Social Beyond Sales
When thinking about adopting or expanding a social media presence, a lot of businesses get discouraged because they can’t see how social media activity can improve sales or generate more enquiries.
What they should remember is that social media wasn’t ‘invented’ as a means of improving communications. Nor was it developed by marketing professionals to sell products or services. In fact, almost the opposite is the case… The concept of social networking was born from a need by consumers to respond to advertising and marketing messages and to connect with each other to talk about brands.
Technology had become available that allowed people to engage socially on a level never before imaginable, and this changed the game forever – marketing at all levels truly became a two way conversation.
This certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t promote your business through social media channels, but a different approach is required. As Danielle Rodabaugh writes in her recent post about social media for business owners in ‘boring industries’ “Use discretion when promoting your business online; people set up social media accounts to engage with one another — not to consume endless promotional content.” It isn’t all about message content – it’s about context, engagement, and recognising that your community is bigger than your brand.
And the truth is, even with creative thinking and an in-depth understanding of these channels, sometimes it won’t be effective or efficient for a business to use social media to drive sales. But that doesn’t mean they should abandon the concept altogether…
Many companies have successfully adopted these channels to achieve other business goals, such as customer services, market research, supply chain management and product development.
For instance, TEVA Pharmaceuticals has enhanced communication between internal function groups using social applications, resulting in a 40% reduction in the manufacturing cycle time in the first four months. And in terms of customer service, check out this post about Sprout Social that illustrates how their proactive outreach programme enabled them to turn around negative PR from service issues and provide customer service unachievable through any other medium.
The word ‘social’ can be misleading and even intimidating to many business owners, and to adopt it successfully into an existing business model requires a bit of pioneering and original thought.
How do you use social media for your business? If you haven’t looked beyond sales, are you missing some great opportunities?
