Social Media Marketing: Unleash Its Potential

Posted 03.16.2009 by Craig Saper

Unleash the Vast Potential of this Thrilling Medium

Social media is perhaps the most exciting, fastest-growing innovation in internet usage today, but why should marketers care? You may see how social media can work for youth-oriented products or big-name brands with lots of emotional resonance, but is it something that your company should be using? Maybe you’ve been marketing with banner and search ads for years, but you don’t see how social media really fits in.

Social media can work for your company — if you understand the right way to use it to your advantage.

From Niche to Mainstream

Social media is media that facilitates socializing — that is, it is a two-way communication employed to share ideas and send messages. Social media started in the late 1980s with the inception of the chat room, a forum for users to share their thoughts on a multitude of subjects. Later innovations, such as one-on-one instant messenger software, allowed people to use the internet for quick, to-the-point communications that previously would have required a phone call. The need for longer-form sharing spurred the development of the weblog, or more simply, the “blog.”

But the real explosion of social media occurred in the early 2000s, as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites provided one central meeting place for networking and sharing that could then be subdivided into almost an infinite number of affinity subgroups. These sites gave people the ability to not only communicate, but also to identify, build, and manage networks of relationships among people with similar interests.

In fact, these three networks today have a combined total of more than 268 million registered users, a significant share of the world’s online population. Social media soon expanded beyond networking profiles with the launch of multimedia sharing (sites such as YouTube and Flickr) and social bookmarking (Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon). Each of these applications provided for more efficient and compelling two-way communication, all from the convenience of any device that has internet access.

Initial adopters skewed young, but since 2005 social media has attracted baby boomers in increasing numbers, providing a larger engaged market share and a significant facility for integrated marketing. Today, web applications (such as Twitter) and corporate blogs alike allow for two-way communication between businesses and customers as well as businesses and other businesses.

Virtually everyone in the world who has internet access is a member of the social media community whether they know it or not. You are engaging in social media when rating a book on Amazon.com; when searching for the correct way to clean your computer monitor on Apple’s message board; or when video-chatting on Skype with a prospective client in Dubai.

Target and Talk

Social media offers easy, compelling tools to build and manage relationships. Whether it is targeting future investors or getting back in touch with a high school comrade, social networks have become a standard for managing and building peer-to-peer relationships. In fact, a recent study showed that 74 percent of global social media users utilize social networks to contact friends. This community-building plays an integral role in social media success.

Social media can actually be more targeted and more trackable than traditional face-to-face networking channels. There is a plethora of search and analytics utilities available that makes it easy to identify and communicate with potential customers. These “filter & find” targeting tools provide more dual-sided, educated relationship construction.

When engaging online, people will unsurprisingly self-select the affinity groups they’d fit into. These selections will influence where people spend their time online. For instance, if I were a 38-year-old male IT Director from Boston, Massachusetts, I could potentially fit in to the following affinity groups: Age (Gen X), Geographical (Boston), Business (Information Technology), Interests (Boston Red Sox), Hobbies (Traveling & Sailing). The social media sphere is constructed of distinct communities particularly encompassing engaged, passionate, like-minded people. This aspect of self-selection, and its resulting targeted audiences, makes the channel an exceptionally valuable addition to the marketing mix.

In addition, extraordinarily compelling is the breadth of reach that social media offers. Of an estimated 272 million users of the World Wide Web, 57 percent have joined a social network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content. This startling fact proves that this channel offers a cost-effective solution for most marketing, sales, and consumer targeting campaigns. The marketing industry has for years been following the consumer to the places they gather. Instead of following, now is the time to gather with the consumer. Instead of communicating “to” them, marketers can communicate “with” their audience with the goal of building a close relationship, so the consumer will begin advocating for you and your product. If feeling compelled, brand loyalists will write reviews, author blog posts, tweet their assessment, post videos, and more — all about you and the useful good or service you provide. This is the birth of viral marketing.

Anytime, Anywhere

The World Wide Web never sleeps. As a global entity, you can now market your good or service simultaneously in a dozen time zones. Accordingly, you shouldn’t only be active from 9 to 5 — people are communicating with each other all the time, making countless decisions out of office, especially with the growth of mobile devices that allows internet access anywhere. Showing that you are active during “off-hours” can not only make you more personable, but also increase your chances of active lead generation and networking.

Accessible and Credible

So now you understand what social media is and where it fits into society, but without a proper grasp of the “do’s and don’ts,” your campaign could very well go awry. As previously mentioned, this channel is a two-way street. It was conceived to put two people on the same communicative level as each other.

• Converse online as if you were talking with a friend in person. The less robotic and more personal you appear, the more compelling you are. Be yourself, be friendly and approachable, and most of all, invite others into your life and business. This is an incredibly simple tactic, yet widely ignored.
• Create profiles on every relevant web community you can and monitor all of them on a consistent basis. Naturally, the more you participate, the more followers you will acquire.
• Conversely, react and respond to conversations initiated by others that affect you; for example, if you come across someone frustrated with your business or product, publicly acknowledge the issue and attempt to resolve it. This type of reputation management is actively employed on a daily basis by B2B and B2C companies like Dell, Sun Microsystems, JetBlue, and Comcast Cable on the Twitter social media site. Not only does the irritated consumer feel exonerated, the public resolution creates excellent PR.
• Be interesting. The companies that join a social network and talk purely about business and what they can offer the customer miss the central principle of social media. This is not the place for a formal sales pitch, but rather a channel for relationship-building and public communication.
• Offer incentives. For instance, Zappos — the web’s largest shoe retailer — has recently offered a special VIP store with free guaranteed overnight shipping exclusively to their social media audience. Companies like Rubbermaid and Sweet Leaf Tea regularly run interactive real-time contests with prizes. Access to a knowledge base, exclusive news, and insights can be just as desirable as promotions and freebees — especially from B2B companies.
• Be transparent. Wherever you lend your presence online, use your real name, your real title, and reveal what you do. One would rather converse with Jennifer, Marketing Manager at Company ABC, than just with Company ABC, Inc. This builds interest and trust.
• Make it a company-wide effort. Don’t just delegate an intern to man and build your social media presence; associates, directors, VPs, upper-level executives should all play a role in your web strategy. Flood the sphere with your brand and message — not only will you connect with social media patrons, but you’ll also be more optimized for search engine presence. Your blog posts, Facebook pages, and Wiki articles will potentially begin to show up as top results on Google and Yahoo! — further increasing leads and eventually, sales.
• Actively measure and analyze your effort. Tracking your presence, audience, campaign reception, and brand awareness (both quantitatively and qualitatively) will rationally communicate your relative strengths and weaknesses. The accurate analysis of these metrics can result in constructive adjustments within your social media campaign, insuring that your investments in time and money are justified.

Social media represents huge potential for marketers based on its reach, its targeting potential, and its forum for customers to interact in an immediate and personal way with your company. Nevertheless, it should not be employed as a standalone tactic, but it should be coupled with other marketing efforts (on- and off-line). Tocquigny has a thriving all-in-one social media practice that offers strategic planning, search engine optimization, pay-per-click, media buying, and design. Let us take the hard work off your shoulders and cultivate a social media campaign that fits your company and appeals to your audience.

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