I've finished a social media basic training. A free courses from Google, namely the digital garage. Therefore, I document the lessons here in this blog. Below are the documentation.

Social media is big opportunity for business

Social media allows people to link, interact, share, and exchange information.

This is a huge opportunity for business. This can be utilized as a powerful tool. Tool for communicating directly to the people, both your customer and potential customer. The company can use this tool to engage the customer, build the trust, reach more people, and the most important thing is to understand your customer better by listening them.

Suppose a customer is looking for something, she is asking for recommendation about the product. You can join the conversation or start a new one. You can start sharing photos of your product to fulfill her need, and this will help you stay on their "top-of-mind".

Reach more people with social media

Let's imagine. How many people are doing like above? And how many conversation do you make to educate your product? This makes your network can grow quickly. Those people can see your status/post and share your content with others. What is the result? The result is you can gain new followers/liker/connections. If you get involve in conversation consistently, those people might become your next customer.

Deliver a good content via social media

Social media can be utilized to build a trust. Therefore, you must deliver a good quality content in your social media persistently.

If you are consistent delivering a good quality content (images, videos, text, etc.), the potential customers will read your reviews, watch your videos, and so on. They will enjoy it, and they will visit your page again and again.

Once they become loyal visitors, they will share and promote you (your product). When this happens, you earn trust. The impact is incredible.  It is called word-of-mouth marketing, because you are not promoting yourself, but people are doing it for you voluntarily.

The key success social media marketing

The key for success are selecting the right social media sites (where do your target market join or which social media sites are your customer using most), sharing the content with good quality persistently, participating in lively conversation, understand your customer by listening them, solve their problem, fulfill their need, and growing your network.

Social media site overview

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn are the biggest social network.

If your existing and future customers are mostly participating in these social network, you must consider to have a presence on these social media site.

If you focus on your niche or specific topic, you can have a presence on this particular social network. For example: TripAdvisor for social travel network, Opentable for the restaurant space reviews, and so on.

Some Factors for selecting the right social media

Beside knowing which social media sites are your customer using most, you have to know what is the fundamental purpose of each social network.

Different purposes for different social network

- There is social network that mostly used for personal relationship.
- Some are more focused on sharing content.
- Some are focused on professional networking.

Why must you know the purpose of the social media site? Because you have to match the content with the social media purpose.

For examples:

- Personal network site is built for people who want to keep in touch with friend and family. You must be aware of the context, such as light, interesting, useful information, etc.

- Content sharing network is built for people who love share such as facts, figures, graphics, videos, how-to, info-graphics, etc. Therefore you can create the content like how-to videos, beautiful photos, etc.

- Professional network is developed for the business world and attract professional people to obtain more network, people who find the jobs, and company that find people to hire. Therefore, you must suit your social media context in creating the content, for example: business tips, career info, etc.

The conclusion is the key is about understanding the purpose of each social network and the people hanging out there that you want to connect with.

Setting a goal for social media

Before having a presence in social media, the first step you must do is setting a goal.

Each social network site has a different objectives. Each objective has a different ways.

Before you are overwhelming with this matter, remember the first step. The goal. What are you hoping to obtain with social media?

The examples of goal are:

- You exist in social media to make a faster way to respond to customer.
- By utilizing social media, you want to reach more people and encourage them to buy your product.
- You want to increase the sales.
- You want to build your brand awareness.
- You want to build your reputation.
- Drive more traffic into your website.
- etc.

Once you define your ultimate goal, you can move for the next action.

One of the action is create an interesting content based on your goal. Then try to get involve in live conversation.

If your ultimate goal is building reputation, try to make a professional content and be authoritative.

If your goal is reaching more people. try to make less formal content and be interactive with people.

The conclusion: Define a clear goal, so you can figure out which network to participate in and know how to use them.

The writing above are social media basic explanation, please wait for the next social media course notes, deep dive into social media.