I mentioned in the first part of this series that social media isn’t just social media platforms. Social media is the interactive, ongoing conversation you (or your brand) is having with your customers. Remember you’re always branding – your customers are always forming an identity of your brand in their minds – the question is what identity are they forming. The same is true of social media.

Social media isn’t just social media platforms.

I also noted that every social media platform is not for everyone. Though I am a believer that every business should embrace social media initiatives, I don’t believe that every business should embrace the same ones. It really comes down to what you define as being part of the social media world – but the bottom line is that every business and every brand should desire and make an effort to interact and engage their customers on a regular basis.

That’s what this article is about – let’s break down the theory and see if we can’t sink our teeth into something more tangible and applicable to your specific business or brand.

Types of Brands:

For the sake of argument and for this article, we’re going to break things down into two categories. Let’s consider that your brand will either be classified as a service, or as a product. I recognize that this is a very general classification, but I think it’s safe to say that all brands could be classified as either a service or a product from a high-level perspective – let’s define those two categories a bit further.

Service: Any offering which isn’t or doesn’t produce a tangible product – relying heavily on knowledge, expertise, methods and/or systems & processes.

Product: Any offering which is or produces a tangible product – something that consumers can physically touch either in a retail, wholesale, or manufacturing environment.

The reason we’ve broken it down this way is because there are and should be different approaches when considering social media initiatives depending on which category your brand falls into. By classifying your brand as such, it will help to define which direction you should pursue when considering which social media initiatives to utilize. In this article we’re going to look at service brands, and we’ll cover product brands in our next article.

Service Brands

For service providers there are three things you need to consider and implement in order to have a successful social media strategy to help build your brand:

1. Present Yourself as the Expert

Though there are many factors consumers consider when choosing a service provider (cost, location, relevance, etc), one of the most important factors – and probably the one that makes consumers most comfortable with their decision – is the knowledge level of the service provider. No one wants to hire someone if they don’t know what they’re doing. So if you’re a service provider or service brand the most important thing you can do is present yourself as the expert in your field.

Social Media Applications: Make sure your website is geared towards your customer – include relevant info that he/she will be looking for and present it in a way that supports you or your brand as an expert on the subject. Start a blog where you can provide consistent, meaningful content in your area of expertise – this is a great way to offer free information to potential customers and can be a huge value add for you. Additionally, consider incorporating “push” content into your strategy – this could include regular e-newsletters and RSS feeds – this is a way to provide regular content to your customers without any effort on their part.

2. Invite Interaction

One of the biggest changes in the web over the past couple of years (and really the backbone of the social/new media movement) is that the web is now a two-way, interactive conversation. It’s not enough to simply “put” information online and then expect potential customers to view it and respond. You have to initiate, and continue to invite interaction on the part of your customers. Once you’ve positioned yourself as an expert in your field you must make an effort to enter your customer’s worlds and make your expertise relevant to them.

Once you’ve positioned yourself as an expert in your field you must make an effort to enter your customer’s worlds and make your expertise relevant to them.

Social Media Applications: (2 & 3 share the same applications, with different uses) This is where some of the more “flagship” social media platforms come into play. You first must define where you customers spend the bulk of their time online. If your customers are on Facebook or Twitter, you need to be on there as well interacting with them. If they are on niche communities such as Cork’d (wine community), you need to have a presence there. You don’t have to have profiles on every platform – rather you need to have effective profiles where your users spend their time, and you need to make an effort to invite interaction within these channels.

3. Interact Yourself

Finally it’s not enough to simply invite interaction on the part of your customers. You must interact yourself. This means making an effort to draw out your user base, network with potential clients, and build relationships. If a new customer chooses your service brand over another it will likely not be because you are more of an expert (though that will play a factor). It will likely be because you have done a better job building a relationship and a platform for further relationships with your users. Plus it builds a more loyal customer base – those who want to use your services because they have a relationship with you, not just because you know what you’re talking about.

If a new customer chooses your service brand over another it will likely not be because you are more of an expert (though that will play a factor). It will likely be because you have done a better job building a relationship and a platform for further relationships with your users.

Social Media Applications: (2 & 3 share the same applications, with different uses) Once again this is where more of the well-known social media platforms come into play. The application is basically the same as #2, and both should be done hand-in-hand. Invite interaction and give interaction – and ideally, give more than you get. Remember people aren’t online waiting for you to find them. They’re online for themselves – so it’s up to you to enter their world and bring them into yours in a way that is both unpretentious as well as strategic.

So for service providers and service brands, social media can and should be utilized because it can be very effective for your business. In our next article we’ll look specifically at our second category – product brands. In the meantime we’ll conclude with a few questions that you should ask as you think through how to effectively leverage social media for your business:

1. Do you have a solid brand presence online? If so, is it optimized effectively and can it be leveraged as the central foundation for your social media efforts? If not, why not, and what do you need to do to create a solid brand presence online?

2. Have you created, integrated, or leveraged platforms for interaction and conversation between your brand and your customers?

3. Are you inviting interaction on these platforms and are you interacting yourself?