Social media, the dawn of a new empire.

Ok, so you have a great business model what’s next?  How do you grow your business and encourage positive feedback?  How do you service and maintain the ever growing universe that is the internet?  These are just a few of many great questions that face new ventures as well as older more established entities.  In my opinion, the most important question you must ask yourself is really what are you trying to accomplish especially if using a social media management tool?  Of course you could go through more traditional channels and advertise, attend conferences, socialize with industry leaders, market to perspective clients and tap into various other networking resources or use social media to your advantage.  The alternative combines all these approaches and then some.  Social media management is a growing business and really offers numerous advantages.  As an accountant myself, I can attest to the fact the most valuable resource is time.  Time is a precious and with various audits, tax returns and bookkeeping projects, finding the right person for the job is difficult.   When you do find a company that specializes in social media monitoring and promotion it is really in everyone’s best interest to take advantage of it.  Another thing to keep into perspective, I’m assured your already aware of, is not only do your employees use social media but your customers do to.  To really capture your audience you have to be visible where they hang out.

Step 1 – The first step of the process, when planning your next move, is to keep the following questions in mind.

–          Who is your audience?
–          What message do you want to convey to them?
–          What do they value and how are you going to reach them?

Step 2 – Establish a measurable goal and reach for it.  Anyone in the accounting industry will tell you that they always go into an engagement with a define set of rules, objectives and savvy skepticism.   Our goal among many is to complete the engagement with the highest quality of workmanship possible and as quickly as possible.  The same guidance should be used to establishing goals in social media.

Step 3 – How do you get there? After reviewing a vast array of possibilities, some of my favorites include using HootSuite and Salesforce.com.   HootSuite’s slogan is, “customize, automate, simplify” and it really does just that.  It provides a simplified way to track and monitor several leading social media applications from the comfort of your own home. The cost of such a service is minimal, unless you need a complex array of services; the average consumer/small business needs the “Pro” version which is only $8.99 a month (last I checked).  My second favorite application is Salesforce.com.  Salesforce.com strength relies on its sheer analytical and algorithm capabilities.  Currently, Salesforce.com is an industry leader and continues to improve every day.  See the below video for a brief overview.