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This is a good question and one that I have been asked at every meeting I have with a business. You are not
alone in asking. As business owners, we are concerned with the return of investment of our time, any costs involved and we want to see change and sales revenue increase right away. If this is a hard question for you to answer even to yourself, perhaps, you are asking the wrong question.
The start of customer engagement
If you are interested in true customer engagement, I believe your question should change to “How can I use social media to help others?”
I define social media this way: It is a two-way conversation via the Internet (from many to many) bringing shared knowledge that benefits and brings value to the people involved.
What value can the knowledge you have of your business, products, personal passions, or favorite activities have to others?
What if you freely shared that information?
Social media works by sharing your content via text, images, slides, video or audio. Businesses win by solving problems. Customers win by educating themselves using the media that best suits their lifestyle, time availability and depth of knowledge. All this is done in the space/place that each individual spends his available time.
So then, what should I do?
First, its OK to take baby steps with social media. You have my permission to do little things.
Second, don’t make a sales pitch and this is not just free advertising.
So, lets get started.
It helps to take marketing materials already created and just re purpose them. For example, most every business has a list of frequently asked questions or could come up with this pretty quickly.
Using this material as our knowledge base, here are some ideas:
1. Collect frequently asked questions used in your business
2. Write it up as an article between 300 and 500 words.
3. Video yourself or others answering each question (video each question separately and make answers between 60 secs and 1 1/2 minutes max).
4. Have someone else record, separately, the audio for the interview /answer questions video, with digital recorder( mp3) Length should be the same as the video.
5. Create a slide show of the Q & A with good product pictures. Answer the questions using product pictures or step by step pictures and limited text.
You have just created 5 pieces of original content that can be placed on no less than 5 different types of social media sites as well as being added to your very own website.
Stay tuned for Part 2 where we will talk about what to do with this new content in the social web.
Do you have content you can already use?
