Social media has become one of the hottest marketing tools over the past five years. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a host of new sites are now a major part of our daily lives. Since I began blogging in 2005, I have become an active participant in this new world. I have learned a great deal and continue to learn every day. Here are a few observations from my travels down the social media trail.
The first thing I learned is that you need to be very focused on what you are seeking to achieve from using social media, particularly from a business perspective. On Twitter you can follow virtually every path of interest, whether it is music, tennis, sailing, cooking or politics. There are thousands of people who share your interests on just about any topic. The question is how will you and your business prosper by participating in one or more social media or discussion groups? The first step on the journey is to set some clear goals, whether it is finding new prospects, recruiting new talent or demonstrating expertise.
Second, don't overlook the obvious. A good website is one of the best instruments for telling your story. However for a website to be truly effective, it has to be optimized. Search engine optimization is the process of identifying the key words about you and your company. If you develop a good website but don't perform SEO, it will likely be ineffective.
A third lesson is the value of consistent communication. In our case, I write a weekly blog that deals with topics of interest to our customers. It takes time, some writing skills, knowledge and persistence to prepare an interesting blog every week. My blog appears in several locations on the internet and is now read by thousands of people a week. After writing hundreds of blogs, they provide another source of traffic as individuals perform searches over time. Both the new and old blogs produce a steady flow of activity.
Fourth, select the social media sites and groups that are most relevant to what you do. Since my company offers freight transportation consulting services, we try to participate in those sites (e.g. LinkedIn transportation groups) where we will likely interact with prospective clients and vendors in our target industries. To raise our profile, we created a LinkedIn group (Freight Transportation Best Practices) and a daily newspaper (e.g. Dan's Transportation Newspaper) that most closely align with the mission of our company.
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