Social media has quickly become commercially viable over the past year and a half as companies large and small have recognized its value. While today you’d be hard pressed to find a major company not involved in social media, occasionally one does pop up.
I happened upon one a few weeks ago. My first reaction was surprise, and perhaps a little disbelief. I thought, perhaps I’ve missed their official profile. So I did more digging and realized that I had not: Profiles for them exist on Facebook, some with more than 100k followers, but none of them are “official.”
For companies like this, all is not lost. While they do have hundreds of thousands of customers talking about their brand in the social space every day, often without an official voice to be found, that does not mean that the company should sit back and observe. They should seize the opportunity that is before them.
In some ways a big brand waiting to formally enter the social media fray can be a good thing. There is already a large number of customers using these platforms, so the biggest challenge right away becomes directing them to the official channel.
When a company is entering the social media space later than they perhaps should have, here are 3 things to consider when developing a strategy
- What platform should you use? Facebook, Twitter and Youtube/Vimeo are not the same. Each serves a different purpose. Brainstorm what function you want each platform to serve before delving into specifics of a strategy.
- How are your customers already interacting with your company in social media? Do a search of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to determine who is saying what, how often it’s being said, and how an official company voice could benefit the conversation, the company and the customer.
- What should your content strategy be? Should you be writing blog posts? Or should your social sites link back to in-store deals/offers? When using Facebook, do you want people to interact, or do you just want to push content? All of these questions and more should be answered when developing a strategy.
Getting into social media late has advantages and drawbacks for a large company. But the important thing is that the company eventually does get involved and become part of the conversations that its customers are already having about their brand.
Photo credit: Stephen Mackenzie/Flickr
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