Before you make the decision to use any social media platform as a marketing tool, you need to evaluate it first and ask yourself how it best serves a specific purpose, otherwise there is the potential to just waste a lot of valuable time, energy and resources without gauging the results.
How, why and even if you use it can and will directly effect the bottom line.
So, before you go tearing into Twitter, or any social platform for that matter, first ask yourself a few, basic, key questions, make some decisions based on these questions and set some goals.
Basically, “how will this tool or platform help me?”
In order to do so, I suggest following the P.O.S.T acronym (originally put out by Forrester)
POST stands for: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology.
1. People: Who are the people you want to be targeting and how do you identify them? Who is your demographic and where can you find them?
Is Twitter the best place to find them? Is Facebook? Is linkedIn? Or maybe Sprouter, Buzz, Etsy, Ning, Xbiz, Foursquare? Or…
Are there other platforms that might be better? Maybe there is a forum based on your niche that would be much more effective instead? Maybe a group? Does this demographic even use social networks?
2. Objectives: What are your objectives and what are you hoping to achieve?
Are you broadcasting a message or researching and gathering information? Are you trying to build a mailing list, or get more traffic to your website? Is it for education, communication, relationship building, or customer service? Is it a tool to generating leads, or to build upon existing leads?
Do you want to use it for input or output? Or both?
3. Strategy: What is your strategy? What is the ultimate goal of your efforts? How will you be using this tool to achieve your objectives?
How much time can you afford to spend with these tools in order to positively effect your ROI? How much time is too much time? Will you be in charge of this process or will you outsource?
4. Technology: Based on your plans, which platform is best suited to serve up these goals?
Once you decide on a platform, do you have a good understanding of how to use it? Are you comfortable using it or do you need training? Do you need tools or additional software?
So to summarize, Social media can be a powerful marketing tool, but it can also be an incredible time suck. Following this basic process and asking yourself some very important key questions first will ultimately define success or failure.
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