While you may be concerned about Facebook stealing your data and stalking you, it is an important business tool that cannot be ignored at this point in time. There are varying statistics regarding how much time an average American spends on social media, but estimates look to be right around 2 hours per day.

Again this is an average, so before you go shouting, “I don’t use the Facebook!” bear with me.

As attention shifts from traditional media outlets to more online based publications and entertainment, businesses must be swift to adapt. I repeat, this is not an option.

Social media (and the internet in general) provides extreme exposure, education, and product promotional opportunities that were previously unavailable without an absurd advertising budget. The result is more opportunity, but even now as the internet has become a widely accepted pillar of everyday life, far too many businesses are neglecting to utilize this powerful tool.

It is no one’s fault. Since the dawn of the modern industrial era, business, sales, and marketing have been conducted in a mostly similar manner. Develop a product, pay salespeople to push said product, invest some capital into traditional marketing routes (i.e. print ads, radio spots, TV commercials, billboards, etc.), and then continue the cycle.

Only within the past 10 or so years has the internet become a viable marketing place for anyone who is not either a computer nerd or someone with enough money to hire a team of computer nerds to build a complex online presence. Social media is the most personalized branding and marketing tool available to reach a large number of people with very little (if any) upfront investment.

The problem that most businesses run into is not knowing where to start, why to start, or what to say. This is again, no one’s fault. The answer to these questions may be far more simple than we are lead to believe.

Authenticity

Social media allows businesses to attach a personality to an otherwise ordinary business. This is across the board, regardless if you sell cookies or excavators or jump ropes.

This unique opportunity not only humanizes your product or service offering but also breaks the barrier that has forever been attached to companies. Companies are made up of people. With an authentic social media presence, it destroys this age-old barrier of producer and consumer. The playing field is leveled, and the customer now has a deeper connection to a company (however fleeting it may be) because they have been humanized.

Taking an authentic, human approach to your business’s social media accounts psychologically assures potential customers that you and your company are people, just like them. People like people.

Well, most of the time.

Establishing A Voice (Branding 101)

The voice of your company is essentially the personality you choose to assign to it via social media. Do you want your company to be seen as sarcastic and funny (in tone) or serious and to-the-point? An excellent example of a sarcastic social media voice is the recent Twitter feeds of Burger King and Wendy’s.

It is equally as important to try to maintain the same voice for your business throughout the social media lifetime because it allows customers to connect to the person that is your business’s social media presence.

Once a consistent voice is established, use it to communicate!

The Message

Social media provides an outlet to communicate any news, sales, and company updates to your existing customers and prospects with the click of a button. Once you have established a personality for your business’s social media presence, you must decide on a message or messages that you would like to deliver over the course of time.

Will your messages make customers aware of lesser known features of your product or service? Will you use the platform to express thoughts and opinions on industry news?

A quick brainstorming session with your team will uncover countless possibilities of what you could express through your company’s social media outlet.

While it is indirect, this is precisely the form of marketing that many are missing out on.

Brand awareness and personality are crucial to thriving in the digital era.

 What Now?

Take time to learn one social media platform well. Start out small, and understand that it will take time to truly build out a web presence. However, once built out (just like a business) it will become an evergreen form of communication with customers, prospects, and everyone in between.

Oh, and it’s free, which is pretty cool considering I just paid three dollars for a cup of coffee.