netbyte.com | Social Media - web site design and development, Auckland NZ
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11 January 2011
Facebook and Twitter are everywhere these days, and it seems all businesses are rushing to create Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. There are questions worth asking though before rushing headlong into another media channel. Do you have a strategy around social media? Have you got the resource onboard to be able to manage this? Can you measure the impact of spending time and money on Facebook? Do you appeal to the "Facebook Generation"? Is email marketing more relevant to your business model than social media? And I'm sure I can come up with some others before I finishing writing this article.
So here's what I think. If you are an organisation that regularly produces content and you are looking for new ways to engage with customers and potential customers, then it is probably worthwhile talking to a company like Netbyte about how you can implement a social strategy. If, like most small to medium size companies, you struggle with getting your website content together, or producing the monthly email newsletter, then think twice before making the leap. I can see a time in the not too distant future, when a lot of companies that have created a Facebook page already, will be less and less active on Facebook and will revert to more "traditional" marketing methods like email and direct mail. Remember back some years, before there was a plethora of anti-spam products and laws preventing the blatant spamming of email accounts? People became very tired of opening their inbox on a Monday morning to be greeted with hundreds of pointless emails advertising goodness knows what. The same is already starting to happen with Facebook - you like something on Facebook and before you know it, the people that you actually want to hear from or about, are lost in the endless noise of companies desparately trying to garner your attention. I can't speak for everyone, but I have begun to remove most of the noise on Facebook, so I can get back to what it was originally set up for - social media, not endless blatant marketing. That said, the people that manage to stay on my likes, are those who don't try to sell me something at every single post, but who treat me like a friend, a person, not a wallet, those who post things of interest, rather than today's special offer. This is possibly the best piece of advice I can give - treat your Facebook channel like everyone on it is your friend - this will get you more traction than trying to sell through it.
For more information about how to leverage the social media, or to just talk about how it can integrate with your website and your strategic direction, give us a call.
