It’s 2013: Social media is now vital for any business to both have a robust online presence as well as to better engage with past and potential customers. It is estimated that 80% of businesses will be utilizing social media, at the least for their marketing, in 2013. Hopping on the social bandwagon is quickly being considered the most important marketing ingredient in today’s internet-enabled world. However, “hopping on the bandwagon” doesn’t necessarily mean success: Your company first needs to have a greater understanding of the potential for social media to meet your company objectives as well as a strategy in place in order to succeed. Socially engaging in these online communities can equally damage your company’s reputation as it can bring you benefits if not approached strategically and with an understanding of best practices.

Maximize Your Social can help your company get up to speed and ready to implement social media internally through a custom social media strategy consulting program unique to your company.

What Is Social Media?

Social media is a medium which is highly accessible by users and which has web-based technology for communication. The main feature of this online media is that it encourages participation, openness, and conversation. It helps form communities which can connect through links to other sites, resources, and people.

The various forms or “channels” include:

• Blogs (like this social media strategy blog)
• Online forums and communities (yes, forums are still important in certain industries)
• Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace)
• Multimedia sharing (YouTube, Flickr, iTunes)
• Social bookmarking (StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg, Reddit)
• Microblogging (Twitter)

Social media is basically about human beings. It involves sharing ideas, cooperating, collaborating, thinking out loud, conducting debates, and building personal relationships. New ideas, business models, and technologies can evolve at telescopic speed through the help of social communities. It can also be a tremendous source of information, personnel, and business for your company.

Why Your Business Needs A Social Presence

Social media is not a fad or hype but is used by a majority of businesses already. It is a real medium of communication that can be utilized for its ability to “spread the word” and sheer speed of conveying relevant information. Furthermore, with the high speed of internet and easy-to-use software, it is simple to build your business presence in social media.

Your business needs to be where your customers are. Right now almost 1/4 of our time spent on the Internet is in social media, and we Americans visit Facebook as often as we Google.

But social presence alone will get your company nowhere.

You need to have a plan or strategy to engage in social based on your business needs. You need to somehow spread the word about your company and product to these social channels. Your brand speaks through online communities and gives you credibility. And you learn that the same community that might influence the purchase of your product can also help provide you invaluable market information about your branding and products and even refer you to your next star employee.

Having a social mindset is the new business mantra as it gets you up close and personal to your customers.

And if you don’t have a presence on the various social sites that your competitor does, it can be a bigger business risk than you think.

It’s time to consider a social media strategy consulting program.

Social Media Strategy Consulting from Maximize Your Social

Maximize Your Social works hand in hand with your employees to understand your company, industry, products, competitors, current social media presence, as well as corporate strategy as a core component of its social media strategy consulting program. Based on this input, and in a consultative manner, Maximize Your Social creates a unique social media strategy that applies specifically to your company and current situation that then provides the blueprint for your company to implement social media internally. In addition to the consultative meetings, a document is provided at the conclusion of the engagement that serves as the guidelines for your company to move forward in social media. This combination of one-on-one meetings and customized research provides a unique combination of strategy planning and education that gets your employees ramped up to start a successful social media campaign or implementation. Whether your company is just trying to get started or optimize current efforts in social media, the social media strategy consulting program from Maximize Your Social will provide invaluable education and lasting results for your organization.

For more information on Maximize Your Social and their social media strategy consulting program, or for a free phone consultation, please contact Maximize Your Social.