I had a meeting with a client today who wants to raise his profile online.
So far we’ve worked on his LinkedIn profile, set up a LinkedIn Company page and re-written the content on his website and got him blogging. It’s all looking really good.
So where to next. Well, as his target market is business, I’m of the opinion that Facebook won’t work for him. Ok, so some social media people are going to disagree with me here, but I think Facebook only works if your customers are the general public. Furthermore, there’s only a limited number of platforms you can reasonably cover well, so as far as I’m concerned, his next step must be to get more interaction on Twitter.
As soon as I’d uttered the words, I could see his face twist……. And that was quickly followed by the usual complaints of not understanding the point of it all and, moreover, not knowing what to say.
For now, I’m not going to even get started on what the point is, as that’s a whole different blog in itself, but as to what to say? Surely that shouldn’t be that hard…….
You see, the answers in the title…. It’s SOCIAL media and surely we all know how to be that? Don’t we all know how to have a conversation, to chat to other people we meet, to impart (sometimes entirely useless) pieces of information? Of course we do!
Twitter isn’t really that hard. OK, if you’re a complete newbie, it’s always a good idea to get some proper training from a specialist (God help me, don’t go to a “Guru” though, they’re usually anything but! ) who can help identify your target market and how to best get your message across. But the rest is simple. Really, it is!
Start a discussion, post a link to someone else’s discussion you like, post a picture you laughed at, share an experience, pass on a valuable message. Treat ti just like a massive noisy room full of people who have all sorts of things to talk about and just get stuck in.
At this point, I have to make a confession. When I first set up Athena, I didn’t really see the point of Twitter either. Then I realised it was only because I didn’t understand it. Now almost four years later, I couldn’t run my business without the little blue bird. I’ve “met” some great people, found out an awful lot of stuff that’s helped both me and my clients and actually made money from “Tweeps” who’ve become clients. More than anything though, I love the lighter side of it, the chatter and the sharing of ideas, the way a tweet can inspire and make me laugh on days when it’s not going so well.
So I say to my client, get out there onto Twitter and just be social; surely that’s what it’s all about. It’s right there in the title after all……..