Like me, as a small business owner you’ve most likely heard it all before. You’ve heard about the millions (and millions and millions) of people on Facebook and Twitter just lining up to buy your product, try your service or anything in between. In the early day’s it was simple. You’d create a profile on whichever network it was, and people wouldn’t really expect anything more. So you’re all good to get back working on your business. But now, with limited resources and more and more networks, how do you attract these elusive social media users? And more importantly when you do, how do you convert them into paying customers? Here at NMT, we’ve experienced exactly the same thing and the trouble is, despite how much time or money they spend, most people are simply not seeing a return on their investment. What we’ve learnt here is that peoples estimations on what they can expect from social media activity is usually far and away above what it should be. They are, in essence, being sold a pup. Sure, some companies’ success has been built entirely on Twitter and Facebook, but generally, this is not the case. Jumping on Facebook once a day to post a status update isn’t going to open the floodgates. I’m sorry, it just isn’t. And sometimes, depending on your business type, unless you are going to dedicate a suitably well trained staff member to it – full time – there’s little chance of getting significant return on your investment. So, what’s to do? Well, we’ve learnt that Social Media, like any other sales & marketing tool needs to be tailored to your own specific needs. It sounds silly, but well over 50% of SME’s still don’t have a dedicated social strategy and simply whirr away, day in, day out. Or even worse, after creating a profile they leave it unkempt – which is a PR disaster waiting to happen. And, you may be happy to know that after we got help from an expert, went through the learning process and sorted our own social media strategy out – we’ve created a set of dedicated services, all designed to help people in the same boat. So, if you’re unsure of where your business is going in this direction – maybe it’s getting on top of you, maybe it’s just not giving any return at all – then, please give us a call or (ahem) a tweet maybe to @needmoretimeltd Because at the end of the day, just like telephone answering and other distracting administration, wasting time on Social Media is one more thing taking your time away from business. Until next time! M.
- Michael Bolt