In this month’s article we take a look at how to maximise benefit from social networking, blogs and online communities; all of those places where you can interact with your customers and indeed where they can interact with each other (with or without your knowledge and input!). You will most likely already be using tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Myspace, web forums and all the others, but are you using them to maximum advantage? The rewards of doing so can be great, but so can the risks if the audience you are engaging with react in a negative way. This article presents five top tips, as summarised from research carried out by Digital Strategy Consulting who analysed the successes and failures of hundreds of social media marketing campaigns. Thanks to Peter Morgan who pointed me towards their article ‘10 Golden Rules in Social Media Marketing’.
Get Involved and Stay Involved
The first step, quite clearly, is to get involved in social media but after you have your Facebook and Twitter accounts you need to remain actively involved, participating regularly in discussions and engaging with your ‘audience’. Having a profile which is never updated and isn’t engaging for readers can often be worse than having no presence at all. It is extremely easy to synchronise various platforms meaning you can post content to multiple places at once, saving valuable time. Do not, however, assume that this is the extent of your involvement - you should still try to participate on a personal level.
Make Interaction Easy
Make it simple for people to interact with you; the easier the participation, the higher the chance of involvement. A simple example is to encourage people to click to vote or rate something. It is important to remember that while only a minority of people will feel compelled to actually write a comment or opinion, there will be many more who will be reading and may be prepared to participate in an anonymous way. This is still very useful involvement and can provide valuable data.
Initiate Conversation
You should seek to start discussions, but then step back and allow the conversation to develop and spread naturally. Viral marketing videos are a prime example of this; the video provides the catalyst for much greater ongoing discussion.
Forget Traditional ‘Website’ Marketing
Consumers now want to choose where to access information and discuss it with their friends. Therefore the traditional model of driving traffic to your website is no longer applicable. The website can still act as a central hub but your message has to infiltrate the places where your customers visit. The large social networking sites is where lots of activity takes place and provide a perfect starting point for your online marketing.
Use your Networks
To effectively use social media platforms you have to be prepared to give up some control and use the consumer to help spread your message. In fact you should be encouraging them to spread it for you. To do this you could make things available that they will want to share with others. Ultimately a message delivered via a form of recommendation will be more powerful than a direct message from you as the ‘brand’. In the music industry prime examples include giving out free tracks and DJ mixes. Taking it a step further you can even get your network of people to create content for you, for example by asking them to make videos of your music or creating remixes from free parts.
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