Social Media, why should you care? Here's why!
• 1 in every 13 people on earth is on facebook.
• 140Million is the average number of tweet people send per day in February 2011
• Together, we spend 2.9Billion hours on youtube in a month. Thats 326,294 years!
Social media sites allow us to connect quickly and stay connected to people and brands faster than ever before, which means we form closer relationships and have quick access to new people and opportunities.
Unfortunately, too many businesses still don’t understand how to effectively use social media and therefore making a mistake of thinking it as just another marketing channel. These businesses are missing a tremendous amount of opportunity and keeping their business from reaching its full potential.
The truth is Social Media is more than just another marketing channel. Social Media can produce an excellent return for businesses which are willing to use it and take advantage of the tools available. It's free exposure, and often organizations fail to intentionally plan their message as they would for an expensive ad campaign. Social Media strategies must be well thought out and planned prior to execution. Never try to run before you learned to walk.
Consider this: In 2010, Nielsen and Facebook did a joint study on the effect of social media for enterprise using the benchmarks: Ad recall, brand awareness, and purchase intent. Social media had significantly better results than traditional marketing.
Social media is permission based engagement - it is the most effective way to engage people and receive measurable results. When someone gives an organization permission to speak to them, the organization's messaging must be "on" 100% of the time. It's like dating, an organization must woo, cultivate, and meet the needs of their network.
The following rules apply to almost every social media user who seeks to develop a platform, client acquisition, increased sales, and better brand awareness.
1. Social media is relational, not transactional. Keep the "keys" to the social media account away from the Sales department. Traditional marketing has no place in social media. Overtly trying to sell a product or service will quickly damage a social media reputation (reputation is quickly damaged and long to repair).
2. An organization should focus on engagement and not on numbers. There is significantly more value in having a smaller network of followers who engage on a regular basis than to have a large network of followers who view your page once and are done. Get connected with your network. A single engaged user is worth more than one hundred unused or phantom accounts.
3. Define your core audience and identify your area of expertise. Do not try to be all things to all people. If you want to reach the decision makers in organizations, you may design your social media messaging and expertise around content that educates about organizational development, as an example. It does not sell your product or service in a direct or traditional way. But the decision makers who follow will begin to view an organization as an expert in their particular area of interest, they will click on links when enough credibility is built and they will share the content. In time, they will take the initiative to find out more about the organization including what products and services are offered. The trust built in social media will transfer to trust in the product or service.
4. Content is king. Posts should add value to followers free of charge, no gimmicks and no strings attached - they may provide information, best practices, or free resources. Develop free resources to give away on a website or blog. While posts should provide stand-alone content, most should include a link providing the user an opportunity to find out more.
5. Updates should be consistent and frequent. Social media is always on and so should an organizations presence. Social media management is not a job relegated to weekdays between 8 and 5. It takes time and consistent impressions with other users to build the credibility needed for them to engage. Posts should be daily and typically should occur a few times and not more than 8 or 9 (depending on the network). When there are dark periods (a day or more without updates) followers get dubious, brand awareness fades, and credibility that has been built diminishes.
6. A Social Media platform must be manifested. Social media streams and accounts should be integrated into every page of an organizations website and communication including "like," "tweet," and "follow" buttons. Clients and followers cannot evangelize if an organization doesn't provide them with the tools to do so.
7. A Profile must be Perfect. The profile is the most viewed page and too often the most neglected. Users decide whether or not to follow an account based on it.
8. Organizations must have a dedicated social media evangelist. Hire an Expert! An organization should have an independent social media specialist who reports directly to an executive on the leadership team. The social media manager should not be accountable to a supervisor who is commissioned or expected to generate a sales quota. They should be the keeper of the keys and the protector of an organization's network of followers. Because social media is incredibly fluid and changes at the speed of light, this person should have a natural proclivity toward Web 2.0, much like a surgeon, always reading, learning, and staying up to date. They should be fluent in related technology in order to track and report on the efficacy of the organization's social media platform so as to assign metrics by which to assess and respond quickly.
Social Media is a complex and evolving medium that many businesses struggle to figure out. Few find quantifiable success with it, many have failed, and most have yet to truly form a social media strategy.
The best advice I can give is to engage with the social media experts. I have access to one of the best Online Marketing and Social Media Experts in Malaysia. And if you are interested to form a social media strategy that creates result for your business, I will be able to assist you by arranging a FREE 1 hour consultation with the experts. Just drop me an email.
Now that you have known the why, the how and the who in social media marketing strategies, So, let's get Social!
** The original article was posted by Joshua Leatherman on Social Media Today
0 comments:
Post a Comment