As of Thursday the 4th of October 2012, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg reported that the site had now reached a monumental one billion active users per month! I believe a round of applause is needed here...
This has been a personal ambition of his for the site - it reached the half a billion mark just over two years ago. The Guardian reported that since its launch way back in February 2004 the site has generated over 1.13 trillion likes and over 140 billion friend connections with a staggering 219 billion photos having been shared to date.
Although Facebook has suffered from their fair share of setbacks since their initial public offering, Zuckerberg gave an inspiring speech of how he plans to revamp the social networking tool as well as giving an outline of the company's future.
Pretty Impressive stuff to say the least! But what does this mean for the social media world?
Social media platforms and the interactions they inspire are here to stay and will only continue to grow and improve both in importance and relevance. This means that as a business you have to make sure that you keep up to date and utilise them to your advantage.
So how do you go about creating that all important 'Buzz' around your brand, product or service? We believe in our tried and tested method of social media enhancement, it is a four stage process which we shall go on to detail for you.
Stage number one; Do your homework and Listen!
Where do you start?
By looking at yourself and taking stock of who you are, what your company does and what you want to achieve by using social media.
The obvious advantages to social media include; improved sales figures, increasing brand interaction but they also allow you to improve your brand profile, provide your clientele with an extra medium for communication, but it is most importantly about being able to listen to what is going on in the world around you.
So as we said listening to what's out there is key; there is very little point in trying to sell a product to the wrong market. By listening to conversations, reading blogs and observing trending topics it quickly becomes apparent if there any holes in the market that can be exploited to your benefit.
Take this as an example;
A large chocolate company wants to launch a new variety of chocolate, but doesn't know how to market it. Their first step was to decide what their product was and what demographic they wanted to target. By doing this they were able to narrow their search.
While observing trending topics and reading through blog posts, they noticed that people crave chocolate at the end of a hard working day, which is a totally natural response. A light bulb got switched on; a new campaign was coined to tap into this market, with various targeted slogans that marketed their chocolate would aid in relaxation.
Social media is shaping up to be a massive phenomenon that has enabled people to become and remain highly connected to each other and to the brands they want to hear from. So in the case of the chocolate company it was a raging success, they listened to the market and tapped into what was required of them.
Researching and listening is stage one and an important tool in your arsenal for social media success. Here at Alchemy we know the importance of market awareness and we know how to listen to the market. We are perfectly placed to help you identify your market and guide you through the best processes to achieve success.
Log on and check out Stage two next week, Bringing relevance to the table!