11. Key Takeaway.
The four steps to successfully using Social
Media:
1. Figure out who your audience are
2. Where they hang out
3. What they want from you
4. Go talk to them
Hinweis der Redaktion
That’s it so let’s do digital
Social Media is not a buzzword – it is here to stay and is part of lots of brands marketing plansRemember Bebo? Myspace? Friends Reunited? We now have vintage social media channels!The biggest channels are getting bigger and evolving and lots of smaller, more niche ones are popping up all the timeAdults online are using social media and comfortable with purchasing online. If your brand has a presence on social media and you are doing it well, you have a high chance of people following you.
Through my 4 step process I am going to show you that Social Media is actually a piece of cake!
This should be the core of any marketing campaign – social is no differentPen profiles for your different audience segments
InfographicsWhitepapers by industry expertsIndustry researchUse social listening tools to find out:Who is influential in your industry?What is being said about your industryWhat is being said about your brand and competitors?
Loads of free and paid for toolsGoogle Consumer Barometer is a great start to find out online behaviours of your target audienceInfluence checker tools:KloutPeerindexFree ‘social listening’ tools:Twitter Discover (specific to Twitter)AddictomaticSocialmentionPaid Social Listening tools:Brandwatch (who we work with – contact me for more info about these guys)Radian6Sentiment Metrics
Once you’ve done your research you can figure out which social media channel to useTwitter – status update in 140 charactersFacebook – everyone connectedFoursquare – check-in App for your smartphoneInstagram – Photo sharing app, just launched web profiles (instagram.com/nike)YouTube – video viewing and sharing platform (and has some of the finest cat videos out there)LinkedIn – Business networking. New profiles launching soon so keep an eye on these if you’re a B2B companyPinterest – online pinboardsLast FM / Spotify – music sharing siteGoogle+ - the future! And great for SEO
This is your content strategy.Why would someone follow you on social media? What will they want to get out of it?Just pushing out brand messages is not enough – very low engagement stats on brand postsFigure out what information you want to put out there for your customers then put together a plan of action. Starbucks: Do customer research and crowdsourcing – Starbucks have a suggestions app called ‘MyStarbucks Idea’Skittles: Show some brand personality and give that sugary hit – Skittles entertainASOS: Give free stuff & special offers – ASOS do social media only give flash salesHeinzBeanz: Reward loyal customers – Heinz have an online community of Beaniez who they give moneycan’t buy experiences to, they then shout about it on social media = people talking to people rather than brands talking to people
Run some trials to see what response you get, E.g. Better responses at certain times of day such as evenings and weekends – experiment with scheduling tweetsWhat works best – photos get highest engagement levelsLearn from what you do then react and change your content strategy accordingly