Social media participation is a marketing game changer for every size of business. The playing field is leveled and companies from @Ford with 198,000 employees, to @AmeriChoiceFCU with 60 employees, to @GoodHlthRewards with 7 employees have equal opportunity to tell their story, attract an audience, listen to the customer, and make the sale.
Perhaps you think blogging, tweeting, and checking-in is a fad. Who cares if @AlanBr82 had coffee at Starbuck in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania? @Starbucks cares and commercial real estate developers like @RichardEJordan2 care.
“Social media brings new tools to our preliminary market studies,” says Rick Jordan, CEO of Smith Land & Improvement Corporation. “In real time, we can learn consumer trends and desires. Twitter is one massive focus group. As a property owner who leases office and retail space, it’s good to know that our tenants have a loyal following and are building community. By tracking conversations, we can discover what products and services people want in a region and attract specific tenants to fill the needs. That’s good for business.”
Chances are high that your competition is already engaged on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Foursquare. To find out, go to www.socialmention.com, www.trackle.com, or set up some Google Alerts. If you’re not on at least one of these social platforms, you can join the conversation today to add social media to your marketing mix. It’s never too late to tell your story.
Where should you start?
1. Meet with the CEO to establish executive buy-in. Top-down support drives a social media marketing campaign. Peter Aceto (@CEO_INGDIRECT) is an excellent example of an executive who harnesses the power of social media for a business advantage. He tweets about his institution, his team, his family; and he has gained loyal customers and fresh insight because of his transparency. Ford’s Global Digital Communications Director @ScottMonty explains the power of these tools and the CEO’s support in a video interview at Ford’s World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. Whether an executive understands these nascent tools or not, dismissing them can be business suicide.
2. Develop a social media strategy. Don’t make this step too difficult—plan for where you want to engage your target audience (are they on Facebook or LinkedIn, are they local or global, are they retail or B2B), and plan the content of your messages. Focus your strategy, and commit to participation in at least two channels where your customers or clients are. Determine objectives, messages, and who will lead the messaging. Every tweet and post embodies your brand. Don’t be fooled by the language and brevity in the social media. Those 140 characters carry tremendous potential to boost your brand or set off a PR nightmare. Are you determining trends, seeking opinions, looking for new customers, finding influencers, or pitching the media? Start with measurable objectives and allocate sufficient people, time, and money to accomplish them. (This is where the value of #1 is realized.)
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3. Choose two platforms to engage in. While you are “doing” business—producing, servicing, selling—smart companies are listening to conversations about their competition and searching the public timeline for opportunities to create their own Blue Ocean Strategy. Engaging on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and reading blog posts from consumers in your industry provides enough data to develop a competitive landscape. What’s your competition doing? Who are their customers? Is there a need being unfulfilled? Is there a weakness? Is there a service delivered unsatisfactorily, hence an opportunity? You’ll find your answers 24/7 in social media channels.
4. Choose what topics to follow. On Twitter.com, use the Search function to find people talking about your products or to discover wholesale conversations on your topic—energy, analytics, IT, commercial real estate, non-profits. When you begin to build a Facebook page, invite customer feedback and build a reputation for responsiveness. When Ann Taylor Loft (@Loft) posted Facebook pictures of models wearing their new line of pants, a few customers commented that it would be nice to see pictures of the employees wearing their new styles. The Loft engaged immediately (proving that real people are listening and responding to consumers) and posted photos of their own team sporting the fashions.
On Tweetdeck, you can organize your columns by topics or people, and listen to real-time, continuous conversations. Brands we follow are @Nordstrom, @Wegmans, @Ford, @Loft, @JetBlue, @Gevalia, and @InteractiveJag. We listen to streaming topics which are connoted by a hashtag—anyone talking about #IABC, #marketing, #PR, #cre (commercial real estate) #sustainability, and #energy is noteworthy to us. It won’t take long to find the influencers in any conversation.
5. Choose who to listen to within a topic. Follow the people with the best content and valuable connections. Find the industry experts and leaders by evaluating their tweets and reading their posts and comments. We listen to PR/marketing colleagues @SocialNetDaily, @HowellMarketing, @PRMoxie, @Michael_MBA, @Barb_G, @LynnDesantis, @RoyJWells, @marketingbyDM, @2morrowknight, @AllanSchoenberg, @EricFletcher, @TreyPennington, @DebWeinstein, @TheSocialCMO, and @manuchat around the world and learn from them. We read their case studies and comment on their blogs. Who are the influencers in your field? Glen Gilmore (@TrendTracker) has developed such a strong knowledge-flow and group of followers that he is a media channel himself. The quality of information delivered in his tweets attracts more than 75,500 followers who quite often check his Twitterstream first to see what’s happening in the world.
By adding social media to your traditional marketing mix, you can redouble your marketing efforts, increase your SEO (check that out on Website Grader), build your reputation, tell your story, and deliver Return on Information—that’s good news for the CFO, your clients, and for business.
Great article Anne! Your right there has to be executive “buy in” for any social media program to be a true success.
Another good point is listening to social media channels. Following conversations can also help you create new products and services that might have been unknown before.
Anne, nice job of mapping a path to help others as they begin their wonderful journey in social media! Have always enjoyed working with you because of your great passion for doing things right and weaving together traditional and new media. Thanks for the post!
Thanks Alan and Glen for the comments and RTs. I continue to learn from both of you in the social media space. The power and potential of traditional marketing + social media marketing is so exciting!
Great article Anne. I suppose the only thing I would add to your list ( somewhere between getting CEO buy-in and developing your strategy) is agreeing on HOW ROI on the program will be measured.
I think that marketers too often measure their activity (number of blogs, tweets etc.) and the social response to it (followers, fans, re-tweets etc.) but fail to properly measure the relationship between that activity and the organizations sales and profit performance over the same period.
It’s never an exact science but being able to show some correlation between your social media effort and improved organizational performance will definitely bode well when appealing for more social marketing budget.