Word of mouth is the oldest form of marketing there is and social media is simply the latest incarnation. While there’s a lot of mystique, hype and theories surrounding it, the basic principles are common to all marketing: getting a targeted message in front of a relevant audience in order to influence a sale.
While most businesses understand the importance of embracing social, for many this doesn’t translate into a well-run profitable campaign. We’ll look at the 7 keys for social media marketing success:
1. Set Expectations
For a social media campaign to survive in any organisation, the experience will need to match the expectation. Believing the hype and treating social as a magic bullet is the first step to disappointment, but likewise neglecting its potential to drive sales directly is also a mistake.
It’s important to go in open-minded and treat social with long term perspective, (like SEO) rather than expecting immediate returns (like PPC).
2. Find your message
Generally your audience doesn’t care about the things you care about. New websites, 10% off, new product launches... people don’t open Twitter to be sold to. In their heads is a loop saying “what’s in it for me?” Failing to answer this question with a killer benefit or advantage each time you communicate is the kiss of death.
3. Targeting the right market
Understanding your audience deeply – their likes, interests, dislikes, fears and aspirations – allows you to match your message to the conversation they are already having in their heads.
You can also use this understanding to find more of your target audience:
- Who else are they following?
- What sort of issues do they care about?
- What do they read? W
- ho are the authorities they look up to?
Building relationships and getting visibility in these places is a great way to match your message to a receptive audience.
4. Choosing your Method
Each niche tends to have a social network of choice, and one of the most important distinctions you can make is choosing your social media ‘base’. Rather than follow your competitors or make generic assumptions (e.g. ‘Pinterest for women’), talk to your customers and prospects and find out where they spend their online time, notice what they engage with and who is already succeeding in your space.
5. Using controversy
Let’s be clear there are 2 types of controversy: real controversy and let’s say ‘apparent’ controversy.
Real controversy needs very little introduction: Picking fights with established high profile authorities can be a great way to boost your own profile, and if you align your message to target something about your market that your audience hates but puts up with, you can boost your credibility with them immensely. But it’s not for everyone and will open you up to criticism.
Apparent controversy, on the other hand, is best explained by the phrase “finding a parade to stand in front of”. The recent Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a good example. It became quite obvious that the act was not going to be passed due to protests from Internet users, so a number of people used this opportunity to align themselves with the ‘Stop SOPA’ movement, and build credibility amongst this audience.
Every industry has a common enemy in some shape, whether it’s the ‘old guard’, legislation, trends or fashions, snobbery, elitism, vulgarity or ignorance. If you’re stuck for ideas, ask yourself ‘what would you end up bitching about if you and your ideal customer started drinking together?’ Then stand in front of this parade and be your audience’s hero.
6. Measuring
Even with the best intentions, it’s likely going to take time and experimentation to find an angle that really resonates with your audience on social media.
Tracking and measuring are key to understanding what’s working and what isn’t, and some key metrics to keep track of include:
- Audience size over time (likers, followers etc)
- Audience engagement (number of retweets, shares, mentions etc)
- Referral traffic (how many people visit your site from social media)
- Conversions (sales, leads, contacts etc generated by SMM
7. Day-to-day management
Social media is littered with half-started campaigns from well-meaning companies who failed to plan the day-to-day management. Without processes in place to manage profiles, curate posts, respond to audience enquiries and so on, it will drift to the bottom of the priority list before disappearing altogether.
Half an hour per day can be all it takes to run a successful campaign, but that job needs to be assigned and given proper importance.
By Tim Kitchen, Head Ninja at Exposure Ninja.
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