Business & Finance Social Media

Five Reasons You Should Change Your Mind About Social Media

Okay, so you are a business to business company in an industrial market segment.
Your customer's think that tweeting is something you do when you hunt wild turkeys and blogging is a Norwegian winter sport.
There is no way that being on Facebook could ever get you a single lead and you have no interest in branding.
Right now social media would be a complete waste of time even if it didn't take any time.
You don't want to be bothered with Social Media! Two years ago, I would be in complete agreement; as a search engine specialist I use to firmly believe that the only thing a b2b company needed was a strong search engine presence.
Now I passionately believe that regardless of whom your company is and what industry it's in, ignoring social medial could be the biggest mistake your company ever made.
So even if you don't value social media, here are five reasons why you should change your mind.
  1. Search Engine Rankings:Social Media is a valuable tool to improve your ranking in search engines.
    Press releases, blogging, article writing, You Tube Videos and social bookmarking are all valuable sources of links.
    Furthermore, Google is paying a great deal of attention to the social media "buzz".
    Tweet posts are indexed within minutes, You Tube videos can show up in rankings within hours.
    Any mention of your company or website can be considered an influence on how a search engine ranks you.
    If you want to be found in the search listings, then you need to use Social Media.
    Maybe your clients aren't paying attention to social media, but the search engines are.
  2. Your Reputation: It is becoming very common for businesses who are considering buying from you to use the Internet to do some research about your company (beyond reading your website).
    What would someone find if they put your company name in the Google search bar?If you used social media to proactively "control" the situation, they might find a couple of press releases promoting some significant achievement of your company, or a couple of videos promoting your business,perhapsa few great customer reviews from a review site, or a prestigious white paper that you wrote..
    Face book and linked in are other potential complementary listings that they could find on the first page of Google.
    What if you DON'T take control?Well maybe there is that disgruntled ex-employee who blogged about how poorly you treat people, or how about the court records of the ex-CFO who was caught embezzling 5 years ago.
    Maybe there is that embarrassing picture someone posted of your President at that wild Christmas party, or maybe a competitor trashed your products on a product review site.
    The point is, you should want at least the first page of Google and maybe the second filled with positive info about your companyThe best way to assure that happens is to get good stuff there before the bad stuff gets posted.
  3. Your Customers:Maybe you were wrong and it turns out that many of your customers are fanatical bloggers and tweeters.
    If they said something bad about your company, wouldn't you want to know?Wouldn't you want to address that issue before it got out of control?There are number of tools that can tap into the buzz and find out specifically what your customers are saying about you.
  4. Your Employees:Here is a true incident that I just heard about:a local attorney made a disparaging remark about a Judge on his Facebook page, thinking that is was only going to be read by a close circle of "friends".
    The Judge, who doesn't even go on the Internet found out about it and that lawyer got into some serious trouble.
    It turns out the nephew of the judge was a friend of a friend of the attorney on Facebook.
    My point is that if you are on Facebook, you are 6 friends from anyone in the world.
    If you have employees, some of them are on Facebook or other social networking sites.
    Most people don't realize that what they post on some of these sites is publicly viewed and could be very damaging.
    You have probably heard many stories about employees being fired or students being suspended because of what they posted on Facebook.
    As an employer, you need to realize that every single employee that you have is a potential stick of dynamite that could blow up in your businesses face.
    Companies need to have a clear and well communicated social media policy and employee training if they want to avoid some ugly situations down the road.
  5. Your Competitors:There is a number of ways that you can monitor the internet to keep tabs on your competitor.
    You should be aware of any news item that comes out about your competitor.
    Furthermore, what if you find complaints or problems about your competitor from tweets, blogs or disgruntled posts.
    There may be an opportunity to capture some business.
If the above does not change your mind consider the following:the Y generation (refers to the population group in the US born from somewhere around 1976 to around 2000) now exceed the baby boomers in terms of employment.
Over 95% of the Y generation is actively engaged in the social networking arena.
This is the first generation that was "brought up" on the internet.
If you are not on the internet with this group, then you don't exist.
This group is starting to creep in age into the mid 30's, they are starting to move into the "decision making" positions.
Someday, the decision maker of your potential customer is going to be part of the Y generation.
If social media isn't important now, it will be.
So even if you aren't ready to act now, at least create accounts for your company on You Tube, Twitter and Facebook so you at least have your company name reserved.
It costs nothing, and at least you have your names reserved when you finally get around to social media.
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