Integrative Waves Makes Social Decisions

Over the past few months Integrative Waves has examined and sampled some of the social media platforms. Now it is a good time to reassess our goals for integrating social media into our business. Too many businesses start off over-enthusiastically with social media and then 'crash and burn'. Integrative Waves does not want to be one of those casualties! So how to avoid this...

We need to consider two very important issues. What do we enjoy using and what can be realistically maintained in the longer-term. What is a good schedule that will fit in with our everyday business life of hands-on care?

We have enjoyed using Facebook and Twitter, blogging, and trying out an email newsletter. We have only dipped our toes into the waters of Google+. LinkedIn is a work in progress.

The only media that will work on a daily basis for us is Twitter because it is very quick to do. We are still discovering the potential of Twitter but have discovered that it is a very useful tool to find out quickly what is happening in many different areas. It has been helpful for keeping up with new social media and other news.

Facebook (and Google+ once we use it more!) can work twice a week for us. Since we found, via Insights, that questions and content with photos capture the most attention for us, we are becoming more creative with our camera to make our posts on Facebook more visually eye-catching. Integrative Waves wanted to become accustomed to regularly posting before we completely focused on more business oriented posts.We have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Facebook since we really am  unsure how many people get exposed to our posts. The rules seem to change quite regularly. We also need to revisit scheduling posts which will make life easier.

Even though we are very new to Google+, I  believe that it will be very powerful and useful for us. There are things we have not done yet that will aid Integrative Waves such as joining some communities.

A weekly Blog is planned. I have enjoyed writing regularly and feel this suits our business goal of consumer/client education.

A monthly Email Newsletter is planned. This will help reach clients who do not use social media regularly or at all.

LinkedIn is another avenue that will be useful but needs to be expanded.

This is enough to begin with! Remember reality....

Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr have not been investigated except for a cursory perusal and they need to wait. Small steps to avoid the 'crash and burn'.

Now it is time for Integrative Waves to plan an online marketing strategy. Part of that will include designing a content schedule for the next month to become organized and also begin testing this strategy! It might also be time to investigate a social media management platform like Hootsuite.....