Going Digital: Marketing Meets Social Media

When Pat asked me to work with her well established company I knew I had to provide valuable and viable expertise to both her company and her clients. It’s not so easy to do when working with an innovator like Soltys, Inc. My passion, my niche, social and online business, proved a timely fit for a new direction for Soltys, Inc. and the clients and customers the business serves.

Social and online business practices are no longer the new fad, they are an expected and necessary part of doing business in 2011 and beyond. From e-commerce to social media, video to blogs, the process of showcasing your business expertise online is not only expected, but of extreme importance to the continued success of your company. That might sound like an extreme statement, but after reviewing many of the online profiles of the individuals and companies with whom Soltys, Inc. does business, I found I wasn’t finding out a lot about business and sometimes too much about personal interests and beliefs.

While social media and social business allow you to showcase the personal and personable side of your business, you do have to be careful about how personal you get, and just as careful about what kinds of personality you showcase via your business persona. Some things to consider:

• Have you set up a true business page on Facebook, or are you using one or more personal profiles as your business profile?
• Does your profile picture or avatar suit your business style? Does it suit the social media platform?
• Are you posting viable, targeted and engaging content that will?
• Do you have a social media marketing plan? Or are you simply posting on social media sites because you’ve been told it’s the thing to do?

The four “e”s that drive social media are engage, embrace, educate and entertain. I’ll be discussing each “e”, as well as some social media best practices and content considerations in future posts.

Thanks for letting me share some of my more simplified ideas on social and digital business. I look forward to discussing them in greater detail.

Mallie Dein, Director of Digital Inititatives
Soltys, Inc.