better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

Is Social Media Still Useful?

9 October 2017

It is amazing to think that only 10 years ago the world didn’t have the words ‘social media’ in its vocabulary. The world didn’t need to rush home from work and log on to an app (another word to be added) in order to catch up with people and find out exactly what they had had for lunch that day. The world wasn’t posting selfies (which hadn’t been invented yet) of itself smiling in front of the Eiffel Tower or the [insert iconic and frustratingly cool landmark] …in short the world was happy and life was simpler.

However, I will admit to being an early adopter of Twitter and have been happily tweeting out for almost 10 years. I ran an online virtual sherry club, with Robert Downey Jr as our barman, caused outbreaks of hilarity with my spoof series – 50 Shades of Sherry, and caught out some people with my April Fool that the Isle of Wight was being leased to the USA due to our recession.

All good fun and I’ve laughed long and hard at the other wags who were there in the early days. Twitter was a witty ticker-tape commentary on all forms of life.

Oh and I found one of my best clients via Twitter. And sold a few hundred books via Twitter. And build up a wonderful friendship group too. So, despite the playfulness, I would say that Twitter was a useful addition to business.

It still is. As is, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and so on. This blog piece was prompted by a colleague who felt that social media platforms were all so crowded that he was worried his message was being drowned out. I disagreed and said that Yellow Pages (remember when the internet was printed and updated once every six months?) was always full of people and that didn’t stop new market entrants from adding their name to the list.

Social media is maturing and so we have to mature with it. It is a route to market for our products and services and we would be wise to provide our potential customers with as many easy ways to find us as we can. I’m always amazed how many students I work with, who are looking for a job, are not listed on LinkedIn …if we want to win the race we at least need to turn up to the start line!

We don’t have to spend £1,000s on social media advertising either. The trick to success is to target the right people at the right time with a clear message and something to hook their interest. For example, I’ve found that 7am and 6pm is a great time to tweet about my books as it catches people when they are sitting down having a break from their working day.

Of course face to face networking is also important for business development, but social media can do one job very well for us – namely that it can keep our name in front of our customers and can maintain conversations with them when we are not physically with them. For me, that is the clincher and means social media remains useful and relevant, even if the timelines do appear a bit crowded some days.

This week have fun with social media and feel free to tweet me @RichardMaun …the hashtag #sherryisgreat is entirely optional!

Next week: Easy Money