Social media has been a revolution in the way we communicate with others here, and around the world. It has made the planet a much smaller place to be when it comes to interacting with others, and I think generally that is a good thing. And business has benefited from it too. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc have allowed businesss to reach out to a whole new audience. An audience that without social media, they may never have been able to interact with. Many do social media right, but some I continue to see do it badly.
Knowing your audience
The key to running good social media campaigns and accounts is knowing exactly who your audience is. Once you know who your audience is, you can fine tune your message to make sure it gets the best possible exposure.
When it comes to our own industry, I like to think that most of us know who our audience is, and that what we’re saying relates to them. In my experience, I have found the different social media platforms to have different types of people. For example, Twitter has a large business audience, so it makes it one of the better B2B platforms for the window and door industry.
Facebook I have found to be much less engaging on a business level, and a tad more juvenile. It’s a good place to chat with friends and stalk people privately, but not a place where people go to talk about windows and doors.
Google+ is a funny one. I gave it a good go at the start of the year, determined to give it a fighting chance. There does appear to be some level of industry presence on there, but of those that have accounts, very few are updated regularly. It’s only the big companies with dedicated social media teams that update their pages with posts and images. It probably works on a B2B level in some way, but nowhere near the effectiveness of Twitter.
Post to the right people
So, if you’re an installations company and have a Twitter account, there appears to be very little value in tweeting things aimed at homeowners when homeowners aren’t the group of people following you.
If you take a look at a typical Twitter account of an installations company, you’ll see that most of it’s followers are industry accounts, like other installers, fabricators, syscos etc. Most of that accounts “following” list are other industry accounts as well. So tweeting something about sales, offers or anything else aimed at a homeowner is pretty pointless. Could work on something like Facebook, but definitely not Twitter. However, Twitter is a great place to show off an installer’s work. Everyone likes having a nosey at other people’s work, or admiring some of the grander jobs we work on. Installers love posting images of their work on there, and that’s great. Nothing wrong with having pride in your work and showing it off. I do it myself via my account for our installation company.
If you’re a fabricator or sysco though, Twitter is a great place to be on the lookout for new business. In fact I see regularly new contacts being made via the platform because of companies reaching out to find new business, or by other companies asking for help and businesses wading in to sort them out. LinkedIn is another platform great for such things, although LinkedIn is a place very much for business only. You don’t see much conversation about food and football on there!
The point is, understand who your audience is before you start posting your heart out. Your message may go unnoticed.
For Twitter, it’s all about variety and conversation. Too many straight sales messages leads to unfollows. For me, too many samey installation shots become a bit boring (is anyone else fed up of every other message on their feed being a composite door picture?)
Keep the “social” in social media, and tweet like a person, not a corporate drone.
I know what you mean about composite doors Mike! You’re right too about the salesy nature of some accounts. There is a time and a place for things like that, and Twitter probably isn’t it.
Thanks for your comment!