With more than 500 million active users on facebook alone, 50% of which are active daily, have on average 130 friends each, are connected to 80 community pages, groups and events and create around 90 pieces of content each month, the question Marketers may be asking is perhaps not “why should we use social media?” but “how do I get started?”.

The following article outlines some factors worth considering if you are thinking about embracing social media.

1.         Know Why You Are Using Social Media

Try not to get too caught up in the hype of something new.  Determine what you are trying to achieve – typically greater brand awareness, building relationships, generating more leads, more direct sales or conversions will be on your list.  This is the first step in developing your social media strategy.  Also consider your audience – you know what you want to achieve but will jumping on the social media bandwagon get you there?  Are your potential clients active on social media?  If the answer is yes, keep reading!

2.          Identify What Social Media You Will Use

Which social media tools will enable you to best fulfil your goals? - social networking sites, real-time updates such as Twitter, blogs, social news sites, review/directory sites, display ads on social media sites and so on.  A bit of research will enable you to determine which channels appeal to your target audiences – this may be popular sites like facebook and twitter or could be a blog or news sharing site specific to your industry sector.

3.         Create Your Identity

Your profile and messages should reflect your personality and be consistent with your brand ethos and identity.

4.         Encourage Participation

Think about how you will drive people to your social media space – initially you can invite your business contacts and friends to join you and actively market your presence on these social platforms via your usual communications channels but your audience will only continue to follow you if your brand offers them something useful time and time again.  Ensure you deliver!  Try to produce unique content from time to time and avoid the urge to post only links to 3rd party content – some of it may be useful but it may also make you look a bit lazy!  Be professional but be social as well!  Engage in conversations but remember that in doing so, you will not always be in control of the content...are you willing to let go and see where the conversations take you?  Create anticipation by indicating future content you will post and keep it current.  Solve problems – you are supposed to be the experts after all!  Be honest – good content is true content, give your point of view but try to back it up with examples and don’t make promises you can’t keep.  If your followers like your brand, they will engage with you and recommend you to their friends....this is what social media is all about.

5.         Integrate With Your Overall Marketing/Communications Strategy

 Your social media activity should be part of a larger marketing/communications strategy.  Think about how your social media strategy fits with what you're trying to do in all your other channels, and how they can support each other.

6.         Measure Success

The saying ‘you get out of it what you put into it’ certainly applies to social media – it’s not a quick fix that will double your sales overnight – like any relationship, you need to get to know your audiences, listen to what they say, respond with solutions that fulfil their needs and in doing so, over time, you will fulfil your own goals.  This takes a lot of time and commitment so ensure you have the resources to maintain the relationship.  Also clarify how you will measure success - is it the number of views, followers, comments, subscribers or by some other means?  Taking on board the lessons learnt, you may have to revise your strategy after a campaign and before you embark on the next one.

For those of you who still aren’t convinced on social media, view Social Media Revolution.

If you want to have a chat about getting on the social media bandwagon, get in touch with us at info@thewebbureau.com

1. Know your goals and stick to them

Why do you create content? There must be some need that it addresses, some benefit that justifies the cost of writing and maintaining it. Be clear on what you are trying to say before you start writing anything. Once you've identified your goals, stick closely to them. Don't include unnecessary information.

2. Know your audience and write to meet their needs

There is no point publishing information that your audience struggles to understand, does not answer their questions, or does not help them do the tasks they are trying to do. You'll end up getting phone calls or emails asking for help, so why bother publishing poor content in the first place?

3. Use plain language

Language is ambiguous and so it is easy to miscommunicate, especially when communicating in writing. If your website caters to people whose first language is not English (migrants, international users, those whose first language is a sign language), the risk is higher still. Using plain language is the key to making sure your web content is understood.

4. Be very concise

Studies show that people are very task-oriented when they use the web. They have a particular goal in mind and they are often in a hurry. So they scan rather than read text closely. Concise text is also important because poor screen resolution, screen glare, small text, poor colour contrast, and other poor design decisions all make reading online much harder than reading printed content.

5. Make content easy to scan

Design content to suit the way people read online. Break up text with useful headings. Make sure paragraphs contain only one topic. Keep sentences short. Use bulleted or numbered lists where you can. Look for opportunities to use images, tables, graphs or charts to simplify complex information.

6. Avoid hype, fluff and exaggeration

Don't put unnecessary words between your real content and the people who want it. It takes more time and effort for people to find what they've come for if you make boastful claims about your products, services or achievements.

7. Make sure page titles are accurate

Page titles are used in search engine indexing, appear as the links in search results, and are stored in browser bookmarks/favorites and histories. Good page titles will help people find or return to your content. Take care not to publish an "untitled document" or use titles that are ambiguous or misleading.

8. Write meaningful link text

Links embedded in the content on a web page stand out. They are a call to action - or at least they can be. Links like "click here" don't provide enough motivation to act. Link text needs to clearly tell users what the link will lead to.

9. Draft and review

Good web content doesn't happen instantly. Make time to draft and review your content. Use a content review checklist and have a colleague check your work.

10. Don't publish and forget

Websites are not like filing cabinets or library archives. Once published, web content is always available and the assumption is that what is available is current. This simple fact is often overlooked and so a lot of websites get bogged down with out of date, inaccurate content that gets in people's way, misleads them, or causes them to make mistakes.