Social Media for Professional Services Firms
Social media provides huge opportunities for businesses and not-for-profit organisations, and yet many fail to grasp how to capitalise on these opportunities.
Sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Google+ all meet the definition of ’social media’ – namely, they encourage people to network together and facilitate sharing of ideas, knowledge, tid-bits of information, and a lot of trivia.
Whilst it’s true that sites like Myspace, Facebook, and even Twitter, do play host to a lot of banal, irrelevant banter, it misses the point to dismiss them as irrelevant in a business context.
Because people ‘opt-in’ to each of these systems, a well-targeted social media strategy will essentially focus your efforts on equally professional individuals who take a serious interest in your subject matter.
So how do you engage professionals in a social media environment, and what should you realistically expect to achieve from it?
Firstly, I would suggest that social media for professional services firms is almost never about scoring a quick sale.
It’s about developing brand awareness, positioning a key individual or the firm as a whole as an authority in their area/s of expertise, and potentially a range of other benefits including (but not limited to):
Customer service
Reputation Management
Graduate recruitment
Monitoring of competitors
Learning/education
Nurturing relationships with key influencers
Secondly, it’s critical that you understand that the power of social media lies in the fact that your social connections have the ability to easily share about you with their social networks. Given that most social media users nowadays have at least a few hundred online connections, you can see that a message can travel rapidly to a much larger audience than you can personally reach directly – provided you can share something with them that’s worth passing on.
Equally, negative sentiments can travel rapidly – and even if you’re not participating in social media, those messages could be occurring regardless. This is perhaps the single most powerful justification why businesses should at least be dipping in their toes in the social media waters – monitoring what’s being said about them, and learning how to play in this new landscape where the consumer/customer holds the power and the public creates their own image of your organisation far more powerfully than any image you might try to create for them.
So how do you implement an effective social media strategy? The Aktiv Tactics 6 Point Social Media Framework covers this in more detail, but some of the major points to understand are:
1. In the 21st century age of social media, you can no longer preach your message and have loyal worshippers bow down in adoration. Customers hold a lot more power, they share their opinions with each other, and it’s imperative that you engage them with authenticity and respect.
2. Individual interactions take a lot more energy/resources than mass marketing to reach the number of people you want to impact. Therefore, it pays to be proactive in intentionally engaging with social media influencers and ‘mavens’ who command the respect and mind-share of your target audience. Not all social media users are equal – some will have a lot more influence over your target audience than others.
3. Social media’s about much more than blasting out your message. It’s also about listening to your customers, learning what your competitors are up to, building loyalty and trust with your customers and prospects, and finding creative ways to create a buzz.
4. Whilst posting a few Tweets and Facebook posts might seem like a pretty simple job, the reality is that effective social media campaigns need to be adequately resourced, highly targeted, strategic and deliberate.
More and more these days, companies are recognising the value of social media. Some are getting it right (e.g. KLM’s ‘Surprises’ campaign), and others have suffered a few unforeseen setbacks, learning their lessons the hard way (e.g. Chrysler). But undoubtedly social media is here to stay, with great rewards for those businesses who get it right.
Philip Brookes is Managing Director of Aktiv Tactics, a marketing consultancy based in Melbourne, Australia and serving clients in the professional services and not-for-profit sectors around Australia and South East Asia. He’s particularly passionate about poverty relief and other causes which make a positive impact in people’s lives. More info at http://www.aktiv.com.au
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