The fact is undeniable - Social Media is rapidly becoming a mainstream tool for marketers. From awareness and brand building to acquisition and retention, Social Media is carving out a role as perhaps the most efficient and effective tool at a marketers disposal. Understanding trends in social media and harnessing the power of these emerging trends is rapidly becoming priority #1 for marketing executives.
I'll not explore all the nuances of social media...that will be saved for future posts. Rather, I'll frame the opportunity in the context of existing multi-channel approaches and how to weave social media into these existing strategies.
So here's the context. You've been historically using online and offline media to create awareness, consideration, preference - as well as drive acquisition and retention/loyalty. You've also deployed PR effectively and have integrated this with your advertising and marketing communications strategies. Targeting continues to be important - but is elusive as the data quagmire envelops the organization. Efficiency and accountability is the name of the game and you constantly balance widening the top of the funnel with cost-effective acquisition and retention efforts. Now, a complex multi-channel strategy is being challenged even further with the emergence of social networking.
The CEO and Board are reading about the massive audience reach of Facebook and Twitter et al and are demanding more specifics about how to exploit these social sites. They throw around the concepts advanced by Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg and others - Social Graph Marketing - as the panacea to better marketing. They believe that the promise of viral and word-of-mouth will increase EBITDA by reducing marketing expense while simultaneously reaching aggressive top line growth objectives. They want a shift from costly channels to low/zero-cost channels. And they want it now.
Sound familiar??
Quickly, you need to understand more about social media and how to invest resources while not taking your eye off the current marketing mix. Best approach - put a 2 month plan in place and isolate a small team (1 or 2 hot shots depending on your size) who is empowered to experiment and learn. Their job is simple - design and execute in-market pilots that validate how social media works with your brand and how this new channel can fit into a multi-channel approach.
Here's a handy guide to getting the ball rolling:
- Immediately create a presence on notable social sites - I'd start with Facebook, Twitter and Flikr. Make the presence informative and fun...experiment with new formats that encourage your brand to come to life in these environments...let people participate and engage with your brand in a way that hasn't been possible before
- Identify tools that allow you to administer your presence in these social communities. The list of tools is growing daily and include content authoring/syndication, automated messaging, measurement and analysis tools, etc. Develop a checklist of basic needs
- Inventory the digital assets you have already developed - product shots, product descriptions, photos, images, videos, blog content...anything that can be reasonably useful/interesting to your community members. Devise a way to distribute these assets throughout the various branded environments you've created in step #2 above. There are many tools to help take these digital assets and propagate them throughout the Web. Find the best tools and syndication services that meet your needs.
- Identify the online blog community that influences your category. Find out how this community behaves, the frequency of their blogging, the type of blog content that they focus on, etc. In short, learn as much as you can about this community. Use this knowledge to tailor your outreach to this community. Make this outreach authentic and sustainable.
- Create a system to actively monitor all forms of "chatter" about your brand. Administer this chatter so that responses are quickly formulated and functional leaders in your organization can engage.
- Once you have this foundation laid, design and launch pilots that meet basic objectives:
- Build the number of community members...whether followers on Twitter, friends on Facebook or influential bloggers
- Drive engagement with your brand by encouraging interactions - making content viral, signing up for newsletter alerts, answering surveys, providing targeting/profile data, participating in community interactions (like product reviews) and of course purchasing
The idea here is to not over-think...be execution focused. Get results and react to trends. Use results to weave Social Media into existing multi-channel strategies.
My next post will dive into more details about setting up pilots...examples of tools, what makes a good pilot, success measurements, pilot duration, creative and development process, etc.
