How do you make social media marketing work for you?
Bear in mind, social media marketing is just one component of a social business strategy.
Often it just addresses the marketing activities such as brand management, customer engagement and support etc.
And in my work with social media and social enterprise leaders who are seeking to understand all the excitement and potential of this new business environment, we talk about these:
5 social media marketing components
- social media ~ the marketing and branding activities
- social networking ~ the internal and external collaboration activities
- social support ~ the customer support and peer to peer support activities
- social innovation ~ the new innovation processes (such as crowd-sourcing)
- social infrastructure ~ the legal, technical, governance, processes, etc that support the social business
Leaders in social business strategy tend to take a broader view than just social media. They see an entirely new operating environment for the whole enterprise ecosystem, and all the players in it.
However ~ and its ‘a biggy’ ~ my experience suggests 95% of organisations are unable to offer socially useful and interesting stuff (content) which creates meaningful value for people, communities and tomorrow’s generations.
They just don’t ‘get it’. They seem to be stuck in corporate brochure and interrupt advertising frame of mind.
Until they learn how
So this means social media is not working for them, and will not work for 95% of organisations. It’s just not the effective marketing medium many assume it to be ~ until they learn how ~ and are willing to provide meaningful value at no cost to the audience.
Quite a big mental leap for most organisations.
It’s what I help them get their heads around.
Here are some of the initial things I get them to think about doing and providing for their audience.
It’s easier than you may think to develop remarkable ideas for your social media marketing, even when you’re feeling totally uninspired. Just use the following handy list of 36 topics to trigger an idea for your next piece of remarkable free content:
Your Industry
- Create a list of the best industry resources
- Talk about something that has changed in your industry in the last decade (or last 5 years, 3 years, etc.)
- Attend an industry event and blog about it afterward
- “What I Learned About Business From [Your Favorite TV Show]”
- Interview someone well-known in your industry
- Write a post respectfully taking a different position about a post written by someone else in your industry.
- Comment on recent news about your industry, giving your take on it. (Search Google News if necessary to find recent press releases and news stories.)
- Create a poll. Blog the result.
- Create a chart that breaks down a complicated industry problem or issue
- Publish a PowerPoint presentation you gave at an industry event
- Create a list of the Must Follow Twitter people (or Google+ or Facebook Pages) in your industry
- Find an industry-related question on Yahoo Answers or OnStartups and respond on your blog
Your Business and Your Customers
- Why your business is different (and better) than your competition
- A video tutorial showing how to use your most popular product
- The answers to the most common emails or customer support questions you get (make sure you do not reveal anything confidential or customer-sensitive – even inadvertently).
- How you delegate tasks (or what you mucked up by not delegating)
- Answer questions left in your comment section
- Give 5 reasons to sign up to your email newsletter
- How you learned to do what you do, or how you got into your current business
- Highlight your customers, such as a Customer of the Week (or Month) feature. Or, publish a customer testimonial, along with a heart-felt thank you.
- Give something away to one of your blog readers/ customers
- Feature a video detailing a customer’s success with your product
- Share your biggest screw up with a customer and how you made it right
- Explain how customers can connect with you on social media
Get A Bit More Personal
- What have you read lately that inspired/angered you?
- Introduce your staff and what they bring to the table
- Share the best [or worst] decision you made as a business owner
- Your biggest challenge as a business owner
- What you love best about being a business owner. What you don’t like.
- The danger of doing everything by yourself
- Write about the achievement you’re most proud of
- Create a video introducing your company to your community
- Share the local vendors you trust
- Give people a video tour of your building
- Your new baby (whether that’s a real baby, a pet, a new project, the car you’ve been restoring for the past two years, etc.)
- Share 10 things you’re thankful for
The reality is that social media marketing isn’t too hard, but it is time consuming.
Of course there is plenty of automated software out there that will make Tweeting, posting to Facebook, Google Plus or your blog less time consuming, but those are just the tools. The real success stories in social media marketing come only to those who actually nurture relationships.
How do you nurture relationships?
What part of your social media marketing works well for you?
![Inbound Marketing Process, From Start to Finish [Infographic]](http://www.socialstrategy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/hubspot-spokes-330.jpg)
I am a novice in social media marketing. I want to explore new things and your suggestions would really be great help. Thanks!!
OK, Samantha, you’re going to have to gives a bit more to go on than “I am a novice”.
How does a business owner track their results? Are there tools or software that can show true return on investment numbers to meashure their social media? Example: Google Analytics is one great tool to identify online traffic by impeding a code within your website or blog. What other tools are on the market?
