I know, you’re thinking “if I have to start updating a Facebook page for my company I’m taking early retirement”, but social media isn’t about having inane chit-chat with teenagers. I fully accept that – at present – there’ll be very few customers who will want to follow a Twitter feed about blue widgets. However, there are several areas of social media which you ought to be looking at.
Services on which your company should have a presence include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+. All provide you with “home pages” where you can link to your website, and list the product areas which you’re involved in. These will get picked up by search engines such as Google, and will reinforce the association between your brand and the products you sell. This association is becoming increasingly important, and could be critical in getting good search engine rankings in the years to come.
Naturally, you can’t just set up pages and walk away. The different services require differing types of involvement, but it’s unusual for any of them to turn out to be that demanding. You might also be surprised at how enthusiastic certain colleagues might be to help maintain the company’s “presence” on a particular service. Give it a try.