“We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value. ”
Pete Cashmore, Founder of mashable.com

Most businesses are acutely aware of the shifting sands of the digital landscape. We constantly hear comments about how “Times are changing,” “If you’re not online you’re nowhere” and “Social Media Management is the new black” – all true of course. However, what does this mean for your business? Are you applying the constant changes to your own business as they happen?

Being in the world of social media management, we’d like to highlight a few of the changes that have changed the game completely, and how you can gain and maintain your customer’s unpredictable attention.

The Way We Were
To be fair, while Facebook has been around for some 15 years, we have only recently realised its potential as a business vehicle. Some businesses still don’t have a Facebook page – go figure!
What this means is that there isn’t anyone on the planet who can boast two decades in the business; everyone is a newbie (relatively speaking) and the winners are those who stay up to date and apply the new learnings.

Social media management used to be about posting your website details and a picture of your staff on a pretty background. We used to be able to post a few images a month, perhaps include a “Happy Friday” post or two and that was all that was expected of us.
Yeah, that’s changed.

The Business of Social Media Management
Social media management has gone from something you give your receptionist to do during quiet times, to hiring a team of professionals.

Why?
Simply this: You are in the public eye, performing on a platform alongside all your competitors and most of your customers, in the unforgiving heat of public scrutiny and within the everlasting memory of “The Web.”
Practically, it means that you need to listen, analyse and engage.

Social Listening
Have you ever read a comment about a restaurant and thought, “Gosh, I’ll never go there!” Do you think that the business owner saw it?
Social listening involves capturing every mention of your product, business or brand that occurs online. If your business is small or in a niche market, then you also want to be listening for mentions of your competitors, and perhaps keywords and language that your target audience may use.
This information gathering can be quite insightful and will give you a peek into the mind of how your customer feels about your business or product, what pain points they have and what questions they are asking. As you can imagine, this is an ongoing project and will form the basis for your social media strategies, and possibly even changes to business processes.

Social Media Analytics
All this valuable data means nothing unless you do something with it, right?
Carefully combing through this information will give you priceless information on what problems you can solve for your customers, where your staff may need additional information or training, what’s important to them, what makes them happy – and what makes them complain?
Once you have this data set out in a clear and digestible format, you can engage.

Social Media Engagement
When you scroll through your newsfeed, what do you see?
More and more people are using social media as a platform for complaints, knowing that a public outcry is more likely to get an immediate and fair response. Others use groups and pages to expound the wonderful service that they have received or to recommend a company from whom they got great service.
So, if you’re still thinking that social media is simply for “Brand Awareness” then you may be a little off the mark.

Your social media manager should be doing the following basics:
• Understand the social media platform, your audience, their needs and their language
• Interact and engage with customers in real-time, solving problems or referring them to someone who can
• Identifying and publishing content which will interest and engage your customers
• Identify your primary audience and grow your social media following
• Make use of social ads for the promotion of special events or products.
• Develop the brand personality
• Boost website traffic and increase conversions

Your social media management is no longer a couple of funny cat videos and the odd image of your Christmas party.
Rather, it is an extension of your digital marketing efforts and your customer service department.
Attention is the New Currency. Granted, getting the right type of attention from the right people on the cluttered and noisy streets of social media is not easy. With the attention span of a rice cake and the loyalty of a small cardboard box, our customers are harder to reach than ever.
But… it’s not impossible.

Does your social media management check all the boxes mentioned above? If not, there’s no need to shut your laptop and run into the sea. Give us a call on 07757593840 – this is what we do and we love supporting businesses to help them grow as well as get excited about their marketing! Never a dull moment and that is how we like it! Polly