No, that’s not a strap line for a new film (well, not yet at least), but the mini biog of an adviser I know who’s active on twitter and who seems to have really grasped the concept, posting a rich mix of work and life tweets, along with the odd picture of a frog looking pleased with himself!
There is no denying that social media has revolutionised the way we communicate and, as you would imagine, it always crops up in a conversation about marketing, or at least about communications and I think it’s fair to say it will pretty much divide the room each time.
So, should you embrace social media?
I don’t think this is a yes/no answer. Well, not at first anyway. Like any medium you are going to consider using, you need to ask one simply question – is it relevant? i.e. are your intended audience active on social media? If they are, then you should be, if not, then consider whether they may be influenced by social media, even if they don’t “Tweet” or “Like” or “Discuss” themselves. So, if your clients, or potential clients, are using social media, then you are going to want to get involved, but whether you are already active on social media from a personal perspective or are completely new to it, you will naturally have some reservations.
The clue’s in the title
The obvious thing to do, and the point at which most people get caught out, is to treat social media like any other form of communication and to simply replicate what you usually do, albeit you may find yourself having to condense it just a little! But this is not what social media is all about – as the name suggests. Yes you can, and indeed should, use it to relay ‘corporate’ messages, but you need to mix in the personal and social elements if you want real engagement. What social media gives you is an opportunity to interact with clients in a different way, on a more personal level.
To give you a little perspective, whilst our resident ‘tweeter’ was absent this week, I had the pleasure of guest tweeting and in the space of a day I posted photos from some events I attended (both ours and industry ones), links to articles that we had published, people reading our latest magazines and the latest selection of biscuits that the team were in the process of devouring!
People will want to know what you are doing in your chosen profession, but also what you are doing as a person – and the trick is getting a good balance.
So, social media can be valuable and it can be fun, but I do want to balance it a little by saying two things. First, you need to commit to this – it will take up your time and you need to make sure you are a regular user, but be careful it doesn’t consume you! Second is to just to say that social media is about conversation not promotion.
There are plenty of free guides and webinars to give you some basic pointers, but like most things, experience will come from the doing.
