Social Media Marketing

 As you can see, in order to reach the millions that are talking about your company online, you need to start talking to them.  Even though engaging in these online conversations requires transparency and a human voice, no company should jump on the social media bandwagon without a clear social media marketing plan. 

You wouldn't spend millions on a nationwide TV ad campaign without researching your audience, defining your goals, and taking time to figure out what works.  Social media marketing requires just as much planning and strategy.

It's easy to just throw up content online and hope it gets picked up.  Since there are so many social media tools out there and so many places where consumers are talking, companies can waste hundreds of thousands of dollars and precious hours experimenting--hoping they reach their audience, hoping they will get people talking,  hoping their efforts are received positively, and hoping their campaign goes viral.

 

Analysis

You already know your audience.  You've been researching them for years.  You know exactly who they are and where they are.  You've done surveys and market research.  You know their likes and wants, their buying habits, etc.  You know exactly what messages reach them, and which ones they respond to positively.  So it's time to make those print ads digital, right?

Not anymore - Your online audience is different.  They've been given the power to control the messages and they've run with it.  Before you take print ads and throw them online with some pay-per-click banner ad campaign, it may be worth investing some resources in figuring out how to effectively put this audience to work for you.

The first step is to figure out who is talking about your company online.  Where are they talking?  And most importantly,  what are they saying about you?  If you do nothing else, you must ask these key questions:

1) What networks are my target audiences interacting within?

2) What is the level of interaction my target audience is having within these networks?

3) What conversations already exist about our company? Within which networks?

4) What type of interactions do users have within each network?

5) What are other brands doing?

Evaluate your resources

Social media marketing is not passive.  It requires actually engaging with your audience and continually contributing valuable content.  Joining the conversation takes time and resources. 

Does your executive board have time to contribute daily to a blog?  Do you have writer's on staff that could do it instead?  Does your staff have time to send Tweets every few hours, answer questions, respond to blog comments, get to know people in relevant social networks? 

Define Your Goals

Now that you know what your audience is talking about and have defined your internal resources, you need to set goals for your social media marketing campaign. 

You can’t measure success without definite goals.  You need to know what you hope to get out of the campaign.  If you’re an international company creating an internal social network, would 50% participation satisfy you?  If you’re a national brand, would 10,000 hits to your website be enough for a positive ROI?  Is it more important to have 10% of your visitors buy now or for there to be 100,000 visitors who keep coming back?  A solid set of objectives will help define the marketing strategy.

Strategic Planning

Any time your organization spends money, thought has gone into how and why.  With the amount of resources required to do social media marketing successfully, there is not reason why you shouldn't spend much of this time in the planning stages, figuring out how to interact efficiently.

You've figured out what people are saying--and know what you want them to say instead.  But how do you get them talking in your favor?

This time should be spent figuring out exactly what social media tools will be used to meet your goals.  You've done the research and you've discovered thousands of blogs and social networks where your audience is interacting.  But you can't be everywhere!  So decide which social sites you need to join in order to effectively reach the most people within your target audience.  Can you put bloggers to work for you?  Are you going to engage with people in social networks?  If so, which ones?  And what are you going to say?  Can you say the same thing everywhere?  Do the terms of service allow it?  Have you thought about SEO?  Are there certain keywords and phrases you need to rank for?  Are there ones you don't want to have anything to do with?

Execution

Now that you have a clear direction, it's time to start talking.

Measurement & Evaluation

Measurement tactics are just as important as the tactics you employ to carryout the campaign and should be aligned with overall campaign goals.  For example, since social network engagement is largely a brand-building initiative, measurement is likely to be more qualitative in nature.  Your site may have a million visitors a day, but if your bounce rate is 90% none of those visitors matter.  Rather than measuring success by the number of page views, you may want to measure the number or percentage of positive audience reactions and feedback.

Exactly what you should measure is going to be different for every campaign but some examples include:

• Site Traffic
  
• Visitors
• Pages views per visitor
• Time spent on site
• Referring sources
  
• Audience Participation
• Blog comments
• Content sharing (i.e. email forwards)
  
• Content Consumption
  
• Social bookmarking
• Feed subscribers
• Profile Stats
  
• Follows, Friends, and Fans
• Profile views
• Wall posts/Pings
• Keyword share
  
• Search rankings
  

These measurements will help you determine what tactics worked and which ones were a waste of time. 

Finally

• Not Listening and Not Responding
• Schmoozing Instead of Connecting
• No Transparency/Authenticity
• Using Social Media as a Channel
• Applying Traditional Marketing Tactics
• Thinking Anyone Cares About Your Brand
• 10 more Fantastic ways to f-- it up
• Social Media Mistakes You Should NEVER Make
• Worst Practices in Social Media