Communication Skills

Is your company taking advantage of social media to promote your business?



You can’t avoid hearing and reading about how important it is to use social media to promote and market your business. Even if you haven’t got involved with social media yet, you will probably be aware that everyone is talking about it, so maybe you should start looking into it.


But where do you start? Look on the Internet and you’ll find lots of information, tips and advice, but do you really understand what you can get out of using Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In etc? Which of these sites are going to reach the right customer base for your product or service?


If you are going to spend time using social media sites as a marketing tool, you need to invest in some training to find out how to use them effectively. Take a look at our top tips below to get you thinking about what you need to find out before you get started.


5 Top Tips
1) Find out which social media sites are out there

2) Look into which ones will work best for your business

3) Decide how much time you are going to invest in building up your profile on these sites

4) Decide who is going to be responsible for managing your social media sites/profile

5) Remember these sites are about building up relationships with existing, and potential, customers and clients, so you need to engage



My advice to anyone about to start using Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In etc is to find out how to use them properly at the start - it will be money well spent and save you a lot of wasted time!

Are some of your customers from other countries? Do some of your customers use English as a second language?

The answer to this question is yes for the majority of businesses in the UK, yet very few organisations think about how the language they use will impact on their customers and clients. Organisations are seriously limiting the number of customers they can  reach by not reviewing their communication strategy.


Let’s consider the first question again: Are some of your customers and potential customers from other countries? The answer is yes they are. According to the Office for National Statistics, ‘The number of people from overseas living in the UK reached a record high of 6.7 million.’

So, the chances are pretty high that a large percentage of your customers and clients use English as a second language. Communicating with someone who isn’t a native English speaker isn’t a problem though, is it? The majority of us have come into contact with people from other countries around the world in our everyday lives or when we go on a foreign holiday. Most of us have some experience of communicating with people from other countries.

Stop and think for a moment. Have you always been able to get your message across? How do you know if the other person has really understood? Often we assume that we’ve explained ourselves clearly, but have we really? Being a native English speaker and using English everyday doesn’t mean we naturally know how to adapt our language to different situation and for different people.

In business, thinking you’ve got your message across isn’t good enough. In order to retain existing customers and attract new ones it’s vital to be certain that you’ve put your message across clearly and concisely.
Learn more about how to get you message across to a wider customer base by following our ‘Top Tips’ on Twitter.