Which social media is effective for brand awareness, which for education, which for making sales? The various options available, gosh, aren’t we spoilt for choices…Read here on what was trending for 2013.
Let’s do some serious thinking now. We want the most effective social media to use for our intention. Owning a business page on social media is not the end of the marketing story.
What do you want viewers to do on the page? How do you get more visitors to that page?
Let’s reflect on what most people are doing: They have a website, and then link that website to their Facebook page, Twitter page and Linkedin page.
Then, visitors will have to choose: predicting what they have on mind,
“I often log into Facebook, so liking the Facebook page is a good idea.
I have a twitter account, but I seldom go through my tweets, because my complete list of friends are on Facebook.
My Linkedin page is for finding a job, or getting a person to fill a job. So I don’t think I will need to look at the company’s Linkedin page.”
Now, the pattern is so clear. That if you have given the 3 options to your audience, they will most probably choose to connect via Facebook first.
Give them a reason why they should click on Twitter or Linkedin, or even Pinterest. Perhaps you have some awesome materials there that your users must see there.
I think Zuckerberg will be smiling at my next sentence:
Facebook is my first choice of social media. It has all the right ingredients for engagement.
Why I Use Facebook?
For sharing useful content – most of the Facebook posts are curated content (someone copied the link/image from somewhere). The most effective strategy is to make your own content. So people will have no choice but to like your page to get future updates of the content.
The Facebook interface seems to have nicely chunked spaces for the posts. So, it kind of have some psychological effect on us via a neat display of content.
For getting quick response on a situation – within 2-3 minutes, someone reads your post and may fire a comment. For sharing of life’s moments – it seems like everyone’s habit to instantly post about something special going on in his or her life, on Facebook.
Twitter will be my second choice. Plainly due to the character limits and the shortlinks. It can be a bit frustrating to see a twit with an attached image, but you can’t see the image directly unless you click on the shortlink. I am not sure if it’s just me, but I guess I am already spoilt by facebook’s feature of attached images already automatically shown in the post.
Why I Use Twitter?
Basically, to spread announcements, as an additional layer on top of facebook. Sometimes, I use it to also discover conversations, using the search hashtags plus keywords. The best thing I really love Twitter for is the fact that I can engage in any conversation without the need to “Request add friend”.
But again, how many genuine relationships can you make with total strangers? That brings me back to my roots, which are my Facebook friends/likes. Basically, because I know why they are my friends, and I know what makes my friends happy. It’s easy to monitor on the Facebook page administrator interface, via the number of likes and comments, what kinds of posts are found to be useful for my friends, and what are not useful.
Wait…a good idea for using Twitter will be for short messages or short advice / words-of-wisdom kind. That basically means, a sentence that makes sense can be seen as a tweet without having the reader to click, unless they want to find out more information about the tweet.
Why I Use LinkedIn?
Linkedin to me is elegance and professionalism. Where all serious topics are discussed in a politically correct tone. No swearing allowed. 🙂 I seriously mean it. And no wacky images and articles please. My time on LinkedIn is precious – it is for a purely business conversation.
Oh, of course, Linkedin is the best professional reference to have. Articles found here are from the experts and enthusiasts themselves, hence they are original. Join the professional networks and get started to find out the trends in your industry. There are many entrepeneurs and experts, exchanging thoughts and ideas. Be polite and professional and they will reciprocate with the same too.
For the entrepeneurs, what better way to learn about the trade from the experts? It’s certainly alright to ask for views and opinions. But be careful not to ask a question that already have the answer screaming at you.
For the experts, what better way to use (or showcase) your skills than to help the newbies? This way, you are creating your brand awareness too.
These three social media sites are already saturating my online social time, which I plan to keep to just 2 hours per day.
I would also like to engage in customers offline, and on a more personal level, via personal email or messages. So that means another 0.5 hour to 1 hour. Oh maybe more. That is what social means anyway. You take care of the people around you. Anything you do should be in the spirit of the community.
Hey, don’t forget Quora too. Think opinions. Maybe enjoy some quiet moments over a cuppa to ponder on Quora?
Teach Me Social Media 