Many social media proponents try to make the case for social media being cheap and easy, when in fact when you actually try to implement a social media marketing campaign you discover it is anything but.
Just because someone has a ton of Twitter followers and FaceBook friends, does not mean they know how to do the same for a business, or create tangible results.
As an example I have a client with two common, but extremely difficult challenges to overcome:
- They have multiple web properties to promote
- Their existing sites are very commercial, which limits their social media momentum
Consider your own situation, do you have these same issues?
Social Media Resists Corporate and Commercial
- A corporate website or ecommerce store? Good luck getting social media traction, in many social media services “for profit” = “spam”
- Low resources and no dedicated staff time
- Little internal buy-in for adding to already tough workload
This is where the “Social Media Hub” strategy can come into play.
Rather than try to promote your commercial sites in social media, instead you create a new social media friendly web property or blog.
Build a Loyal, Engaged Audience, Funnel Attention
You use this new hub to archive all your social media content such as photographs, audio podcasts and YouTube videos, and build an audience by driving your social media following to engage you at the hub. Essentially you go to where your audience already hangs out, give them engaging content, then get them to follow you back home.
Once you have an audience following you to your hub, then you keep them returning and build their loyalty using email newsletters, blog feeds, community and Twitter/FaceBook groups.
This attention can then be funneled to your ecommerce/service offers, your news articles, events and campaigns.
Although this hub strategy appears to be a lot of work, it is a lot less effort than creating social media targeted content distributed across your existing web properties, and is more likely to gain traction because it is developed as social media friendly from the outset. Rather than raise red flags and label you as a spammer, your following will actually promote your content for you, creating a viral effect, and thus lessening your reliance on your own scarce resources.
Target Specific Audiences, Match Their Needs
You can even create hubs for specific demographics, which through focus creates even better traction, rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all approach.
By addressing the unique requirements of a profile you can taylor the content, media, packaging and presentation to the exact needs and preferences of your most wanted audience, and give them everything they need to get involved and take action.
What you have to remember is that a social media user is unlikely to want to hear from your CEO, they want to hear stories that connect with them, engage with services that address their challenges and answer their questions. Rather than feeling sold to, they should feel at home with your content.
Often that means giving them a safe, specifically designed environment, and only taking them to buy when you have gained their full trust.
This is certainly an interesting outlook on merging social media portals with audiences that companies are trying to reach out to. But I feel that this is clearly the hardest portion of a good marketing campaign to accomplish. There is such a fine line to walk between a company interacting well with its audience through social media and then a company trying way too hard to be “hip” by making themselves appear corny because they decided to have a facebook/twitter/digg account. Personally I find it funny when government groups (here in dc) make twitter accounts and label themselves as being in with “social media” now. Who really cares about what the department of agriculture is currently doing right now?
It’s certainly a model that has its downfalls, but if thought out in a thorough manor, it can be very effective in driving your audience to interact better with your company.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:54 am