How To Decide If Social Media Is Right For You

Companies of all sizes are jumping onto the social media bandwagon.  Their building Facebook pages and creating Twitter accounts.  You think the time is right for your business to take the plunge.

Is it the right thing to do?  Is social media right for your business model?

There are three basic questions we ask before we determine whether social media is right for your organization:

• Is your target market using it?
• Are people talking about your business online?
• Is it possible to have someone in your organization run your campaigns?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, then social media isn’t a good fit.  It’s probably better to run pay per click campaigns or do intensive search engine optimization on your website.

If the answer to all three questions is yes, you are uniquely positioned to run social media campaigns to further your brand and your client interactions.

The point of social media is to target areas that your customers are already going.  If it’s Facebook and Twitter (currently the big two networks), you’re best bet is to jump in.  If you operate a business to business sort of service, LinkedIn is a good place to start.

The bottom line is your goal should be to develop and build relationships using social media.  It isn’t a magic bullet.  It simply provides a means to getting in front of your target audience.

As I’ve said before – the people you want to be in front of aren’t reading the newspaper.  It’s your job to get back in front of them…