People fall into two camps. Those who ‘get’ social media and those that don’t. Companies fall into two camps too; those that should use social media and those for which it is probably a waste of time.

If you sell directly to consumers, e.g. a person buys your product or service for themselves personally, then you should definitely be on social media.

For personal trainers, shops, consumer brands, florists, restaurants, car garages, etc., having ongoing access to your end customer is a very valuable marketing tool. Posting photos of events, videos of people using your product or service, and making people aware of special offers will generate repeat business and digital word-of mouth.

If you sell a product or service directly to other companies, however, then social media should be way down your marketing to-do list.  There are always exceptions, of course.  If you are a young, vibrant company whose customers are tweeting and posting status updates all day long themselves, then you can use Facebook and Twitter to improve your relationship with these customers.  You can post behind-the-scenes photographs of your staff, use the company Facebook page to share links to blog articles or get involved in Twitter conversations with other local businesses.  However, only if you are confident you are doing everything else right first (your website, branding, email marketing, Google Pay Per Click advertising, etc.) should you even consider social media as a B-2-B business.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, should not be regarded as just social media. LinkedIn is a professional online networking tool that you can use to develop business relationships with other professionals and build your personal brand.  All of your key customer-facing colleagues should have active LinkedIn accounts and be encouraged to network on the platform.

OK, you’ve decided that your company does want to be on social media – for whatever your reason – so let’s take a look at the main platforms.

LinkedIn – for professional networking

LinkedIn has carved out a separate identity for itself away from ‘social’ media. Although based on a similar model as other social media sites, LinkedIn is your online business network and address book where you can build a professional profile page and get involved with business discussions and online networking groups.  All professionals should have a LinkedIn profile, and whenever you make a new contact in the real world you should look to link with them in this digital one too.

Being part of LinkedIn brings a number of benefits, the first being professional validation.  On LinkedIn, your contacts can ‘endorse’ you for particular skills. This is very useful if, for example, you are pitching at someone for IT training and when that person looks you up on LinkedIn they see that 60 other business professionals have endorsed you for your IT training skills.

Recently, LinkedIn also added the ability to post articles through its Pulse publishing platform, meaning that anyone visiting your profile can see what articles you have written as well as alerting your contacts when you publish a new one.  This can build massive credibility.  It only takes a few months of your contacts seeing you publishing articles, blogs and even videos for them to start thinking of your as an authority in your area of expertise – even if only a few of them actually click through and read the article in full.

Finally, LinkedIn groups can provide as many opportunities as real-world networking groups – and you can drop into them and get involved with discussions whenever you have a few minutes to spare. You will be amazed how many people turn to LinkedIn groups to ask for recommendations for exactly the product or service you offer, and how little time it takes to keep up with the conversations. Find groups that have been set up in your target geographical area and contain members that are from your target market.  It can be far easier to prove your credibility with a new contact on LinkedIn than it is meeting someone face-to-face for the first time, because all someone has to do is click your profile picture to see your expertise, endorsements, experience and articles on your profile page.

Facebook – for socialising and sharing

Facebook is the world’s largest social network with around 60% of UK adults using Facebook (Ipsos MORI Tech tracker). It’s where we go to socialise and keep in touch with our families and friends, and a large percentage of your customers will be on Facebook. From a business point of view, Facebook excels in the business-to-consumer markets. People will follow brands, personalities and local businesses on Facebook as much as they will friends and family.

However, you have to take into account what people are on Facebook for – to socialise and share with people they know personally.  This means that business and sales messages can often be an unwelcome intrusion.  Facebook has a very comprehensive algorithm that dictates who sees what you post based on how interesting it judges both the post and your company’s page in general to be.  If you just push out sales messages that no-one interacts with, less and less people will see what your business posts over time.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook lets you overcome this by offering a number of paid promotion options. A range of tools allows you to target advertising at very specific demographics, often for relatively low budgets, and if you have a consumer business then you may consider dedicating a proportion of your marketing resources to building up your Facebook following. Usually, the less corporate you are on Facebook, the more people will like and engage with you. It’s supposed to be a place to socialise, and pictures of your staff doing funny things, behind-the-scenes videos and anything personality-based will be well-received.

Twitter – for live events and topics

Where Facebook has 1.65 billion active users globally,Twitter has around 320 million (Statista). Twitter and Facebook are often seen as rival platforms but in reality they are very different.

Facebook is your digital home, a place to keep photographs and browse each other’s lives. Twitter is best described as an ongoing and very public conversation that happens in real-time – whether you are there or not.  That is why the hashtag system is so important, where users add a hash symbol to the beginning of a word or phrase (for example #digitalmarketing) to tie the tweet to a specific subject, event or campaign.  People can then easily see all other messages containing the same hashtag – so if you are at a live event, searching the event’s hashtag will show you what everyone else is tweeting about it, whether you are connected to them or not.

As with Facebook, business-to-consumer companies fare best on Twitter. However, you also have an opportunity to benefit if you are considered a personality in your industry. If you have someone in your business who is a regular speaker or a recognised industry expert then they will likely attract followers on Twitter who want to learn from them better than any company Twitter account would.

People use Twitter to connect directly with people over brands, and if you want to use it for your business you need to be ready and willing to engage in those direct and very public conversations.

The others…

Google+ has the potential to be a far more useful platform than Facebook and Twitter from a marketing point of view because of one simple fact: it has been integrated with Google’s search engine.

This means that articles and blog posts appear a lot faster on Google searches if you have posted them on Google+, and you can even link your blog to your Google+ account meaning that your thumbnail photograph will appear in the search results.  However, the active take-up of Google+ is still low and it remains an afterthought for most businesses and consumers.

Photo sharing sites such as Pinterest and Instagram do not dominate the market as nearly as much as Facebook, but their global use is on a par with Twitter and they are the fastest growing sector of social media (Pew Research Centre).  However, it’s important to note that the main user demographics of these sites are younger audiences.  The highest use of Instagram in the UK, for example, is 15-25 females (Ipsos MORI Tech tracker) so unless you are specifically selling to those customers (even if your business lends itself to being image-led) your time would be better spent on Facebook or Linkedin.

So where do you start?

I’ll repeat what I said at the beginning of this article: if you are a business-to-consumer company or organisation then social media may be one of your best marketing and word-of-mouth tools, but you need to make it part of a wider strategy that ties into your business goals and offline activity – you will get little success if you go about it in a piecemeal way.

If you are a business-to-business company then social media should be what you do after you have done everything else, if at all.  There’s no point in trying to drive social traffic to your website if your website is going to put people off, and it makes little sense throwing your resources at a limited audience on social media if you have a neglected mailing list of thousands that you could be engaging directly with email marketing.

More about Stewart Leahy

Stewart Leahy is a sales and marketing guru, having worked his way up from the ground floor in the sales and marketing industry he is now the go-to man if you want to generate more sales enquiries for your company.

Stewart is a regular presenter on sales, marketing and business growth for a number of organisations including the Chamber of Commerce, national trade bodies, blue chip organisations and is an appointed business mentor for the Government’s New Enterprise Allowance (NEA) scheme.

Stewart’s presentation style of “telling it like it is” makes for both an entertaining and valuable lesson in marketing – if you would like Stewart to talk at your event or business group call us on 01484 841 088.