Without a doubt, the best of them all his Hubspot. Inbound marketing can be a powerful tool but it only works if it’s targeted correctly. Hubspot can help you do the targeting.
I want to make a facebook page to promote my product. It’s a small business. What page category that’s best and can someone give me some idea how to build a market?
Can you give us a clue what kind of product, what kind of small business and which market do you want to go after?
I am Stumbleupon member from the last month. I want to promote my website through Stumbleupon. Is there anyone who gives me step by step guidance to do SMO on Stumbleupon?
What kind of social network marketing do you do and how effective is it? Thanks
This is the strategy I follow… Inbound Marketing Process, From Start to Finish
I’d like some recommendations for books about social media marketing. Specifically, best practices and examples of how companies are using sites like Facebook/Myspace/Twitter to build their businesses.
Thanks
Here you go… http://www.socialstrategy.co.uk/inbound-marketing-process-infographic.html#comment-175
Do I need to opt for Social Media Marketing process if I would like to optimize my site to get it to the top in search engine ranking.
It may seem odd, but no. They’re actually two different things although one could help the other. You don’t need thousands of loyal friends and followers, to get to Page #1 of the SERPs, but these days, with competition as tough as it is, it would definitely help.
Need assistance doing social networking marketing!
What kind of assistance do you need?
I’ve been attempting to promote my website for sometime now and that i appear to become going nowhere. I have attempted several social networking marketing items and use the “experts”, but nothing appears to operate. Now, I’m just wondering what social networking marketing items I’m able to use to advertise this site?
If you give me a clue, like what kind of site is it, and maybe a URL so I can look for myself, I’ll try and help.
Lately recieved employment offer but am unsure concerning the title? It’s in researching the market and involves mainly social networking marketing but additionally other online PR/marketing methods. What exactly are some typical formal job game titles for individuals doing similar jobs within this area?
We’ll provide Social Networking Marketing services to clients on mainly platform of Facebook, Orkut, Blogger, Scribd along with other sites. How you can charge for that services mainly per addition of the Friend, per marketing email as well as other parameters. Kindly tell me.
Personally, I don’t think that’s a very smart way to look at it, and an even crazier way to pay for a service. A client is looking to pay for advice and help to achieve traffic which converts to sales, not just to buy friends or followers. That’s like selling links or Twitter followers, when what the client really wants customers. Far better to work out a metric that is more related to real results.
i have done BE in electronics and communications and then MBA in marketing and HR. does the job of social media marketing suit my qualification well? i want to know the scope of social media marketing in india and abroad -eg- gulf. howz the money and how much can i grow in this field? please clarify on the growth oppportunities.
thanks.
I am not a creative person who can design something or plan strategies.If I plan to go for social media marketing profile, will I have problems in it?Is SEO knowledge required in this field?
Long answer short ~ Yes. But over time you should find all you need here and if you get stuck you can always give me a shout.
My friend just offered me a job on social media marketing, I don’t know too much about it but I could definitely use a second job to get more money. I was told that I could have a 8-9 (1 hour) job which is very puzzling so someone fill me in on it.
I would like to start using social media to market my nursery/kindergarten in the UK. I was thinking of using Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn…would all of these be useful for my type of business?
Also, how would I best utilise these tools to get the full benefits of social media marketing?
First you have to stop thinking about the technology, social network and channel alternatives. There’s time for that later, when you’ve found out where your audience can be found. I’ve written a several posts lately which may help you since they’re basically written with someone starting up, in mind. The most important for you will be the “Your Social Media Marketing Plan” series which is going to be expanded to a full step-by-step plan, from start to finish.
The starting point is to create and publish high-quality content in words, pictures, audio or video on your own website and on other important sites.
Next, you need to optimise this content for the search engines, so that it appears at the top of organic (i.e. free) search results.
Finally, you share your content via social networks such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, to stimulate viral spread of your message.
Did you read this article?
Did it ring any bells with you?
What is the most trusted Social Media Advertising and Social Media Marketing firm you know of?
This is a trick question, right?
As I look back at many of the business owners and social enterprises that have attended my workshops and conferences, I’m sure they all attend with the best of intentions but, for whatever reason, not all end up creating and implementing successful social media strategies.
I think an interesting exercise would be to analyze 5 that are doing it well and 5 that aren’t and see if there are any patterns in terms of the type of business, type of person, etc.
Off the top of my head I know those that are successfully leveraging social media to grow their business through creating, nurturing and growing relationships, are those people that a) have a ‘social personality’, b) enjoy the technology (or at least don’t have a mental block around it), c) are in it for the long haul and don’t see social marketing as a quick fix that they give up on if it doesn’t produce quantifiable results in 3 months.