Social media marketing is something that every business should be doing no matter what its size.

It is a way to promote your business online to an unlimited market place.

Social media isn’t just about PR, it can also be used to montior your brand, what people are saying abou you and your customer service.

If you don’t do it, why don’t you do it? Any of these sound familiar?

My time is precious

It may not be expensive in a monetary sense, but social media can be very time hungry.

I can’t afford to spend that amount of time playing with social media.”

You’re not alone. Many businesses feel that way but can you really call it playing when it can bring in business to your company?

How many other activities offer:

  • Unlimited PR opportunities
  • Direct contact with your customers to gain insightful feedback
  • A way to constantly monitor your brand
  • A way to respond quickly to negative feedback
  • The chance to ‘talk’ directly with your customers at any time

At one time your customers could only phone you when you were in the office – and then mobile phones came along and changed the face of business.

There was a time when had to wade through a pile of mail every morning and could only deal with clients via a phone or snail mail – and then email appeared and changed the face of business.

Social media marketing is just the next step in communication development.

Embrace it and win

Learn to make time and your business will benefit hugely.

Establish what you need to do within your business to adopt this new form of technology. Should you Tweet, blog, Facebook, article marketing? Perhaps a combination?

Next you have to work out who will do what. Although you may want one person to deal with your Twitter account (continuity of voice helps to generate a strong bond with followers and potential clients), there is no reason why you can’t share the blogging responsibilities.

Some companies decide they have no time to do this themselves and so farm the work out. As a copywriter I would be happy to help you, but blogging is your opportunity to get your opinions out to your readers; to build a direct relationship with them through your words. As such using someone outside your company may make this difficult. But at the end of the day it’s going to depend on what you want to achieve from your blogging.

You could use guest bloggers to bring in fresh ideas and content although you will need to ensure they understand what your blog is about and issue them guidelines to ensure they follow your subject matter.

Don’t get left behind by your competitors. They can all see the value and are using it to great effect – they know what their customers want (and don’t want) before you do. They can quickly deal with negative feedback and turn it to work in their favour.

Come on, isn’t it time to redress the balance and got stuck in?