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I have recently been given the responsibility of handling the company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. I know how to use both from personal use but am unsure as to where to start with regard to a corporate presence. Any ideas? Quick wins?
Asked On: 11 May 2010
Answer
If you are already involved with Twitter, Facebook or any other social media account, you are already in a great position!
The best place to start with any Social Media campaign is to sit down with the marketing manager (or whoever is in charge of your online PR) and devise a strategy. From here, you will need to:
- Decide the targets. Do you want to gain more Twitter followers? Do you want to reduce call centre resource? Do you want to improve the general brand perception? Do you want to drive more users to your website and so on.
- Research where your audience is. Are they more active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, forums etc.? Or a mixture of those previously mentioned?
- Decide the tonality you will use online. Will this be formal or informal?
- Depending on the above, decide the content you will post on your social media account. Will they include be links to interesting news / company press release / company blog posts etc? Will you post informal and fun updates of goings on in the office? Will you interact with your customers directly?
Some quick wins would be to:
- research the thought leaders in your industry, see what type of conversations they reply to (questions, compliments, ideas etc.) and spark a conversion with that in mind.
- turn your company newsletter into a blog post allowing you to "tweet" the message on Twitter and link back to the post.
- If you already have a company blog, make sure you link back to the posts so your community is aware of it. Pushing out interesting content that adds value and insight are great ways to gain followings and increase brand presence.
- Try, test and test again. See what online actions increase your community following or online interactions. Do more of what works but make sure you still add to the mix to make sure your content does not become stale.