Another Piece of the Puzzle – Social Media
Sharon Koehler
Stone Industry Consultant
Facebook, Pintrest, Instagram, Twitter, lions and tigers and bears, OH MY! The fact is that the internet changes daily, hourly and basically every nano second.
It’s hard to keep up with. Sometimes I get dizzy watching it go by. And sometimes, something that I did last week isn’t relevant this week. It can be frustrating. But, it can be a great tool in your arsenal if you take the time to figure it out.
A couple of things to keep in mind from the start:
#1 – You can’t be everywhere – You may think you are. You may even pat yourself on the back because:
- You think you left no stone unturned but trust me, there is always an app or website that you have no idea even exists. It’s OK, you aren’t alone.
#2 – You are going to make a mistake – It’s the nature of the beast. And, it may not even be your fault.
- When you make a post or a comment, you may know what you mean but other people may interpret what you say in a totally different way. You’re in good company. Us Air, Pepsico, the NYPD, The Gap and many others have had huge issues with their social media. And, these are entities that pay whole teams of people big bucks to handle their social media presence.
My advice would be to start with the basic Big 3. Start with one and then move on from there.
I “Friend” you. You “Like” a post. I “Share” a post. You play a game. I keep up with my family. You send a message. I create an event, etc., etc. That’s great but those are our personal pages. Business pages have a different purpose and different guidelines.
A Facebook business page is created to help promote your business to the general public. There are a lot of things you can do with a Facebook Business page. The first thing you need to do is get “likes”. Ask your friends and family to like your page. Use your business page to “like” other businesses you do business with. They should “like” you in return. The more “likes” you have, the more your posts are spread around.
You can post photos and videos. You can make people aware of events you are hosting or involved in. You can boost posts and create ads on Facebook as well. You can ask questions and engage customers and potential customers.
You can have a “Facebook” special. Ask your customers to like you on Facebook. You can create a “Call to Action” that will drive customers to your website or mobile site. Facebook ads can be demographically targeted and ad budgets can be set by you and they are incredibly flexible and very reasonably priced as well.
There are some guidelines to help increase your exposure and maximize your efforts. Pictures are better than plain text. Text is better than video and videos are better than links. In a nutshell – post pictures with descriptive text. Posts should be made 3-5 times a week and always around the same time. The best time to post is Friday through Monday between 6 and 8pm.
Now you’re sitting there thinking “We are closed on the weekend and no one is here at 7 at night.” That’s OK. Facebook has a great feature that lets you schedule posts. You can sit down at a day and time convenient for you and schedule posts to appear at later times, days, and weeks in advance.
You don’t only have to post just job photos. Take a picture of a new staff member and introduce them to your Facebook family. Share special events, holiday hours and closings or mark a company milestone or awards.
Twitter is another big social media forum. Facebook is global but most of the people that will “like” you are your customers and therefore local to you. Twitter is global as well but it is a lot more public. The whole idea behind Twitter is to share information and ideas. This concept makes it a much more public forum. You can send private messages to people but all your posts are available for public view. People or businesses that don’t have Twitter accounts can read posts but they cannot respond to posts.
Posts on Twitter are called “tweets” for personal accounts as well as business accounts and they are limited to 140 characters or symbols, so they have to be short. On Facebook you want “likes” but on Twitter you want to have “followers”. The more people or businesses that follow you, the better your tweets get around.
Here again, “follow” people and businesses that do business with you and start building your “followers” platform. Because Twitter is so much more open and spontaneous than Facebook it doesn’t have the guidelines to maximize your exposure like Facebook does but you can do something really simple to limit your repetitive posting time between Facebook and Twitter. You can link the two accounts together. That way, every time you make a Facebook post it shows up as a tweet on your Twitter page. 2 for 1 – how easy can it be?
One thing that will not carry over from Facebook is ads. If you create a business ad on Facebook and you want to advertise on Twitter as well, you do have to start from scratch. But Twitter is easy to advertise on. You can set your demographic or the area you wish to advertise in, then set your budget and away you go.
Pintrest
Pintrest is the new kid on the block. Launched less than 5 years ago, it has now been named the 3rd largest social networking platform outranked only by Facebook and Twitter. But, Pintrest is based on a different format. Pintrest is a truly visible format. Users find photos that they like for whatever reason and upload them to their “boards.” These images are called “pins.”
If another user sees a pin that they like, they can repin it from your board to theirs. And so it spreads from person to person and board to board. It’s all about inspiration. As with Facebook and Twitter, you want to follow your customers and vendors.
Boards can be used for different things and you can have more than 1 board. If Mrs. Consumer wants to remodel her kitchen, she will create a board strictly for that project and start pinning images to it that she likes or she thinks will look good in her new kitchen. At the same time, her sister is expecting a baby and Mrs. Consumer starts a nursery board to help her sister plan the room for the new baby.
Here again, Pintrest is very public and your photos will more than likely end up on someone’s board that is across the country, or the world for that matter, but it’s another way to get your company out there and garner some more SEO attention.
Pintrest has recently made some changes that make them a little more “retail” friendly. Retailers use Pinterest for advertising and style trends. Pintrest now allows businesses to create their own pages or virtual storefronts.
Nordstrom and the Gap use Pintrest on a regular basis. The Gap creates its own boards of style trends in an effort to get their product out in front of consumers. In 2013, Pinterest introduced a new tool called ‘Rich Pins’, to enhance the customer experience when browsing through pins made by companies. Business pages can include various data, topics and information such as prices of products, ratings of movies or ingredients for recipes.
Even if you are not a nationwide chain store, your photos will get out in front of the public and seen by a greater number of consumers. Not to mention, it’s another category that will pull your name up in a Google search when potential customers in your area start searching for companies to do the jobs they want.
After the big 3 you can look into Snapchat, Instagram, Vine, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, Google+ and all the others out there. The two to watch right now are Instagram and Google+. These two are gaining market share by the day.
Google+ was launched by Google back in 2011 and was supposed to give Facebook a run for its money. It has gotten off to a slow start but over the last year it has picked up momentum and users. Once people get used to it, it will be a social networking force.
Instagram is strictly a mobile app for phones. Both Android and Apple users can download the app. It is a photo and short video sharing program. The videos cannot be longer than 15 seconds and the photos come out in a square format that can have descriptions and comments added to them before they are shared with a group of people. Imagine photos of your jobs going from person to person to person in the blink of an eye.
Now, before you start thinking that you will be spending all your time in front of a computer pinning, posting, sharing and tweeting, there is a shortcut. There are sites out there called Social Media Management services. These programs allow you to post to all your social media sites on your schedule.
Hootesuite and Sprout are the two most well-known. Hootesuite will allow you to post on up to 35 different social media sites. Yes, 35. Sprout does not integrate with that many but may be a great place to start getting your feet wet.
However you want to do it, in these times and in this day and age, social media is important. Don’t overlook it.
Sharon Koehler is a 10-year veteran of the stone industry. Currently she is the head of marketing for Artistic Stone Design in Richmond, Virginia and has been a regular contributor to various trade magazines for several years. Any thoughts or comments may be sent to sharon@artisticstonerichmond.com .