“How can social media improve my business?”

“It depends…”

“You mean…?”

Its funny how people expect a quick one liner answer to a question like this. I wished there is a quick answer but unfortunately its not as simple as it sounds.

Social media is not just about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, internet, online banner advertisements. These are social media tools. To get into social media, the first thing you must have in mind is your goal and what strategy you want to use. The strategy must be unique to your business, and no blind copying because a strategy custom-tailored for another business (though might be in the same industry) might not have the same effect to yours.

There is an interesting article I came across, “Social Media Not The Answer for Weak Brands” which quotes that social media is akin to better weapons & bigger army strength in a war, but ultimately it is the warfare strategy that leads to a win. The emphasis is to get the strategy right, then use social media as a platform to execute the strategy.

Although I truly believe in the strength of social media, I’d not want business to think and believe that social media IS the ULTIMATE everything to help improve businesses. Social media is a tool and a platform that can help businesses reach out to target audience, engage with them, interact with them, understand them, maybe even as a channel to test responses for new product/service roll out. All these information leads to better understanding of the business, which can then be used to improve business processes, realign products/services offerings, offer new products/services and of course (hopefully), lead to a bigger bottomline.

Thinking about using social media for your business? My advise – start with the end in mind, that is what is your goal, then think about the strategy to deploy, then only which social media platform to use. :)