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Social Media Marketing
What You Need to Know Before You Start
The Nature of the Fun-Loving Beast
“Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels, and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention, and massive amounts of traffic.”
Dosh Dosh
Now that you have a solid understanding of online marketing, we can move on to social media marketing. Let’s break down the phrase “social media marketing.”
•Marketing: Promoting a product or a service to increase sales
•Social media: Online platforms where people connect and communicate
Some examples of online platforms are blogs; social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+; and YouTube.
Most people abuse social media platforms. They use them to push their message on people and try to dominate the market. Remember our discussion about the mistake of going against the grain? This is a great example. Marketers who abuse social media usually do so because they are used to using traditional marketing methods like television. You can’t talk back to the TV. (Well, you can, but it doesn’t get you very far.) With social media, talking back is the whole point; it’s a conversation, not a monologue.
What Social Media Is All About
I chose to explore the social web as a business framework after reading Tim Berners-Lee’s talk honoring Vannevar Bush at MIT in 1995, excerpted in part here:
I [have] a dream that the web could be less of a television channel and more of an interactive sea of shared knowledge [and that] by working on this knowledge together we can come to better understandings.
This crystallized for me what social media is all about, conveying the importance of participating with rather than attempting to impress upon your customers. The social web is a place where people gather and share to improve their condition. As marketers, it is our obligation to respect this fundamental premise. It is our gain when we do and our loss when we don’t.
Dave Evans,
author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day
Chapter 1 discusses how traditional marketing has evolved over the years. Now let’s take a look at a table of descriptive words and phrases that compares traditional marketing and online market-ing—specifically, social media marketing.
Why Social Media Marketing? Why Bother?
According to multiple surveys and studies, between 49 and 90 percent of web users have made a purchase based on recommendations they received through a social media site—an impressive percentage even at the low end. Yet roughly only 25 percent of businesses have a Facebook page, and many fewer use any other social media platforms. Marketers are missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with potential customers. Social media marketing is a good idea for the following three reasons.
1. Social media sites are where the people are. Let’s say there was an expo happening with 750 million attendees, and I offered you a free booth. Would you take it? I sure hope you would. That’s how many people are using Facebook. If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s fourth largest, smaller than the United States but larger than Indonesia. And it costs nothing to join.
2. Trust in advertising continues to erode. Let’s face it. We trust our friends more than we trust what the nice folks on TV tell us. You can either be that friend or you can be the voice on TV that gets ignored. The call is yours. But you can’t fake it. Because of the transparent nature of social media, you can’t really hide who you are for long. Let’s say a company pretends that they value their customers more than anything. Then they turn around and treat a customer badly. That customer has a voice. Chances are she has a Facebook profile or Twitter account. Even if she doesn’t, she may tell a friend who does.
3. People are already talking about you. That last example tells us something else, too: people are already talking about your products, your service, and your company. It’s inevitable. Social communities are breeding grounds for interaction. The only choice you have is whether you join the conversation. Every individual who interacts with your company has the potential to become a champion or a critic. You get to determine which one they become.
Two of the most powerful benefits of social media for small business are access and prominence. Tap your blog to demonstrate thought leadership (aka prominence) in your niche, and then leverage Twitter and Facebook to expand the conversation, facilitate evangelism, and grow your “following.” As an example, Twitter lets you find highly relevant conversations with prospective clients, vendors, mentors, and colleagues in real time; join in, demonstrate value, and then, if appropriate, offer solutions to any problems being discussed. Do this on a regular basis and you’ll grow a sizable tribe primed for your products and services.
Jonathan Fields,
author of Career Renegade
Social Media Marketing Tenets
Before we delve into the nitty-gritty of specific social media platforms and how to make the most of them, let’s look at the tenets of social media marketing. These principles do not change, regardless of the technology in question.
•Respect other people online. Whether you’re using email or instant messaging (IM) or social media: (1) don’t spam people, (2) don’t blindly add people to your email list, and (3) respect people’s “virtual space.” Basically, follow the Golden Rule; if it would annoy you, it will doubly annoy another. The same common rules of etiquette that apply offline apply online, too. Would you ever run up to someone, hand him your business card, and run away? I hope not. Yet people often do the online equivalent: post their website link—their virtual business card—blindly on people’s online spaces.
