Does Your Business Need To Be On Social Media?

I know this may come as a surprise to most, but why are you really on social media in the first place?

Half the time, for most companies on social media, a lot of time is spent pandering about “what we do” and share everything about “ourselves”, but never anything from other people and other pages we follow when it comes to Facebook. What’s worse is when the content you share is so poorly packaged – grainy images, typographical errors, brand defying imagery and horrific use of puns like eggnormous Easter offers Arrrgh!

Twitter and Instagram content is a repetition of what’s on Facebook. Companies are like annoying friends who only use Instagram and Facebook to share selfies of themselves everywhere. It is annoying and quite irritating. It is the easiest, laziest and worst way to run a social media account but ideally what you are meant to do is socialize. This means engaging with people and sometimes your posts will be from other people and not yourself all the time.

The argument is that social media is a great way to market yourself and source new clientele. And it does work for millions of people. But for those of you who are not seeing any growth in numbers here are a couple of things to consider:

Are you on the right medium?

The aim of marketing is to engage your customers, remain top of mind and win over new customers. But how do you do that on social media when you are everywhere and nowhere. This week I have spent time on a couple of company websites, clicked on their social media sites and almost passed out. They have on average five accounts, with barely any updates. Then why have the account? It defeats the purpose entirely; it only works against you!

Do you have any idea who your target audience really is? And NO, like I have said numerous times on this blog – EVERYONE is not a TARGET consumer. The term target refers to a level of specificity, that means a gender, an age group, a country, a culture – it needs to be uber specific. And that means once you know who that TARGET / SPECIFIC consumer is you can find them and engage with them on their social media site of preference.

Not all consumers are on Social Media

This brings me to my next observation, for those targeting CEOs and corporate global trotters, engaging them on Twitter, or LinkedIn may be neat, but many people are doing that. You need to do something phenomenal to get their attention.

So where exactly do you get the top corporate executives and moguls, to be honest, if you are in this league, I believe they are more likely to be too busy to respond on social media accounts unless they are fans of the medium.

For those top executives on social media, they use it to raise their profiles as industry gurus. You can you do the same to get noticed by them.

In the Kenyan market, I believe, you could nudge occasionally on social media – build your killer profile but also make an active effort to engage offline. How? Attend events they are likely to be part of and make some headway there. You may need to invest some cash in paying to attend these events but it just could pay off.

Is your Social Media profile a Killer?

I don’t mean this in a nice way. Your business social media account, yes, should be true to your brand persona. But it should still look inviting. This is a little something from unbounce.com to help you.

Is your content King, Court Jester or Pauper?

Are you actually creating unique content for your brand? The hugest challenge of the 21st-century communication demands of companies; is the need to create a mini media house. You need to package your communication in so many ways in multiple mediums constantly and relentlessly engage with your audience to stay relevant and profitable. That is the truth. 15 years ago all you needed was a website; 7 years ago social media accounts became a necessity globally. How do you manage it? You need a team, not a solo performer.

A key thing to note as you build this team isn’t just youthful exuberance and relentless fixation on social media. You need to really find out if your team understands:

Sales – your team needs to understand what they need to do creatively and uniquely to ensure they build that bottom line.

Consumer needs – do they understand what the market trends and habits online really are?

Storytelling – can they fuse knowledge of the sale and consumer psychology, and creatively weave together a narrative to win consumers over, and keep fixated on your brand? If the answer is yes, that is your winning content team.

If you chose not to invest in this, there will be a price to pay, what that price will be, time and profit margins will tell.