Social Media: One Company’s Story
Eighteen months ago Omagh Enterprise Company decided to embrace the digital world and develop a social media strategy. The journey has been interesting and some of the lessons learned along the way are listed below.
1 Mindset Change: Businesses often see social media as a way to advertise, whereas, people using social media see it as a way to share information and engage. Learning how to share and engage online requires a change of mindset.
2 Business Objectives: It may sound obvious but before you develop a social media strategy consider your business objectives, as your social media strategy will require human and financial resource investment.
3 Update Your Website: Your website should be simple in style, clear in message, clean in presentation, fast to load and super mobile friendly. Eight seconds is the average time people spend on a site before deciding to stay or go.
4 Social Media Platforms: The main social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn should form part of your website. Each platform has its own style and you need to include the ones relevant to your business.
5 Blog: To blog or not to blog is something you have to decide and the choice is to blog regularly or not at all. Regularly means at least once a week. Your blog should capture your own style and inform and engage the reader.
6 Video: Video is a great way to gain attention and can be done simply and at low cost. The ideal approach is to develop a short format that suits the business.
7 Podcasts: Podcasts are a good idea for a series of lectures or workshops but can be demanding. To make a podcast worthwhile, it has to stand out from a content and quality perspective.
8 Quality Content: The purpose of blogs, videos and podcasts is to create rich original content. The regular creation of such content is key to developing a successful strategy.
9 Running the Business: The realisation that implementing a social media strategy must be done while running the business on a day-to-day basis is key. So, don’t take your eye off the ball.
10 Search Engines: Search engine optimisation and data analysis can help guide and inform your strategy but won’t make up for poor quality content.
SO, 18 months later it has been an interesting journey and has taught us how to survive in the digital world but the big lesson is that it takes time, effort and resource to get it right.
What do you think? What is your social media story? Get in touch, we would love to hear your views contact Nick on 028 8224 9494 or via Twitter @nick_oec.
