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Social media – is it like the Noughties never happened?

Posted June 21st, 2010 by Ben Fox. 1 Comment

After researching the SME market, it seems that a surprising number of businesses have dipped their toe in to the water of social media – with some really embracing the medium. Whilst participating in a live web chat on the subject yesterday, a leader of a SME business network commented that many small businesses are actively using social media and are not afraid of having a go. Great to hear.

Contrast this to the situation in the mid to late 90’s when businesses seemed to be actively afraid of having an online presence.

They were dragged kicking and screaming into the online world, and would only launch a website when all of their competitors had already done so. Perhaps that is why so many of the sites were such woeful affairs.

But once they did have a site, that would be it. Left to gather virtual dust.

“Oh yes, we’ve got a website” they would say.

Do you update it? Does it work for you? Does it rank in the search engines?

“Well no, but I know that people look at it – some clients have told us that they visit it.”

The worry is that I’m hearing almost the same conversations about social media now.

The similarities in attitudes to websites in the 1990’s and attitudes to social media now are startingly similar: Put something up and the job’s just about done.

“Oh yes, we’re on Facebook and Twitter.”

But I see that you haven’t updated anything on there for over a month now.

“Well, yes we don’t have time to spend all day on Facebook and Twitter you know.”

Most seem to feel that this isn’t a problem as the social network presence won’t be going anywhere. Similar to the old argument about once you have a website it’s fine to leave well alone.

Ask them how they use it and how they they engage with their audience and they’ll say something like:

“Well, we just put our offers and announcements on there. Claire does it, she’s young and knows her way around Facebook.”

SME’s tend not to outsource social media and prefer to keep it all in-house. Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes this is where it falls down. There’s no two ways around this, social media is bloody time consuming. SME’s – especially the smaller ones, will put a great effort into Tweeting or being active on Facebook or LinkedIn for a month or two, but then other work takes over and the presence gets neglected. The owners and managers will often not have the time themselves, and they don’t usually want to entrust regular staff members to be the public voice of the organisation.

The other common fault is the lack of integration. Too many businesses use it as a standalone marketing tool and neglect to see how well it can be used to support the rest of their marketing efforts.

Social media is not rocket surgery. It just takes a bit of careful planning and fair bit of commitment. Okay, a lot of commitment. But like anything, if a job’s worth doing!

A few things SME’s should note before using social media:

• Have a social media strategy.
• Have a policy on spokespeople for social media.
• Ensure activity won’t just stop (or stop and start at random intervals).
• Make sure it integrates with your other sales and marketing efforts.
• Consider outsourcing – but if you do, be very careful about who will be speaking on your behalf.
• If you can’t commit to doing it properly, be wary about starting it until you can.
• Be consistent
• Have fun with it – it will show

Tags: facebook, media, social, twitter
Posted in Graphic Design, Marketing, Social Media

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