Facebook, Google+ and other social media platforms have become a norm for businesses. One of the first things business owners do after registering a company is almost immediately open social media accounts.

As normal as it may be, the majority of businesses simply don’t have a clue how to use social media to their advantage. The key thing to social media is understanding the purpose of social media, how to use it effectively, and increase your business reach, revenue and engagement with your customers.

The Purpose: co-creation

This is a marketing concept that forms the basis of why your business should be using social media. Co-creation is the concept of creating and generating value for customers through a personalised interaction with your business or product. The aim is to create a mutually beneficial interaction or experience between user and business.

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The benefits are customers that receive value for participating in an action with your product or service. The business gets exposure, reach and engagement from customers and both win.

An example of this is Social Media but co-creation goes a lot further than just social media. Nike demonstrated this with their “customise your shoe” experience.

This gave users the chance to customise select Nike shoes the way they want it. Consider a client spending three minutes on your website, staring and interacting with your product…

Most companies don’t get this sort of “free ad time” with customers at this level. Customer is having a personalised experience and business is getting value through brand awareness, free advertising and much more in the long term.

Social Media and Co-Creation.

Co-creation is the basis for your social media interaction with customers. The value of co-creation in this instance- is simplified to creating a value added interaction on a medium that is familiar to your customer.

The benefits of social media are;

  1. Providing personalised experience between business and customer
  2. Gives human face to company
  3. Increase engagement between customer and business
  4. Add value through personalised offers and ability to communicate at customer’s level
  5. Level of transparency
  6. Entertain…

The traditional formula

As per the below infographic the goal is customer engagement. Once achieved both customer and business are in a true co-creation environment. The business has the ability to market itself, advertise whilst maintaining customer engagement.

To conclude, your businesses goal for social media is to achieve an environment that is mutually beneficial to customer and business. How you generate the engagement is based on your target audience, what makes them tick and in turn your content strategy.