Twit or Tweet?

With Social Media marketing taking on a life of its own in recent years, we at The Plum Consultancy ask what is relevant and what isn’t? How many people are drowning under the barrage of tweets, shares, likes, LinkedIn requests and Google+ notifications? Are they all meaningful or are tweets being re-tweeted within an inch of their lives and is anyone taking any notice or is it all going in the spam folder?!

We believe the considered approach is the only approach to have when using and dealing with Social Media for business purposes. Social Media is as much about relationship building as picking up the phone and having a meaningful discussion with someone at the other end. Would you consider picking the phone up and repeating the same conversation you had last week with the same person? They’d probably think you were bonkers, so why keep sending out the same messages? A lot of people panic and think “I haven’t got time but I must be seen to be active” so just press the ‘Retweet’ button.

Not every piece of social media is relevant to every business and as far as we’re concerned the jury’s still out on the use of Facebook as a business platform for a number of service industries when there are so many elements which are out of one’s control. Far from reaching the youth market, most youngsters we’ve spoken to only see it as a social medium for personal sharing, not an arena for business. However, we monitor with interest.

We don’t believe Social Media is just for the youth market; it is a very useful relationship building tool if used correctly and in a responsible manner. When Social Media first arrived on the scene a lot of companies jumped on the bandwagon because they thought they should, tried a few things, waited for the money to come rolling in and then when it didn’t, abandoned all efforts with plenty of website blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts languishing in ‘Never Never Land’! As we all have limited time, why not make every second count by using Social Media in a properly thought out way to build strong relationships with your target market and use it to your advantage?

Let’s not be twits about this, engage at the right levels with Social Media and build relationships!

For further information contact The Plum Team - www.theplumconsultancy.com