You have a Web site. You're run­ning a busi­ness in the 21st cen­tu­ry so no­body need­ed to tell you twice how im­por­tant it is to have an on­line pres­ence. You're proud of your Web site, too. It gives in­for­ma­tion about your com­pa­ny's mis­sion, your prod­ucts and ser­vices, a lit­tle bit about you and your team and then, of course, you share the all-im­por­tant con­tact de­tails so cus­tomers can get in touch.Since you paid that de­vel­op­er to set it up two years ago, you haven't changed any­thing about it. All the per­ti­nent de­tails are the same, so there's no need.

You ad­ver­tise. A hefty por­tion of your mar­ket­ing bud­get goes to­wards ra­dio and news­pa­per ad­ver­tis­ing every year. In this Christ­mas sea­son, you up the ante with some di­rect mail-out fly­ers through TTPost. You know your Trin­bag­on­ian cus­tomer and there's noth­ing they like more than lis­ten­ing to dri­ve-time ra­dio and prime­time tele­vi­sion. The one un­for­tu­nate thing about mass me­dia, though, is that it's hard to fig­ure out just how many po­ten­tial cus­tomers it reach­es. But that's where your hefty bud­get comes in: for at least 30 sec­onds every day, they're go­ing to hear you, see you or read about you. You hope.

You've de­cid­ed not to get in­to so­cial mar­ket­ing. You al­ready have the Web site and you al­ready have your ads, and they're work­ing for you.In ad­di­tion, you want to tar­get clients with mon­ey to spend and the young peo­ple who pop­u­late these pop­u­lar sites are more in­ter­est­ed in play­ing games and up­dat­ing their re­la­tion­ship sta­tus than hear­ing about your com­pa­ny. So it makes more sense for you to chan­nel your en­er­gies else­where.

Do you recog­nise your­self in any of the above state­ments? It's like­ly many of our busi­ness read­ers have, be­cause though tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing is a giv­en and Web sites are now com­mon­place, the next fron­tier of mar­ket­ing-through so­cial me­dia-has not yet tak­en a strong foothold in the Trin­bag­on­ian busi­ness sec­tor.This is so for a num­ber of rea­sons but chiefly due to the as­sump­tion that so­cial me­dia is for plea­sure, not busi­ness. This is a be­lief which has its root in an in­com­plete un­der­stand­ing of all that so­cial me­dia is. It goes be­yond Face­book.

What is so­cial me­dia?

So­cial me­dia is the term used to cov­er a tool or plat­form that you can use to pub­lish, share and con­verse about con­tent on­line. Giv­en that de­f­i­n­i­tion, so­cial me­dia in­cludes blogs and mi­cro-blogs, like Twit­ter, con­tent com­mu­ni­ties, like You Tube, vir­tu­al worlds, like World of War­craft, and net­work­ing sites, like LinkedIn, and, yes, Face­book.

Why is so­cial me­dia im­por­tant to your busi­ness?

The main pur­pose of pub­lic re­la­tions, mar­ket­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing is to reach a tar­get mar­ket. What a com­pa­ny wants to hap­pen once con­tact is made will vary wide­ly, but the first step is that con­tact. So­cial me­dia is an­oth­er av­enue in which you can reach your cur­rent and po­ten­tial cus­tomers. Like tra­di­tion­al forms of ad­ver­tis­ing, it can broad­en your brand aware­ness and in­crease sales. Like a pub­lic re­la­tions cam­paign, it can im­prove brand recog­ni­tion and in­crease brand val­ue.

But where so­cial me­dia has the po­ten­tial to go be­yond the ex­pect­ed is in its abil­i­ty to in­crease the lev­el and va­ri­ety of your cus­tomer con­nec­tions which, in turn, speeds up as well as de­tails your busi­ness an­a­lyt­ics and, if you ex­e­cute ideas out of that da­ta, it can im­prove your cus­tomer ser­vice.

Know your cus­tomer more; know your cus­tomer bet­ter

When you set up your Face­book page and start in­ter­act­ing di­rect­ly with clients, though you're dri­ving the bus in terms of de­cid­ing what to share and how of­ten to share it, the im­me­di­ate feed­back to be gained from a site which al­lows com­ments and in­stan­ta­neous shar­ing tells you quick­er than a fol­low-up call to a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment can, what the gen­er­al pub­lic thinks of your of­fer­ings.

The per­son­al feel to a Face­book page al­so gives a face to your com­pa­ny and it is wide­ly ac­knowl­edged that many sales are con­vert­ed based on hu­man in­ter­ac­tion rather than writ­ten ma­te­ri­als or pro­fes­sion­al­ly cre­at­ed ad cam­paigns. Though it may not be face-to-face (but it can be-that's what YouTube can do), ex­pand­ing your mar­ket­ing arm to so­cial me­dia gives that hu­man in­ter­ac­tion that is miss­ing from tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing.

Put out the word; let oth­ers spread it

So­cial me­dia is in­her­ent­ly a plat­form cre­at­ed for shar­ing in­for­ma­tion. There­fore, all tools and ap­pli­ca­tions which de­fine them­selves as ve­hi­cles for so­cial me­dia make it easy for the user to dis­sem­i­nate in­for­ma­tion. This is great for your busi­ness and un­matched when com­pared to tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing.

When you put your half-page ad in the dai­ly news­pa­per in­form­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic about your 40 per cent sale, you're hit­ting many eye­balls, guar­an­teed, but how many of those eye­balls de­cid­ed to use their hands to show that ad to some­one else? Per­haps, the cousin they know would be in­ter­est­ed is in Ari­ma and they're based in Wood­brook, mak­ing the phys­i­cal pass-over of in­for­ma­tion im­pos­si­ble. Or, per­haps by the time they re­mem­ber to call that cousin, they can't re­call the news­pa­per they saw it in or the page.

So­cial me­dia is dom­i­nat­ed by but­tons which make every 'like', 'share' and 'tweet' a click away.

T&T CHAM­BER OF IN­DUS­TRY& COM­MERCE

www.cham­ber.org.tt

Con­tin­ued next week