Misconceptions exist about what social media actually is and how it can be used by the protection industry as a sales and marketing channel. Christopher Tuite explains
It is also crucial that at the outset you have a clear sense of what your objectives are for your campaign and how you want this to benefit your business. Once this is clear, you need to thoroughly review your current PR and marketing output as well as your website. At the same time, you must harvest what you can for social media purposes.
Cross-fertilisation across all these outlets is not only the most efficient way of managing what can often be finite resources. It also creates a joined-up and consistent approach that is "on message".
Clearly, identifying audiences will also go a long way to defining how successful you are in your efforts. Customers, analysts, industry commentators, journalists and staff are all good targets. Effort should also be made to identify the internal subject matter experts that will be responsible for providing content and also outline the sign-off procedure for posting content.
It is vital that compliance procedures are followed in much the same way they are for other marketing or PR materials. Although a more laid-back and conversational approach is desirable to make a social media campaign work, this must also be conducted in a responsible way to avoid any legal or reputational pitfalls.
Once these internal questions have been addressed, you will then need to identify which tactical channels you will use to implement your campaign. Blogs, microblogging (Twitter), social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook) and YouTube channels are all free to join and have potentially huge market penetration. Finally, you should try and ensure you update your channels on a regular basis with focused, quality and relevant content, helping to establish your brand as a responsive and interactive authority in its field.
As well as being informative, your output also needs to be regarded as authentic and transparent. Trying to be something you're not will immediately come across as fake and will damage credibility. For example, you would not expect HMRC to start using colloquialisms in its Twitter posts. Your output should try and reflect the culture of your organisation where it can.
Tracking conversations is also crucial to make sure you can respond quickly to any comments, positive or negative. A quick response can nip any negative sentiments in the bud while also reflecting well on your organisation's customer service in a public forum.
An open window
As with any marketing spend, management will be looking for tangible ways to measure the success of social media campaigns. Fortunately, there are a number of reliable metrics that exist to measure success or failure.
Some are basic and easy to track. These include website visits, web page views, average visitor times on your site, inbound links to your website, blog visits, Facebook followers, Twitter followers and clicks on Tweets.
All of these are simple and easily measured. However, social media monitoring tools are also available that allow you to look at more complex trends across industry subjects, to track competitor activity and track trends across the entire social media in question. They are useful when it comes to charting your success.
Above all, if co-ordinated and focused correctly, social media should result in greater interaction with customers, enhanced reputation and - most importantly - increased revenues.
Social media is not just about salacious celebrity gossip or videos of household pets doing wacky things. It should be taken very seriously. A conversation is happening about you somewhere online whether you want it to or not. Social media gives you a chance to shape this impression of your business directly.
It should be used as a way to build personal relationships with your key audiences. It should also be integrated fully into your existing communications activity.
But crucially, social media is a way to drive customers to your 21st century shop window. By not engaging, you may well be missing out on a golden opportunity to grow your business.
Christopher Tuite is head of financial services at corporate PR firm Rostrum Communications
