Social media: Approach with pragmatic enthusiasm
By Leo Valiquette
LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Blogs, podcasts and discussion forums. The early adopters rave about the merits of jumping on the social media bandwagon as a marketing tool that allows a company to generate brand awareness through dialogue with customers, peers, partners and the world at large. It’s all about the warm and fuzzy feelings created when customers feel that they are being heard, that their input is important to the ongoing development of a product or service. Then there’s the celebrity that comes of being a provocative source of information and insight that attracts a following and drives traffic to your business’s website.
The possibilities are endless. And therein lies the problem — running off half-cocked with giddy excitement. But as the panelists at last night’s Social Media for Business Marketing event at TheCodeFactory emphasized, social media is a set of tools, not a strategy in and of itself. It’s a medium, and as such, is still secondary to the message.
The group included Linda Moran, manager of marketing communications at Sciemetric Instruments; Bob LeDrew, senior consultant at Thornley Fallis Communications and blogger at Flacklife; Alec Saunders, CEO and co-founder of Iotum and blogger at Saunderslog.com; Peter Childs, social media strategist; and Luc Levesque, founder and GM at TravelPod and travel blogger.
It was a group passionate about the possibilities of social media, but pragmatic as well. Here are the key points the group agreed must direct any push to use social media as a marketing tool:
1. Listen to what is being said about your company, its products and its brand in the social media universe before launching your own initiatives. What is your reputation? Are there problems you can identify and resolve? Use tools like Google alerts and blog feeds to monitor the web.
2. What are your objectives in terms of brand? Who are you trying to reach? Is this target group social-media savvy? Older age groups are far less engaged with social media than younger ones. In some industry verticals, there may be some early adopters, but the majority of the decisionmakers you want to reach may still be stuck in the ’90s trying to master their email.
3. What business problem are you trying to solve? How will the use of social media address this? Which tool is best for the job — a corporate blog, a Facebook fan page, a polished piece of video on Youtube, a coordinated combination of several?
4. What kind of business outcome do you want to achieve? Such as, is there a specific number of new clients in six months that have come to you through your social media efforts?
5. Experimentation is key. If one tool isn’t yielding the outcomes you want in the specified period of time, try something else. Keep swinging until you hit something.
6. Tying revenue directly back to social media activities is just as difficult as saying with certainty that a story about your company in a major newspaper led to new business with customers X, Y and Z. But there is plenty of research that demonstrates increased web traffic converts into increased business. The trick is figuring out how to drive that traffic.
7. Time. Commitment. Consistency: If you are going to embark on something like a blog, maintaining a steady flow of new content is critical. Alec Saunders, for example, commits to three new postings a day and his traffic is through the roof (the debate’s still open on whether he actually sleeps).
8. Quality: You have to be pushing out quality, compelling content to draw and hold you audience. It’s a dog’s breakfast out there when it comes to competing for the public’s attention. The way to rise to the top is with consistency and quality.
9. Ranking high on a site like Technorati is less important than successfully engaging in dialogue with your target audience. There’s a difference between having a big audience and the right audience.
10. And lastly, if you’re in a position where you’re trying to sell the advantages of social media to a senior executive who’s slow to catch on, speak in simple terms and avoid jargon. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with your own enthusiasm.
