Five ways for businesses to leverage social media

Time was when all a company had to do if it wished to tap onto the power of the Internet was to create a nice website. That was during the era of Web 1.0.

In the era of Web 2.0, having a website is a given. And it’s not enough. To really make a difference online, you have to leverage on social media.

Social media is basically online services that allow people to interact with each other. Its roots are, as its name suggests, social in nature. But it can be used for companies to communicate with its potential customers.

There are many types of social media services out there but the ones that you really need to concern yourself with are: Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

Blogger
There are many blogging platforms but the easiest one to use is still Blogger.com. Setting up a blog is easy enough. The challenging is in filling it up with the right type of content and posting them regularly.

One approach is to have a dedicated company blogger – quite possibly the CEO. Another approach is to have a small team of bloggers who alternate. Topics should include anything that relates to the industry your company belongs to (to establish expertise and thus a following), new products or services and events that are relevant to the sector.

Encourage consumer feedback and interact with readers. After all, that is what social media is for.

Twitter
Twitter is micro-blogging service that is super easy to use. But as with blogging, it’s easy to set up but hard to keep up. When you have a Twitter account, people expect you to update your page several times a day.

It should be used differently from your blog. Twitter updates are short – about the size of an SMS – so you should use it to update your readers about smaller, perhaps more trivial or should I say, more fun, topics.

For Twitter to work, you need followers. And the best way to get started on that is to follow some Twitterers. When you follow others, they notice you. More often than not, they will follow you in return. And if they find your postings interesting, they will tell others about you. That’s how you build up a following.

Facebook
Facebook started out as a social networking tool for college students but it’s now grown to become the biggest force in social media. And the folks behind Facebook have decided to make it more accessible for companies to use it to promote themselves.

Create a Facebook fan page, which is different from a typical Facebook homepage). Then load it up with notes, pictures and videos relating to your company. Promote your fan page through your blog and through Twitter. And when fans start adding you, make sure you interact with them. Such interactions will appear on their homepages and their network of friends will notice your fan page. Some of them might even become new fans.

Flickr
Just as there are many different blogging platforms out there, there are probably as many online photo album services. Many of them also have social media elements to them but the granddaddy of them all is Flickr, which was probably the first one to embed that social aspect into its offerings.

Through Flickr, you can showcase your products or any pictures relating to your industry. People can share the photos with others and they can comment on them. They can even download them, if you permit.

YouTube
If your company is big enough to have its own corporate video, upload it on YouTube for others to discover. But if you don’t have a professional corporate video, you can still gain exposure through YouTube by creating informal yet informative video clips with just a simple camcorder.

Remember to tag your clips so that it’s easy for others to find. Tagging is a big part of the social media scene. Fans of your clips can comment on them and even post video responses. There is no better form of viral marketing than to get fans actually interacting with you in a multimedia way. They will tell others who might also participate and tell even more people.

Social media is now an important part of a person’s digital lifestyle. Any marketer who neglects to look at social media would be missing out on an important means to reach new customers. Embracing social media is a must in this day and age.