What are the minimum social media assets businesses should have?

In the modern world, in whatever business you are running, social media presence has become part and parcel of life. Most start-ups and some major corporations that have experimented with social media and now reaping benefits in customers engagement, management of PR crisis and announcing new initiatives.

So if you want to enter the new world of social media, what are the social media assets you really need?

The good news is that most of these assets are free and setting up is relatively easy, the real challenge is the management of these assets.

In this post, I will provide a list of minimum viable social media assets you can’t do without.

Twitter accounts & lists

A Twitter account is good for conveying announcements and news about your company. Some companie,s like Starhub, deploy Twitter for customer engagement. Whenever you have major announcements, you should be able to tweet and get friends, evangelists and champions of your company to help you spread the word.

Customer engagement is a slightly trickier and requires the person who handles the account to be able to make tactful comments and be empathetic to the needs of the customer. With social media, it’s easy to get into controversy.

In the case of some businesses that are location or offers specific, you should probably create two twitter accounts: one for announcements, news and offers and the other for customer engagement. Do remember that Twitter does not allow user names (or handles) to be more than 14 characters.

Some companies use their Twitter accounts to create Twitter lists of their employees and seperate them into different departments. It is not a bad idea and allows customers, potential strategic partners or employees within the organization to communicate in real time.

Of course, if you want to do that, make sure that you have a clear policy for your employees on how they should conduct themselves on the social network.