Social Media for Business

Purpose

Social media offers the opportunity for people to gather in onlinecommunities of shared interest and create share or consume content. It is an important tool of corporate and business engagement. It also encourages its employees and contractors to use social media in a personal capacity, as a way to reach out and share information and views with friends and communities – both old and new.
With the rapid growth and application of social media -The 3 Rs ask that when you engage in social media you be clear about who you are representing, that you take responsibility for ensuring cooperate requirements, and that you show respect for the individuals and communities you interact with.

Social Media Tools

1. Social networking sites e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Friendster.
2. Video and photo sharing websites e.g. Flickr, YouTube.
3. Micro-blogging sites e.g. twitter.
4. Google plus which affect SEO.
5. Weblogs, including corporate blogs, personal blogs or blogs hosted by traditional media publications.
6. Forums and discussion boards eg Whirlpool, Yahoo! Groups or Google Groups.
7. Online encyclopaedias e.g. Wikipedia.
8. Any other web sites that allow individual users or companies to use simple publishing tools.

I thought it would be helpful to put together a quick pros and cons of social media so that if you are engaging with social media for your company that you can go in with eyes wide open.

Pros:

1. Low hard costs compared to traditional marketing like print, television, outdoor, etc.
2. Quick, honest, and detailed feedback from the customer.
3. Allows for deeper engagements with customers by providing update, feedback, subscribe and promotions.
4. Similar to great brand marketing and customer service, the benefits of doing social media right can last for years.
5. Every customer and employee is a potential media outlet: social media is word of mouth on digital steroids.
6. In the past, companies that had the most money to spend on marketing often won, today it’s the company that produces great products and experiences for their customers.
7. Social media takes time and effort. Many companies aren’t willing to do this; hence those companies that put forth the extra effort will stand out.
8. If you are a progressive company you can use these tools to effectively recruit new talent.

Cons:

1. Often, many benefits of social media are seen in the months to come rather than immediately. It shouldn’t be viewed like Google Ad Words, which has a quick return. It should be viewed more like brand marketing and good customer service, which pays off in the future.
2. Tools can quickly change; one day it is MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, and Bebo; the next day it’s Facebook and Mixi.
3. There are a lot of hidden soft costs: it takes time to develop relationships with customers. In the offline world, developing relationships takes time and effort, the same holds true within social media.
4. May reduce the amount of faceto face communication we have with one another diminishing on interpersonal communication skills.
5. If the customer feels they haven’t been treated appropriately, they have powerful tools at their disposal social media to express their side of the story and negatively impact a brand reputation. Just like anything, there are some cons to social media. However, advantages outweigh the disadvantages and even if they didn’t, we don’t have a choice on whether we do social media. The question is how well we do it. The worst thing to do is to do nothing.

Which social media channel is best for me?

• LinkedIn: Share a favourite small business tip or ask and help in lead generation.
• GooglePlus: Google Plus one button in your website and ask your friends and peers to click on that little bugger whenever they could to help rankyour site.
• Facebook : For those looking to build brand awareness through official page
• YouTube :For those with robust video assets to offer consistently over time
• Twitter: For those looking to engage an audience with a high frequency, and those able to be available to respond with some immediacy and engage in conversation

Flickr: For those with robust visual communication assets to offer consistently over time

Let us know!

If you want to develop a social media outpost for your company, let us know. We are eager to build a community groups using social media and to promote these channels on our main social media page – VISNETWORK
In addition, feel free to connect with other groups on our social media
channels. Watch and learn how they use these channels and begin building a community of your own.

• Welcome to drop us email in socialmedia@visnetwork.com.auor

Visit: www.visnetwork.com.au for more details