Leverage social media by taking advantage of its unique features. Prepare and execute a plan.
What unique features does social media have over traditional media and how can they help with marketing?
- Discussion- You can have a back and forth with your visitors, address their questions and concerns. Creates interesting content through several authors.
- Reviews, Ratings & Comments- Gives you valuable feedback, helps others make decisions about which product to buy and which company to get it from, can make your business seem more transparent and trustworthy.
- Sharing- Your users can easily share content of yours that they like with their friends which can help you get a greater audience.
- Connection- Through user accounts, 'liking,' 'fan-ing,' 'following,' etc. you can keep in touch with your visitors and give them multiple opportunities to convert.
- Targeting- By monitoring for mentions of your brand and using data that people freely provide about themselves it's much easier to target your message to exactly who you want to receive it.
- Personality- The nature of social media allows interactions on a much more personal level which can help people trust your brand and company and form a relationship with it much more easily.
Your social media marketing plan needs to leverage the unique aspects of social media to provide a benefit to your company. Mashable has a great article listing many of the different types of social media marketing and some notable companies using each type.
When starting your social media efforts or even deciding whether to get involved, use the MAIL approach to get started. The MAIL acronym stands for: Monitor, Analise, Interact, Lead. (I learnt about it from @LeeHopkins who attributed it to @davidjones).
When starting your social media efforts or even deciding whether to get involved, use the MAIL approach to get started. The MAIL acronym stands for: Monitor, Analise, Interact, Lead. (I learnt about it from @LeeHopkins who attributed it to @davidjones).
- Monitor mentions of your brand, your competitors and keywords related to your products, services and industry.
- Analise those mentions to determine the best way to get involved in the discussion.
- Interact with those who are doing the mentioning.
- Lead by providing valuable content to your audience, continuing to interact and creating brand advocates out of your customers.
- Target and interact with customers on an individual basis. Give them a personalised approach to try and turn them into advocates for your brand.
- If you have an offline marketing strategy that works, bring that strategy online by creating and enhancing its social aspects.
- Focus on creating interesting and valuable content that people will want to share and giving them the tools to share it.
- Engage people by encouraging them to interact with you, make suggestions and give you feedback. This will help with branding.
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