Social media – too much choice? Go back to basics

The thing with PR and marketing is that it’s never-ending – you can always do more. On the one hand that’s one of the great things about communications; the possibilities truly are endless, on the other hand, there are day’s when you feel you’ve missed a trick.

Social media is making the job of communicating easier and harder at the same time. Its ability to engage, excite and stimulate discussion is incredibly valuable – but there’s so much choice that for many companies it’s hard to know where to begin. Kind of like being overwhelmed at the supermarket – you’re pretty sure you know what you want, but then you’re met with such an array of choice at the shelf you suddenly lose sight of what it is you’re really after.

You’d be nuts not to think about how social media channels could work for your business, but make sure you keep sight of your objective. Who are you trying to speak to? What do you want to tell them? What can they tell you? And importantly, what do you need the result to be? Stack your social media options up against your objectives and find the best fit. You cannot possibly use every one, there simply isn’t enough time in the day – though Ping.fm helps!

And it might sound obvious, but treat social media with the respect it deserves. These are immensely powerful tools in terms of their reach, influence and shelf-life, so be careful what messages you put out there. If you’re using social media under the company name, apply the same rules you would as if sending an email to a prospect or releasing a statement to national media. The tone of voice will of course be different, but the content should be managed just as carefully.

Finally, make the most of the host of free online tools that make running a social media campaign more manageable – I’ve included a few links below.

mashable for business – for everything you ever wanted to know about social media and the opportunity to learn from other companies

ping.fm– one post here and you can update all your social media sites at once

twitterfeed.com – feed your company blog to Twitter or use RSS feeds to broadcast relevant industry news

tweetbots.com – allows multiple users to Tweet to the same account, plus you can set it up to auto-follow people that follow you

twilert.com– receive alerts each time your company/product/service is mentioned on Twitter

howsociable.com – see how visible your brand is across a range of social media sites

socialmention.com – similar to Google Alerts, you can set up an alert to track your brand/competitor mentions on social media sites

trendpedia.com – track and compare volume of discussion around multiple topics

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