Get a social media strategy or get left behind

I have been working in the Internet Industry for over 20 years now, and it is now, finally, no longer considered the new kid on the block. No longer do I have to spend a good 5 or 10 minutes trying to describe to people what I do for a living in terms they can understand.

When I was told as a young 20-something during the 2nd week of my second job that ‘someone was coming in to teach me how to be a Web Designer’ the next day, I didn’t realise how life-changing a direction in my career this small and innocuous (and frankly, baffling) statement would be.

My response at the time was, ‘What is a Web Designer?’ and, ‘I’ve never even used the internet!’ A testament to how the first real wave of commercial internet development was swooping over the city of London in the early ‘90s. By the time I reached my late 20s I was a senior manager in a large company and I could not hire Web Designers for love nor money (*lots* of money). This was the dot.com bubble.

Back then, naysayers were debating whether or not to invest in a website, which is a ludicrous thought process to observe now. Not everyone in the office got the privilege of their own email account. Fast forward a couple of decades and the same debate is happening over whether or not to get involved in social media publishing. These days, everyone gets their own email address and saving files to a PC is an outmoded thought process, especially in these days of mobile devices and ‘the cloud’.

‘Social media’ has now become a household phrase. This fact in itself should be a compelling enough reason to get involved in social media. Surfing the internet has now eclipsed TV viewing as the nation’s favourite pastime – especially in younger people. More than 1 billion people worldwide use Facebook, there are around 284 million users on Twitter and 313 million people use LinkedIn. That’s without even mentioning Youtube, Pinterest and blogging, but there is more… so much more out there.

Whether you are a business owner, marketing manager or part of a sales team generating more enquiries is what makes our business world go round. You may be finding that you are being met at every junction with social media – there’s certainly a lot of it and ignoring it won’t make it go away – so my advice to you would be to embrace it.

If you are in HR or Sales, or you are a business owner who is not on LinkedIn, then you need to fix that right away. Today. If you are in Marketing or Customer Services and aren’t monitoring what is being said about you on social media then you are missing a trick (yes, yes on Twitter and on Facebook, but what about on Trustpilot or Yelp? Who is passing off on your product or company name on Adwords, through content marketing and on blogs?).

Now more than ever is the time to make the leap and to incorporate social media into your wider digital marketing strategy. If you are mystified about how to do this, then get in touch with us and we can have a no obligation chat over coffee to help you figure out what is right for you.