By Eniko DeLisle, Social Media Director, Sales-Link, Inc.
A client’s comment the other day lead me to ponder how differently people use social media in business. The client’s complaint was that I was promoting their participation in a series of conferences too aggressively. She suggested that perhaps I could instead re-post current articles pertinent to her company’s interest in the Life Sciences…things her employees would enjoy reading and learning from.
At first, I was surprised, and even a bit baffled, then I realized that she simply had a different end-goal in mind for her social media strategy than what I was used to. In my mind, business usage of social media has a really direct purpose – namely to sell your product or service. There are a number of formulas that can be used to accomplish this, most of them involving some sort of self-promotion.
Most commonly, I try to drive traffic to the company’s website, where more information can be found and contact/sale can be made. On the other hand, if a business prefers to use social media for their company in the same way they use it in their personal life – to share interesting information, teaching moments and points of view, that’s okay, too. The important thing is to have a presence on the platforms where your audience hangs-out.