•Efforts to control or manipulate will backfire. Did you hear the story of how the CEO of a top grocery chain got busted for pretending to be a customer and praising the company in forums? It was quite a scandal. Once his identity was made public, it was all over. It’s next to impossible to manipulate people online without getting caught. And because there are so many better ways to go about influencing people positively, there is no need to control the conversation.
•Don’t chase everything new under the sun. This is a common mistake many people make when first starting out. Remember “shiny toy syndrome”? Resist the temptation to grab at everything. Do your research, pick one or two methods, and work at them consistently. This is the reason I am not covering every social media channel that’s out there in this book. I’ve chosen instead to focus on the ones that I believe provide the highest return on investment.
•Traffic is nice but should not be the only goal of social media marketing. Some people out there look at social media marketing only as a means of attracting traffic to their websites. Although traffic is a great goal and easily measurable (it falls under Attract), it should not be your only goal. Remember, you can and should use social media to transform as well. It is a great way to share your stories, listen to feedback, and cultivate relationships with potential customers and future partners and vendors.
•It’s a good idea to use your real name. Nine out of ten times, it’s best to use your real name—even if you represent a company. Why? People don’t want to be friends with McDonald’s or Dell. They want to connect with others like them. We cover later when it is advisable to use your business name.
•You have to be proactive. This is not the same as being pushy. I hear the following a lot: “I am on Facebook and LinkedIn, but it doesn’t seem to do much.” My response is usually: “What exactly did you expect ‘it’ to do?” It’s like saying you went to a networking event that didn’t do anything for you. The real question here is what did you do at the networking event? Did you reach out to two people and have a conversation? Social media is only what you make of it.
Social Media Marketing Checklist
The following is a list of what you must have in place (or be in the process of putting in place) before you start with social media marketing. Remember—social media marketing is only part of the bigger picture.
A good BOD: You must have a keen understanding of your brand, outcome, and differentiator.
A website: Remember EMS. Your website must educate, market, and sell!
Content: Ideally, your website will include a blog, because a blog makes it easy to update your site regularly with fresh content, but however you update, just make sure you do. Fresh content increases the likelihood visitors will stick around and turn into consumers.
An email capture mechanism: Don’t send people to your website unless you have a way to follow up with them. Ideally, this means collecting their email addresses so you can send them relevant content in the form of a newsletter or bulletin in the future.
Have all four? You’re ready to rock and roll!
Visibility + Credibility = Real Social Media Success
By using social media to position yourself as an expert in your field, you’ll stand out from competitors, generate buzz, and increase your value. To do this, you must market yourself as a highly visible, ideally matched source of information for your audience.
Always focus on providing valuable content, boosting your credibility, and building trust. When done correctly, you’ll turn followers into loyal fans who practically do your marketing for you.
Value, credibility, and trust. Add those three things to a high level of visibility and you have the social media recipe for success.
Nancy Marmolejo,
Viva Visibility (www.VivaVisibilityBlog.com)
Which Technologies and Networks Do I Use?
Although there are thousands of social networking sites and technologies out there, in this book, I will be focusing here only on the four that I have found to be the best for marketing purposes:
•Facebook (www.facebook.com)
•Twitter (www.twitter.com)
•LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com)
•Google+ (www.plus.google.com)
I also cover certain technologies that complement social media marketing, including online video.
There’s really only one way “social” and “marketing” can coexist happily. And that’s if you take off your marketing hat when thinking about social media marketing and, instead, think like an average user of social media.
Allow yourself to become engrossed in the user experience on social media sites. Watch for things like how the particular “culture” of each site is constructed and maintained. Watch for things people say and do that would lead nicely into relationship building, which leads to new clients, branding, or product sales.
Since it is impossible to completely forget that you are a marketer, you will still pick up on great ways to increase business through social media, but you must think like a user first and a marketer second.
Social media users are there for anything but advertisements and pushy marketing. But make no mistake about the fact that marketing is being done successfully on these sites. It’s called social marketing for a reason, and it’s a very different thing that you can only see when you have your user goggles on.
Once you understand the main purpose of any social site, you can do a lot to increase your traffic and grow your business with social media in ways that don’t turn off users but that engage, intrigue, and excite them.
Jack Humphrey,
For each of the four networking sites, I’ll tell you:
1. Why to bother with it
2. How to use it
3. Do’s and don’ts
4. Specific marketing tactics
Ready? Let’s get started!