Integrating Social Media Marketing: A Guide
Along with a lot of other companies you’re probably considering, or have maybe already started, dipping a toe in the social media marketing waters. A strong social media strategy that’s executed with honesty and care can boost your brand image and reputation with a potential audience of hundreds of millions of users. It can drive traffic to your website, help generate leads and enquiries and grow your marketing database.
But a social media strategy cannot exist in isolation. A company which is generating buzz on social networks, blogs and other social media platforms has to be prepared, and have the infrastructure in place to deal with the potential upturn in interest. In addition, treating your new community of followers and friends without respect or failing to value them adequately can lead to a social media marketing strategy blowing up in your face.
Integrating social media into your overall marketing and customer relations strategies involves consideration of a number of different convergences and overlaps. Here are a few hints and tips for making sure that your social media campaign is working with and not against the best interests of the business:
Be Present
It’s no good building a social media presence if you’re not going to use it. Don’t just log into your accounts once a week to post all your new content and then leave them alone the rest of the time. Users will quickly wise up to the fact that despite your ‘presence’, nobody’s actually there. Abandoned Facebook pages and Twitter accounts make it look like you’ve given up the ghost. Stagger your posts and release new information as when you get it. This will not only let people know you’re engaged but it’ll prevent you being scooped by other sources.
Another good reason to be constantly engaged is that your present customers may try to engage you with problems and concerns via social media. Monitoring who’s mentioning you and how will help you engage with customer problems quickly. Not responding to customer concerns looks terrible to other users and, if the issue’s serious enough, could prompt them to mount a campaign against you.
Be Savvy
Use social media updates to back up offline campaigns. Social platforms are a great way to maintain buzz around your offline campaigns by introducing online only special offers and promotions that tie-in or simply by responding to users who mention your offline activities.
Social media obviously has massive potential for integration with your online strategy. Use links to bring traffic to your sites and make sure they’re working from an SEO perspective – that they’re active, they take users to the right part of your site and that they’ll find strong content when they get there.
There are plenty of tools already available – and plenty more being released all the time – to help you track your messages as they propagate through the social sphere and the sentiment that they generate. Using these tools can help you plan and react to new developments and give you an idea of what ROI you’re getting from your social media activity.
Don’t Be Spammy
Think of the social media world as one large, ongoing conversation. Don’t be the bigmouth in the corner spouting on endlessly about themselves – it’s annoying and you’ll find yourself shunned pretty quickly. Only post when you have something to say: you’ll only be trusted by other users if you’re making a valuable contribution to the conversation and your content will only be shared if other users trust you. Your ultimate goal should be to become a known authority on a particular subject or range of subjects so that when you post this kind of content people take notice. Use your offline activity to back this up and generate opportunities to hold forth on your specialist subjects.
Following these simple guidelines should keep you on the path to social media stardom and away from social media pariah status. If you’re floundering or don’t have the confidence to get started yourself but you’re still determined to get social, hiring in a consultant to show you the ropes and build you a strategy could be the way forward.
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