In the first post of this series, What Social Networks Should I Join to Promote My Business Website?, I gave an overview of some questions you should ask (and try to answer) to decide which social networks are best for your business. The first question, is the most important:
What goal or problem am I trying to solve?
It may help to take a look at some possible answers:
- Increase Sales
- Increase Traffic to the Website - Why? This is a common answer, but what does more traffic give you? One would hope you’re actually trying to increase sales (see #1).
- Increase Customer Satisfaction - Good. This should also lead to #1.
- Need more information on how our products/services are doing. - Also good (and should lead to #1 - see a trend?)
Businesses often lose sight of their main goal - to increase sales. Don’t become bogged down with all these new technologies and buzz words. If sales are hurting because you have a customer serice or research problem, then use social networks and your website to solve that problem.
Take a deep breath. Visualize what you’re trying to do and why. Now we have a good foundation to move forward.
Technorati Tags: social networks, social networking, internet consulting
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[...] Using Social Networks for Business - What Are Your Goals? [...]
Amen! Yes, there must be strategy. One point. Sometimes it is important to get website traffic for reasons other than sales/profit (at least in the short term) If you have a brand that rates low in the awareness category, it is important to get you brand name/image out there. The first “A” in the AIDA consumer behavior model is attention, so your customer must be made aware of your brand before the consumer can have interest, desire, and action.
Malcolm, I agree with you - for the short term, as you said. But for the long term attention still needs to lead to profit/sales. My goal in pointing this out is for people to thing long term (strategy) about what they’re trying to do with short term goals & actions (tactics). I think there is a tendency for people to get caught up in the short term without even considering the long term. Thanks for your comment!
[...] Using Social Networks for Business - What Are Your Goals? [...]