In order to successfully use social media for marketing you have to have a plan. You can’t just jump in, with your fingers crossed, and hope to achieve your goals, especially if you haven’t defined your goal. Defining your goal for using social media is just one element of a social media marketing plan. Answer the Who, What, Why, When and Where to make better use of your time and effort with social media.
Why: do you use social media or why do you want to use social media? Is your social media participation geared to staying in touch with friends? Is it to enhance client relationships? Is it to gain new clients?
Who: directly relates to why. If you participate in social media to stay in touch with friends or to enhance client relationships, then you already know the who, but if you participate in social media to reach potential new clients, then who refers to your target market.
Who is your target market? You’re probably thinking “everyone.” Marketing to everyone, though, is like trying to hit a bullseye with a needle from several miles away. Although “everyone” may seem like a large target that’s impossible to miss, it’s for exactly that reason that you don’t want to market to everyone — everyone is too large a target market. There are too many variables in the “everyone” target market. You need to narrow down your target market from everyone to a more manageable niche, and there are lots of niches to choose from.
Sit down right now and think about your strengths. What areas of human resources (HR) do you excel in or prefer? Maybe you should focus your effort on compensation or maybe training or maybe leadership development. Maybe you should remain a generalist but focus your marketing efforts on heavy industry, or small business, or new and emerging businesses. By narrowing your marketing focus away from everyone, you’ll save yourself time and effort and produce better marketing results.
Where: relates to where does your target market gather and hang out? What forms of connecting does your target market use? This is where the “birds of a feather” element comes into play. Chances are pretty good that your target market doesn’t hang out at meetings, forums, email lists and websites that HR consultants hang out in. The desire to hang out with others in your industry is primal, but hanging out and following other HR consultants won’t gain you clients unless HR consultants are your target market.
You need to invest the time and effort in finding out where the members of your target market hangs out, and then you need to hang out in those places yourself. LinkedIn and Twitter are very popular social media hangouts for HR consultants, but unless other HR professionals are your potential clients, you don’t want to follow other HR professionals. Utilize LinkedIn to find groups of people in your target market and join them. Utilize search engines to find your target market on the Internet. Spend 95% of your social media activity with your target market and only 5% of your social media activity with your specific industry (other HR professionals).
What: refers to what social media activities are you going to engage in to reach your target market? Will you join the same social media sites they join and lurk until someone asks a question you can answer? Will you go to in-person conferences, training and networking meetings that they attend? Of course, your best bet is a combination of the two, but you shouldn’t spend all your online social media activity time just listening.
Start by listening and after you’ve gotten comfortable with the flow, do some postings yourself. On online social media sites, don’t use in-your-face marketing. Instead, use information marketing. Post the url to an interesting blog post, preferably yours. Post the url for the Department of Labor (DOL) announcement about a new employment law/regulation; include a comment that you’re willing to explain the announcement to those who don’t understand government-speak. Tweet from an HR conference you’re attending.
When: actually refers to how often. How often should you participate in social media? If you’re using social media for keeping up with friends, how often is dictated by how much online time you want to spend with your friends. If you use social media for enhancing client relationships or to gain clients, how often translates to as often as possible. Because that can sound daunting, I recommend a minimum of once a week to three times a week. If you choose once a week, plan to spend at least an hour total time on social media sites. If you choose three times a week or more, plan to spend a total of 30 minutes on social media sites.
Summary: There you go; the who, what, when, where and why of a successful social media marketing plan for your HR consultancy with the emphasis on plan. Everything you do in your consultancy should have a plan, including social media marketing.
What is your social media marketing plan? Does it include the five elements of who, what, when, where and why, or does it include different elements? Please share your social media marketing know-how with everyone by leaving a comment.
