Servcorp Event Explores Social Media Tenets For UAE SMEs To Build Their Businesses Servcorp held a discussion to equip their members and the whole SME community of the UAE with the right social media tools to grow their businesses.
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Servcorp, a serviced office and co-working solutions provider, recently held a panel discussion on "The Power of Social Media" at Jumeirah Emirates Towers, Dubai, aiming to equip their members and the whole SME community of the UAE with the right social media tools to grow their businesses.
The event, moderated by Laudy Lahdo, General Manager of Servcorp ME, explored the topics of how social media can enhance customer experiences, and enable selling effectively by understanding customers' needs and wants through the right media platform, including analyzing the benefits of different platforms and acquiring the ROI metrics for each campaign.
The panel delved on various topics around social media strategy for enterprises: Petch explained how social has proven to be a drive to Virtuzone's growth, while Audi stressed on the importance of creativity to generate market dialogue and response, which her team does by ensuring each campaign is framed as eye-catching and effective. On the type of social media platform suited to building a business' presence, Azees explained the benefits (and downfalls) of LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Rankin commented on social media's crucial role in developing an engaging organizational culture and utilizing the right tools for assessment. Meanwhile, Rankin noted that for businesses who set up customer-facing social media accounts, it's essential that these entities learn how to actively manage positive and negative comments.
"The Power of Social Media" thus delivered four tenets for SMEs to follow as they deploy social media:
1. Magnification. Social media plays a powerful role in building a background of awareness of your business and what it does; recent research shows that when customers are then exposed to your other marketing and advertising, this awareness can multiply the effect exponentially.
2. Use each social media format in the way it was intended. LinkedIn is generally best for "serious" messaging and B2B marketing, while Facebook and Instagram shine for lifestyle promotion, as their lighter feel and imagery can help communicate a journey or "experience."
3. Don't think of social media as"technology;" think of it as "talking to people." In the same way as an actual conversation, what you're saying will need to fit in with the flow of the existing conversation- and the more you bond with the dialogue, the more people will be receptive to your messaging. Don't try to sell overtly!
4. Social media isn't a "bolt-on." It has to be part of the way your whole business thinks, produces and reacts. Remember that social media makes things happen so fast, you have to be ready- things can go very right or very wrong with immense speed!
