Week 11: Marketing with Twitter, LinkedIn, Social Influencers

I think it's important to evaluate all your options when using Social Media for your business.  Each platform has a different feeling, different demographic, and different ways of communicating with their audience.  For me, I think if I could stay on top of all the platforms, I would use them all, but some cater more to my business than others.  

Being a bakery that specializes in customized cakes and other baked goods, a visual platform is necessary.  Twitter is great for this.  One of my teachers referred to Twitter as "the cocktail party" of Social Media.  It's fast, visual, and kind of gossipy.  It's a great place for announcing specials and posting beautiful pictures of my creations.  It is a controversial platform, but it's still enormously popular and definitely for the younger crowd.  So, I would post images of cakes that are more geared towards a college-age crowd and above.  Approximately 40% of the majority of users on Twitter are 19-29 years of age.  So, I would try to find out what their favorite desserts are and post those or post thematic items that their demographic is into at the time.   That's how I would use Twitter for my business.  I haven't signed up for an account yet, but I think it's a dynamic platform!

LinkedIn is the B2B platform.  It's the platform that businesses use to post job openings, look for qualified candidates, and network.  I think this could also be an interesting platform to use for my business.  I like the idea of joining groups that aren't necessarily directly related to your business, but for your interests.  I think that's a great opportunity to make organic connections to boost your sales.  For instance, I love photography and travel, so I would join a travel group.  Let's say I get into a conversation about traveling to Italy, which evolves into a chat about the best Tiramisu I've ever eaten, and that can segway into how I learned how to make an amazing version of traditional Tiramisu...just so happens to be my business and low and behold, that's their husband's favorite dessert and his birthday is coming up....that could start a business connection right there.  I don't have to be selling anything.  The conversation just goes there naturally and it all can happen through mutual interests on LinkedIn.  I love that idea!  

At this stage of my business, I think Social Influencers would be amazing to use, but my business isn't ready to go there yet.  I can't think of anything worse than getting an enormous amount of exposure and PR and not be able to handle the orders.  I think that would kill my business.  But, when I get more business, and staff up, watch out!  I would love to do a Live event cooking with a Social Influencer!  I think it would be so much fun!  And it would generate a lot of interest!  Video content is king!  

I think overall, I'd like to add LinkedIn and Twitter to my Social Media platforms, for different types of engagement they could offer me.  I'd like to use LinkedIn for the business contacts and to gain some organic followers by joining groups with similar interests so I could engage in different conversations that might give me some better insight on a variety of topics that might serve my business down the road.  Twitter I would use like the "cocktail party" it is.  It's quick, youthful, and fun and feels like the perfect place to post pictures of what I'm making or to make a quick funny comment on the chocolate disaster I just had to explode in my oven and post a picture of that.  I think it's critical to understand who your target audience is so that the content you post is something they find valuable and that they will seek it out.  I think it's also important to make sure that you post content that's relevant to the audience that is using those platforms.  You have to be consistent with your postings too.  I had a friend who was very sporadic with her business postings and all the engagement she initially built-up stop following her because whenever they went to see what she was up to, she hadn't posted anything new, so they left her.  Social Media is fun to use, but it's really hard to do it well as a business!  It takes a lot of work to create meaningful content consistently and continually!  But if done correctly, it can really launch your business to be a huge success!