How are your social skills from The Business Marketing Company

Some of you are already using social media while others are puzzled or unaware. So how are your social skills?

If you are active, have you been listening, monitoring and communicating with your audience or just broadcasting with your ears closed?

Social media is not just Facebook. It is any web-based tool used to interact with an audience. It is easy to dismiss all social media if you only think of a couple of examples that may not appear appropriate to you or your industry.

Some examples: Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Video, Ecademy, Google + or it may be blogging, twitter, YouTube, your website, forums, wikis to name a few.

We’ve been successful in posting video on YouTube. Typically these can be videos demonstrating machinery working with the produced product, or applications and layouts with details that are best served by the video medium.

These will be helping customers and starting conversations.

The monitoring of forums can be useful in hearing your customers and prospects problems. This also gives you the opportunity to respond in a positive manner.

Social Media is another tool to communicate with your customers, suppliers and potential clients. And the benefit is that it is a two-way communication. Not just you broadcasting.

So is social media good for your B2B technical business or more particular your business? If you don’t try you will never know.

As with all marketing activities you should know what you want to achieve before you start. Ensuring goals and targets are measurable to know their effectiveness.

Tips:

– Have a search for your company mentions or products in each space.

– Use something like Google alerts or Twilert to automatically find what’s going on.

– Have a look at a number of the social media tools, not just one.

– Some are more appropriate to your situation than others.

– Consider how much time it could take up.

– See if any of your suppliers or customers are already active.

– Like many activities don’t expect immediate results.

Remember in most cases with social media you’re trying to gain authority, collaboration, communication and demonstrate your expertise.