We all know Shakespeare’s famous quote that the world is a stage. But now with Social Media it seems even more true: Social Media is your stage. You need to put your brand under the luminescent light and give the world a breathtaking show. Social media is not just a tool to share pictures of your lunch and the latest cat video. It is a place for entertainment and knowledge. And just because your area of expertise is ECM that doesn’t mean you cannot make the most of it.
Here are several suggestions how to use the stage to your advantage. The C-suite is not always a fan of social media. All they see are the bills for the ads. So it is only natural that leaders remain skeptical about social media ROI. (Quick update: No, there is still not a measured value of a social media status or a Tweet).
In the mean time, here is what you can use social media for:
Customer Service
Let Social Media channels be your eyes, ears and mouth! Through the different platforms, you will be able to easily monitor what people have to say about your brand and how they feel about your products. It will give you a priceless insight on what your customers need and how you can upgrade the product/service.
Furthermore, social media platforms give you a chance to be part of that conversation. Not only to listen actively, but to respond the the messages and deliver your unique value as a brand. It will improve your customer service: from sales to marketing, you will know what the needs and values of your audience are.
Social media ties together product, marketing and sales strategy and allows you to show it off in front of your customers. Get on the stage and steal their hearts and minds.
Learn More about Your Customers
Even though ROI is difficult to measure with Social, there are a lot of other things you can actually measure that will help you increase your revenue. You can still analyze valuable customers by traffic source. If your organization has the analytical capabilities to performs broad listening, it can use this information into the reporting. Thus, monitoring millions of data sources, you will be able to reveal spikes in sentiment, mentions and global trends.
Use your Google Analytics and Facebook Insights data to track end-to-end conversions and explore the full customer journey, track conversions and analyze geographic variations.
Collaboration
Yes, the C-word. Heavy workloads, different teams, people who work together, but don’t interact every day, remote workers and geo-dispersed team members. Workspace collaboration is challenging mostly because: people are insecure about their ideas and they don’t speak up; misperception. Employees fear their ideas might be viewed as silly or irrelevant or they might be misconstrued.
Managers bring more people into a project on the assumption that the extra brain-power will yield a better result. "But the reality is the more people we bring together, the more complex we make that collaboration," said Matt Wenger, CEO of Tink Tank. "We add more limits and obstacles to a successful outcome." In order to get past these limitations, we need to embrace new technologies like mobile engagement, the cloud and the social platforms where all elements fuse.
You can create a Facebook group or create a Twitter feed for everyone to follow. You can use G+ to create a special learning and sharing place. Whatever you do, just make sure you all have a place to share ideas, express your values and unite around a shared goal.
And of course don’t forget to use social media for it’s intended purposes: sharing your enterprise messages and insights. You feel like you need inspiration? Check out these examples of killer enterprise content marketing.
Ladies and Gentleman, the velvet curtains are opening! Are you ready for the show?
