Where to Start When You’re Starting Out in Social Media

Part One: Research

Social media has made a big splash in the marketing pool in the last two years as businesses big and small are jumping into the online chaos in droves. Companies are using social media for a variety of reasons: brand awareness, brand management, recruiting, customer service, and consumer insight to name a few.

According to Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study, the top social media sites that businesses participate in are: Facebook (80%), Twitter (56%), LinkedIn (39%), LinkedIn Companies (38%), and YouTube (35%).

In an attempt to keep up with the ever-changing networking sites and tools and its flighty audience that bounces from one new platform to the next, businesses will have to assess whether or not they belong on social media networks and even more importantly what social media networks will work best for them. Whether you’re interested in business to customer (B2C) or business to business (B2B) networking, social media may have the perfect platform for you.

According to a 2009 Reuters study on social media use for business professionals, “webinars and podcasts are top social media resources for business professionals, used by 69% of those who turn to social media channels for business information.

Facebook is the dominant social network on which consumer-focused companies maintain one or more profiles, cited by 83% of respondents versus 45% for Twitter. Business-to-business (B2B) companies, however, maintain a presence on both platforms with 77% maintaining a profile on Facebook and 73% on Twitter.

Current trends to restrict access to social networks like Facebook or Twitter at work need to be re-thought in light of the business value in such activity. Among respondents using social media for business purposes in their day-to-day jobs, 62% visit company or brand profiles on social networking sites and 55% search for business information on these sites.

Consultants and marketing communications professionals are the most active users of social media as a resource for business information, particularly in micro (<10 employees) and small businesses (10-99 employees).

Both companies and employees are scaling a massive learning curve with social media. The average company in this study was planning, developing or running seven different social media initiatives; 65% of respondents staffing those initiatives, and 71% of companies themselves, have less than two years of experience with social media for business. Building brand awareness and brand reputation are two of the top social media success metrics, but nearly two-thirds of companies focused on these metrics have little to no insight into performance via standard or easily accessible reports.”

If you’re trying to decide if it’s right for your business then it is imperative that you do the research necessary to make an informed and effective marketing decision. Your first step should be researching what your competitors are doing with social media, what platforms they use, assessing what platforms are working best/worst for them, and what kind of following they have. Secondly, look at where your target audience is online. Creating a Facebook fan page may seem like a good idea and easy to do, but if your audience doesn’t use Facebook or if they use another network more often, your strategy might be more effective if you considered other networking sites.

You can find out where and what your customers are saying by using free tracking tools. Technorati, Google Blog Search, Twitter Search, and Facebook Search are just a few options that will allow you track relevant business and industry terms on specific social networks. Simply using a search engine like Google or Bing to look up your business’s keywords may provide you with an idea of which social networks to investigate further.

Once you know what your potential or current customers are saying and where they’re saying it in the social media sphere, you’ll have an idea of where you should implement your company’s social media strategy. This research process takes a little time, but it will save you time and money in the long run by knowing if social media is right for your business right now. And if it is, the research you did will show you what social media sites and tools you’ll need to use to make the most out of social media marketing plan.