Having lived away from my home country for many years, Social Media was one of those nice-to-have things that I used to find out who was getting married, whose vacation was the most awesome one or the newest baby from one of my friends. I then started working with a company who asked me about Social Media in my interview, and a week later, I was happily writing content for that company, watching the customer base grow with my social media efforts.

1. I made a strategy

I knew that I had a tight budget and that there was no space for errors. I could not afford expensive campaigns or fancy events. I evaluated my resources, carefully understood my market segments and selected my communication channels. My channels were split between advertising, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing, and finally online marketing. The first four channels were assigned in the “print budget”, while the last one was allocated separately because I wanted to track the ROI closely.

2. I defined my social media channels.

Social Media channels vary between geographies and age groups. As an example, 65% of Pinterest’s traffic is from the US and 91% of adults use social media today. However, the selection of social media channels depends entirely on your company’s strategy, market scope and budget! When I started working with the company I mentioned, I selected just a few channels. The ones that were more popular in my geographical area and that directly related to what I was working with. Who needs Instagram when there are no pictures to share?

3. I started monitoring customer feedback.

Facebook and Twitter became as important as my info mail. From my own experience, I knew how annoying it was to write to the info mail and never get an answer. So, every day, every hour, every “ding” on my computer told me that there was a customer reading, visiting or leaving a note. Later on, I was shocked to read that “55% of companies ignore all customer feedback on Twitter and Facebook”.

4. I changed their perception about my product.

So, with every message from my customers, I started building a standard set of messages that I would transform into a personalized piece of information that would fit their needs. I created a very personal experience through my communication, and what is more, I explained my product in more detail to help them through their purchasing decision process.

5. I sold my product!

This was the very best part! On a particular week, I counted 10 customers writing to ask about my product (please remember… this was a start-up). So, I contacted them all with my personal messages and followed up with a mail or call to check if they had more questions. Out of those, two bought the product and two more asked to be contacted in the near future. What happened to the rest? I kept in touch, added them to my database and kept them informed. One came back later requesting a sales call.

I used Social Media and it worked. There was an important component: I did not only post updates, but I also responded to my customers’ questions and comments!