Is social media relevant to my business?

It’s still a question many businesses are asking.  So how do you decide?

Why in late 2010 did Coca Cola reallocate their marketing budget in favour of social media marketing methods? Is it that they consider most of their customers spend their lives sitting in front of a computer obsessively checking their Facebook account for the latest news on what’s hot and what’s not, while knocking back the Coca-Cola to keep them refreshed and awake!  Or, perhaps their customers are more the brigade who walk around with a mobile phone fused to their ear, or the hand they continually Tweet with?

If the descriptions above strike a chord with your perception of  users of Facebook and Twitter users and you’re not convinced of the relevance of social media to your business, then please read on.

Coca Cola customers are of course legion and not confined to Facebook and Twitter users. Although it’s very unlikely traditional marketing methods will be ditched any time soon, what Coca Cola have recognised are the huge gains to be made through developing a social media strategy that’s ‘right’ for their product.

It seems there’s a business trend developing where less budget is allocated to expensive ‘splash’ campaigns and traditional print-based media, but more invested in engaging with audiences using social media platforms. The aim of harnessing social media is  long-term engagement with users resulting in development of advocacy.

Coca Cola are embracing the potential of an arena where word of mouth, replaced by power of the Tweet or Facebook sharing can spread a message very cost-effectively.

So, that may be OK for Coca-Cola, I hear you say, but my business is Accountancy which doesn’t seem to lend itself to promotion via Twitter and Facebook?  I’m not going to give an answer to that one, because there actually isn’t a straight one, it depends not just on your business, but your attitude!  Here’s a few social media channels available for you to harness for communicating with your customers.

The power of social media marketing lies in the interaction.  So, I’m inviting you, dear reader, to leave a comment with your view on the subject. For those of you who don’t understand much about blogs, asking for comments is not laying you wide open to finding you’ve got negative comments posted on your site.  You have the power to decide which comments will be shown to the world and which consigned to the bin!  It’s not censorship, just a sensible and sound way to protect not only the owner of the blog, but also the wider public from sad individuals who obviously need to find something better to do than post unhelpful or nasty comments.

So, give it a go, leave your viewpoint on whether you think Twitter and Facebook would be a useful tool for an Accountant? Or share a viewpoint on the relevancy of social media to your particular business.