media sites while representing the brand. Social media can be a slippery slope in which personal profiles intermingle with professional interactions. There are best practices that can be easily documented and posted on a company intranet to help employees use social media in the most safe and constructive manner possible. We can help your company develop these guidelines.

• Competitor overview

Even though one social media plan does not fit with every company, it is a good idea to know what your competition is doing. Knowing the trends and popular practices your competition is using will help you outpace your competitors and outsmart them in the long run.

• Training on online reputation management

Once your social media profiles are launched, they become an open forum for positive and negative customer interaction. We will train you on the best monitoring programs you can use to make sure that you are aware what the public is saying about your brand so that you can react quickly to any customer concerns that, without intervention, could easily escalate into a brand damaging campaign. Excellent customer service is key to turning a potentially negative comment into a positive customer experience that anyone who visits your social media site will see.

Contact WBC today to see how we can help your business use social media. Email us or fill out our online contact form.

What is the difference between social media sites?

According to CNN, Nielsen found Facebook users are 25 percent more likely to be affluent than MySpace users. Twenty-three percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 compared to only sixteen percent of MySpace users. The report unveiled MySpace users “tend to be ‘in middle-class, blue-collar neighborhoods” in comparison to Facebook users. “Facebook [use] goes off the charts in the upscale suburbs,” said to Mike Mancini, vice president of data product management for Nielsen.

How does this research impact your business?

The impact of more demographic research by the three most popular social media sites lends itself to creating strategic marketing campaigns (The word ‘campaign’ may emanate an expensive bill but a marketing campaign can start at a few hundred dollars). Companies who want to reach an affluent audience may concentrate content on Facebook or LinkedIn, but companies that want to reach an audience with smaller salaries may want to concentrate on content with MySpace.

CNN reports the Nielsen research shows almost 38 percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year, but companies that wish to use only one social media site and reach a broader audience should use Twitter. “Nielsen’s survey didn’t find a dominant social class on Twitter as much as they found a geographic one: Those who use Twitter are more likely to live in an urban area where there’s greater access to wireless network coverage,” said Mancini. More information like this Nielsen report can help tame marketers frustrated social media antics and allow them to concentrate on sites that will result in higher leads.

How can you monetize and prioritize using social media?

Besides promoting the popularity of social media, this research promotes the need for a social media strategy. The demographic differences between the large social media sites can help marketers plan a social media strategy and focus attention on the sites that may lead to higher leads. Many marketing agencies can help create a simple social media strategy that is customized for your business. Ask the agency if they offer an a la carte options (Web Biz Consultants does).

Take Away Lessons

• Pay attention to new information about social media. This is one phenomenon that is not going away (Although social media sites like Facebook or MySpace may be replaced with another option). Social media is so popular that large research companies like Nielsen Claritas is spending time discovering specifics about this phenomenon
• Have a specific social media strategy to leverage leads and information effectively.