Jay LeonardThe number of social media users is growing rapidly in Kenya, providing immense opportunities for businesses to communicate with their clients. Social Media Marketing works for brands and businesses whose customers use social networks.
Target Audience, Determine Channels and Build Internal Capacity
Before any business or corporate decides to use social media as a marketing channel, it has to evaluate the following things. Who are your market audience? Do your customers use social media? Which Social Media Channels are best suitable to reach your customers? Is it Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ Pinterest? Do you have internal capacity to do social or you have to out-source from an agency? There are the pros and cons of using an agency to do social media marketing for you, compared to doing it internally. Capacity building for staff would be the first step if a business decides to do social media internally. You need someone who has your brand DNA to be your face on social networks.
Engage
The other important thing is that Social Media is not a monologue. It is a dialogue. It is conversational. You get loyalty and trust from your online community by constantly engaging them. You can’t just create a Facebook profile, abandon or just push messages. There is always a cause and effect. When you post content, expect reactions from your audience and respond to them swiftly.
Constant Surveillance
Social media also require constant monitoring and surveillance for any positive or negative brand mentions. If you do not do a 360’ real-time surveillance on social platforms, you risk losing a lot of brand reputation, goodwill and business opportunities which cannot be measured. In the era of connected consumers, Real-time is not fast enough. A brand must constantly be on top of the game.
Allocate budget for Digital
We are in the digital age where most consumers are tech-savvy and well-informed. It is therefore important for marketing departments to always allocate a certain percentage of their marketing budget to digital marketing in order to be relevant to the ever-changing and competitive marketing landscape. We are seeing more and more consumers using mobile devices to communicate and interact. The benefit of being on Social media for a business is earning customers loyalty and trust. This happens if you have a clear strategy that responds swiftly to queries and serves customers well.
Never Ignore Negative Comments
Don’t Ignore negative or critical comments. Respond to every Comment. Be professional and respectful to negative comments. Stick to the facts. Provide accurate and reliable answers.
Never delete a negative comment ( feedback) from a customer, it could be a great source of learning. If you convert an angry customer into a happy one, he/she becomes your online evangelist or advocate.
But of course, never fight with a bully (pig), because everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it
Strategy
The greatest headache for social media marketers at the moment is how to convert social media fans or followers into sales. A proper strategy is needed. I can discuss this in another article.
Article originally published at How We made it in Africa
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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