When you think about social media, do you envision Millennials or hipsters wasting time on Facebook? Is it hard for you to imagine that social media provides any real value to your pallet business at all?
Caution and skepticism are not bad things when it comes to social media. Small business owners are well advised to not waste too much time and money on social media chasing “likes” and “shares” or other metrics in a media that can change at any moment. If you are a larger pallet business, you really do need a logical plan or program for social media and you probably have the budget to allocate a modest amount of resources to make sure you have your bases covered on social media.
Once you decide to take a balanced and sensible view toward social media, you can go about crafting a social media strategy that is a good fit for your pallet business. Here are some simple guidelines to consider for your social media plan.
• Audit your current social media presence. Review everything that has been created over the years to see what you have and whether it is accurate. For example, do you have a LinkedIn business page from several years ago with the wrong address or phone number? And make sure you have all of the access credentials – user names and passwords – under your control for any social media account associated with your business.
• Develop a profile of your ideal customer (the actual decision maker) and determine what kind of social media that person is most likely to use. For example, if your decision makers are mostly middle-aged or older, it may not make sense for you to put a lot of energy into Instagram or even to have a company Instagram account at all since about 80% of Instagram users are under 30.
• Make some logical decisions about what your goal or mission will be for your social media presence. It could be as simple as you want, to make it easier for customers and prospects to stay informed about what is happening at your company. Another goal could be building an opt-in list for email marketing.
• Invest in the right tool or service to make sure you will be consistent. Everyone has seen the company with the Facebook page that has a smattering of posts from three years ago and then nothing. Social media has been around long enough for there to be plenty of options available to hire a service provider or to purchase the right tool to help your business have a consistent social media presence, while also keeping it from taking up too much of your time.
• Track or analyze what is happening with your social media program and make changes to improve results. One of the reasons you want to have a good tool or service to manage social media is to make it easier to see whether it’s achieving your goals. Are you being consistent and keeping your audience informed? Has your email marketing list been growing because you have increased engagement? If something is not working, what can be done to improve results?
Another thing to remember is that you shouldn’t use your social media program to just talk about your business. You need to talk about topics and issues of general interest to your customers. This is a great time of year to start gearing up your social media presence for the new year.
