All brand and no sales

I'm reminded of the old saying 'all mouth and no trousers'. I'll explain.

There is a lot of sentiment around on using social media to help you build your brand. But, of course, having a great presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and elsewhere will not necessarily bring you additional sales on the time-scale you need.

The same can be said about having a great website. Why?

Who are your customers?

With social media, you have to ask yourself the question: what percentage of the clients I am going after (or people who could refer me to these clients) use these platforms? And then the second question: do I expect this percentage to increase with time and how fast?

Your answers to these two questions should set your social media strategy for your business. If, in all honesty, most of your your clients are not on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc., you can't justify social media being the main thrust of your current marketing effort - they should be just part of your overall marketing mix.

The same is true for your website. If most of your clients don't search the web for their suppliers, you have the same issue.

This is what I mean by 'all mouth and no trousers'. You can be as vocal as you like on these web platforms, but if it does not bring in new sales.....

Slow burn

That said, having a well-honed social media presence and website is a must. The number of people using them is increasing, and as time goes on you can expect to see more and more of your own clients beginning to make use of them also.

So even if the short term returns are low, in the long run the benefits begin will flow to those who have taken the time to develop their web-presence.

It makes you think

And, embarking on a social media campaign certainly does make you think. It makes you think about your brand and how to put it over to your target audience.

Even if you spend just a few minutes on it every day and look at the response, you can begin to see the impact you are having on your stakeholders. You can then think about it and adjust your approach to see if it increases the impact - and you can even feed your best ideas back into your website copy.

A benefit worth having, I'd say!