How to Properly Use Social Media to Fit Your Business Strategy

In our increasingly connected society, building a social media presence is as commonplace as getting a driver’s license. Personal Facebook profiles, LinkedIn accounts, and Twitter handles are common among students and professionals alike. However, frequently updating your Pinterest boards does not necessarily equip you with the tools and experience that you need when crafting a social media strategy for your budding business.

Whether you are operating a brick-and-mortar company, or a more tech-heavy startup such as my business, thoughtfully employing social media can help you increase your visibility, profits, and number of customers. One key is carefully linking your social media activity to your business strategy. How can you do so? Here are three pieces of advice:

1. Choose the right platforms and practices
It might be tempting to follow the social media trends that are considered “hot” in popular culture and jump on whatever platform is being talked about the most. Maximizing your social media use means choosing those platforms and practices that suit your core business strategy. For instance, it may or may not make sense for your company to update its Twitter account every hour; what works for another company may not have the same effects for yours.

One strategy could be to first determine which platforms your customers and leads use, and then build your social media presence with those outlets in mind so as to achieve predetermined and measurable business objectives. Even if revenue impact is hard to measure, you should have specific key performance indicators in place that will help you evaluate the extent to which you are doing a good job and generating meaningful value for your company.

In many cases, the objective of a social media strategy is to increase the reach and visibility of your company. Therefore, it would make sense to consider fostering a social media presence on most – if not all – of the major platforms to maximize those reach results. For instance, Facebook may be the largest social media platform, but Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram have the highest growth rates. Which outlets are likely to benefit your business most, both in terms of the users you’ll reach and how you do business? Twitter users, for example, often expect near-immediate responses when they mention a company. If you do not have the resources to answer quickly, Twitter (and other similar platforms) may not be ideal for your company’s social media strategy.

2. Set goals for your social media use
The location, purpose, and size of your business will naturally affect your social media goals. However, many companies use social platforms to:

• Increase referral traffic to their website
• Drive lead generation or e-commerce purchases
• Increase company credibility
• Demonstrate a corporate identity and culture that makes people more likely to want to work with as consumers or employees
• Increase the quantity of feedback that they receive from customers and leads.
• Offer an additional avenue for customer service interactions. Your clients may find it more convenient to compose a Tweet or write a Facebook post than to call or email you. It may even help them like you more. One survey found that 43% of customers are likely to recommend a product or service to others when that brand responds in a timely manner on social media outlets.
• Media outlets may even consider your online presence when deciding whether to feature your company in a piece. The stories that you portray of an exciting company through social media may help you connect with reporters and writers who are looking for interesting businesses to profile.

Whenever possible, track how your social media use influences your lead flow and customer conversion rate. Ultimately, good use of these platforms should be impacting your revenue and profit figures.

Read the Full Article Here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckcohn/2015/01/23/how-to-properly-use-social-media-to-fit-your-business-strategy/#4c3658e5474e578d2de25474

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