Social is easy to use. Quick sign up. Do it on the fly. Take a photo, share a post, like – it’s meant to be easy. The original ethos was fun, light and entertaining.
Fast forward to today and it still is for millions of people. If it wasn’t the major social networks wouldn’t exist and be profitable.
The benefits of using social for marketing has been understood by companies for quite a few years but all too often companies just do it badly or pay lip service to the core reason for using social in the first place.
It is to reach people. Not customers but real breathing people. If through your use of social you convince people that your brand or service is worth investigating or even purchase then that is a real added bonus.
The above fake tweet is something we see all the time and is just an example…..
The perception that social marketing is an easy funnel to peoples minds and purses is incorrect. The same logic that applied to old-school marketing still applies.
Frequency theory still applies to social to a large extent although not the 20 times of older style. But first time rarely if ever works. You need to establish trust, build loyalty, share value and then and only then is there a chance that a person might engage.
Social Media Management v Marketing
This is where businesses mix up social media management with marketing.
Social media management is relatively easy. Line up your tools, pick your material and news sources. Turn on the hose and go synchronous. Cosmetically this looks good but from a business viewpoint, it is largely a waste of time.
Facebook has a useful Insights metric which shows how engaged people are with your brand online, Twitter has similar data for impressions, visits, mentions and of course followers.
It is metrics like these that a savvy social media marketer should be focused on. In fact, this is the drumbeat that social for business marches to.
Doing this takes some planning, listening and monitoring what your market likes and is already engaging with.
What works in healthcare might not work in insurance and so on.
Standing out is the hardest part as in the stream of noise that passes us by we tend to hit the snooze button all too often. Superb social media is the exception rather than the rule but companies do do it.
Rules for Social Media Managment
The main rule for social media management that we adhere to is to treat every message as if we were the potential customer reading it. Not as the business but as the recipient.
The ideal way to learn what works best is to monitor the top brands and see how they effectively engage with their clients, potential customers and followers. This is where we learned as well.
No matter the size of a company there is still a tempo and mood to follow that their market likes and loves. Not marching to that tempo means you are just managing noise and not doing the best job of marketing
