How To Do Social Media – DIY – new element of the Promotion Mix
Going through number of mostly badly executed social media online campaigns I have to say knowledge of how to use social media tool is quite poor. Although I have to admit there is number of market leaders which are just shining with perfectly organized campaigns tons of others are just one big misunderstanding. Most of the small and medium business doesn’t understand whole principle. For most of the people Social Media is just having Facebook Fan page with thousands of subscribers, twitter packed with followers and make sure boards.ie is not saying anything bad about the company or product. IT IS VERY WRONG STATEMENT. Looking on the content of some twitter posts, I have to say I never heard so boring news in my whole life. Just to translate boring is NOT engaging.
People please follow basic principles of online marketing:
1. Bring audience (traffic through brand-gossip-SMM, long-term-search-SEO,short-intense-campaign-PPC)
2. Engage (content, content and one more time content)
3. Convert visitor into buyer (1+2+well design funnel is very importance, coordinating and analyzing each step+delivery).
4. Back to point 1 & 2 for returning clients/visitors. Keep them engaged once you have their attention.
As recent research shown any customer gained through social interaction is 10 times more valuable as one-time purchases as their connect and have complex relationship with the brand through their frienships (e.g. emotions – read more in emotion intelligence).
If you are marketer, now think for a second which of those 3 points your recent post relates to if you are not involved in your brand/product at all? You are just ordinary person browsing through. And even if “friend of friend” linking will work and that visitor will end up on your twitter account, at best he/she will click “Follow” that’s all. He will not even remember what do you do and knowing what you sell is the last thing on his/her minds there. You have to awake their imagination, engage with them. I would refer you to subjects like “Engaging speeches” or “creative marketing”, or even Emotional Intelligence – how to connect with people for “know how” of Social Media, not a marketing school. It is not about saying what is right anymore; sometimes it is about even creating any gossip (even negative if handled properly).
Giving you more cleared maybe (to some maybe) example of social conversations. Which dinner table conversation with engage with participants in deeper level, which will awake their interest?
1. “May I introduce you to someone or help you develop better friendships?” – YES, winning strategy
2. “Hey! Can I sell you something?” – NO, bad strategy
“Social Strategies That Work
Numbers like those attract traditional companies, which have launched Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts in hopes of finding new customers and engaging existing ones. But few of those companies succeed in generating profits on social platforms, despite collecting lots of “friends” and “followers.”
I studied more than 60 companies across industries ranging from manufacturing to consumer packaged goods to financial services as they ventured into online social realms.
What the poorly performing companies shared was that they merely imported their digital strategies into social environments by broadcasting commercial messages or seeking customer feedback. Customers reject such overtures because their main goal on the platforms is to connect with other people, not with companies.
That behavior isn’t hard to understand. Imagine sitting at a dinner table with friends when a stranger pulls up a chair and says, “Hey! Can I sell you something?” You’d probably say no, preferring your friends’ conversation over corporate advances. Many companies have learned that lesson the hard way.
In contrast, the companies that found significant returns devised social strategies that help people create or enhance relationships. These work because they’re consistent with users’ expectations and behavior on social platforms. To return to our dinner analogy, a company with a social strategy sits at the table and asks, “May I introduce you to someone or help you develop better friendships?” That approach gets a lot more takers.
Successful social strategies
(1) reduce costs or increase customers’ willingness to pay
(2) by helping people establish or strengthen relationships
(3) if they do free work on a company’s behalf.
The work people do on a company’s behalf can include customer acquisition, supplying inputs such as R&D and web content, and selling the company’s products or services.
To see how the strategy of reducing costs by helping people strengthen relationships works, consider Zynga. In the game one friend helps another to build object, farm, grow plants, watering them while friend is away etc. “
Source: http://hbr.org/2011/11/social-strategies-that-work/ar/1
By Mikołaj Jan Piskorski for Harvard Business Review
