Social media has become part of daily life for a large proportion of the population, for business, news, recreation and celebrity following. So I’m surprised to find that many of the IT community are still not using it as an integral part of their business communications.
At an IT vendor-led marketing event a show of hands revealed that a surprising large number of service providers and resellers hadn’t yet adopted social media. The excuses ranged from age (“Facebook and Twitter are something teenagers use”) to tradition (“Why not pick up a phone”) to workplace challenges (“How do I convince my CEO it’s a good thing?”). How significant an audience are they missing by ignoring this communications channel?
To find out more, when we recently carried out our annual customer survey among in-house IT teams we added some questions about digital marketing. We found that 29% of the respondents actively use social media for business, with a further 9% planning to do so. Interestingly, most of those who have embraced social media are in the public sector.
This shows that social media is not a substitute for ‘traditional’ communications. However, it is clearly a useful means of reaching out to a significant number of the target audience to increase engagement with you and your business. Let’s be clear; social media is not better than a face-to-face conversation, it’s not intended to replace existing marketing efforts and on its own it’s not going to ensure you meet your sales targets every quarter! But it can help make direct connections with those who have the potential to be your future customers.
If a prospective customer is social media savvy, this should be the primary method your sales team uses to engage with them. Why cold call and leave 20 voicemails when you can converse instantly with them on their preferred social platform? If they’re active on Twitter, for example, engage with them by replying to a recent tweet. In my own experience this has often produced instantaneous results for a fraction of the time that would have been spent trying to establish contact by phone.
One reason some organisations are less than enthusiastic could be the lack of an executive sponsor. We were fortunate that Fordway’s managing director was on board from the outset and quickly became an enthusiastic tweeter. Another reason may be that they simply don’t know where to start.
My advice is to start small, keep focused and don’t spread your social conversation too thin. Begin with one platform and treat it as another communications channel within your marketing strategy to distribute your content. As your confidence grows and you find out where your target audience spend their time, you can add different platforms and identify the topics which generate the most relevant discussions.
Social media is so wide-ranging that it can be easy to dismiss. It’s important to understand, however, that whilst it can be led by the marketing team, ultimately the major benefits of social media come from expanding it beyond them. By providing appropriate guidance to all employees and empowering them to use relevant social channels, your organisation can engage with many more people at an individual level. Although it requires a cultural shift, the potential benefits are too great for it not to happen.
By Jon Beck, Marketing and Alliance Manager, Fordway
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