Transcript Social Media in Business

• The use of social media is growing at an
astronomical rate. With Facebook floating on the
stock exchange at a mind boggling $104 billion.
• However, there is no denying the power of social
media and the impact that it can have on the
business of marketing.
• Social media websites such as Facebook,
Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest represent a huge
opportunity for businesses to grab the attention
of customers while simultaneously building a
brand image.
• There are many tactics that businesses employ
to do this, like the creation of brand profiles on
social networks such as Facebook fan pages
and branded podcasts and apps.
• Social media platforms provide the perfect
opportunity to take advantage of word of mouth
and to see it spread.
• People are connected on a global scale and
casually participate in each others lives through
online observation. Something as simple as
“Liking” a brand on Facebook can spread virally
very quickly throughout the various social media
channels providing rapid exposure of products.
• Since individuals trust the opinions of their peers far more
than advertisements, millions of people review products and
services directly via social media sites, using video through
Youtube, which in many cases is shared to other social media
websites.
• As a consequence, the public increasingly look to social
media to find reviews on various products and services to
help them to make buying decisions.
• Companies even provide products to popular Youtube users
to review for their subscribers as well as create their own
branded Youtube channels.
• Companies may see the spread of negative
reviews about their products or services as a
bad thing, when they can use it to their
advantage.
• By utilizing social media effectively, companies
can reach out to dissatisfied customers directly,
within their own social media environment, to
find innovative ways of improving the product or
service they have on offer.
• When creating a social media marketing
strategy, it is worth thinking very carefully about
who is being targeted.
• There will be people within your social networks
who may not necessarily be customers, but who
nevertheless can have a massive impact on your
marketing efforts.
• Forrester Analyst Augie Ray broke the various types
of social media influencers into three distinct
categories:
– Social Broadcasters (at the top)
– Mass Influencers
(middle)
– Potential Influencers (bottom of the pyramid)
• More than 80% of that population is made up of
“potential influencers”.
• It is worth making the effort to identify who these
people are in your network and connect with them to
attract shares and likes which ultimately help to
spread your brand name.
• Social media has had, and is continuing to have
a huge influence on business, marketing and on
how businesses engage with their target market.
• The use of social media to share and engage
with others continues to grow at an astounding
rate, so it would be wise for any business to
develop and implement a sustainable social
media strategy in order to successfully take
advantage of this rapidly changing environment.
• For businesses in any industry, the key to success is
knowing your audience.
• Social media makes this possible, and easier to
accomplish than ever. With tools like Facebook, you
can learn the dominant languages spoken among
your social media audience, as well as their age and
gender.
• This knowledge can help you cater campaigns and
product offers to your target audience, which will
provide you a better return on investment.
• Geo-targeting is an effective way to send your message out
to a specific audience or demographic based on their
location.
• Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have tools that
allow you to communicate the right kind of content to your
audience.
• For example, in Hootsuite you can target by ‘Location’,
‘Language’, ‘Age’, ‘Gender’, ‘Relationship status’,
‘Interested in’, and ‘Education’ on Facebook, and
‘Country(s)’ on Twitter.
• For example, if you want to send out a post to people who
speak Spanish, geo-targeting is an easy and effective way
to do it.
• Social networks like Twitter allow small businesses
to locate their current customers or seek out
potential customers.
• For example, if you open a new coffee shop in the
neighborhood, you can create a geo search in
Hootsuite to locate anyone tweeting about needing
a morning cup of coffee within your area.
• After locating those tweeting about coffee, you can
start reaching out to them, and invite them to come
and try your products in your shop.
• Social media for business gives you instant access
to positive or negative feedback, which provides you
with valuable insights on the customer perspective.
• For example, if you launch a new product and
share it on social media, you’ll instantly learn what
your customers think of it.
• Another way to gain customer perspective with
social media is by learning how they use your
product; brands often base new products or services
on their customers’ original ideas.
• With social media monitoring you can gain key
information on your competitors, therefore improving
your market intelligence.
• This kind of intel will allow you to make strategic
business decisions in order to stay ahead of your
competition.
• For example, you can create search streams in
Hootsuite to monitor mentions of your competitor’s name
or product. Based on your search results, you can
improve your business to offer something your
competitors are missing.
• So you built a website for your company, now what?
• One of the best benefits of social media for
business is using it to increase your website traffic.
• Not only does social media help you direct people
to your website, but the more social media shares
you receive, the higher your search ranking will be.
• In the past, marketers faced the challenge of
ensuring their content reaches their customers in the
shortest possible time. With the help of social media,
sharing content got easier and faster.
• When you use social media for business, specifically
for sharing content about your business or for
content curation, all you need to do is simply share it
on your brand’s social network accounts.
• But keep in mind that getting your customers to
share your content with their followers means you
need to make sure your social media content aligns
to your brand and interests your audience.
• Social media is an easy way to generate leads.
• For example, Twitter ads has allows a company to
scale, increase reach, and fuel demand generation.
– ungated content - free content requiring no email address for
access.
– gated content - free content requiring an email.
• Sharing gated content on social media is a great
way for any company to generate leads.
• Social media is great for creating meaningful
relationships with your customers.
• For example, social media allows tourism brands to
create dialogue with travelers, therefore creating
relationships with customers before, during, and
after they have booked a trip with the company.
• This kind of social media dialogue between brands
and customers is something traditional advertising
will never achieve.
• The costs associated with advertising strategies are
a lot higher with traditional methods.
• Recently, marketing departments across companies
started hiring community managers to increase
brand awareness and reach through social media.
These community managers foster relationships
with online audiences in different regions.
• This helps to make sure a company can keep
expanding the reach of the brand to those regions
and maintain relationships with key stakeholders.
• Marketers are faced with an array of new choices with
the rapid increase in the use of social media.
• The main disadvantage of using social networks as
marketing tools is the time required to navigate and
manage the intricacies of each medium.
• Social media networks come in different forms and
settings and each requires its own distinctive approach
to engagement and individualization.
• As the name implies, social media is interactive, and
successful, two-way exchanges take commitment.
• The nature of marketing changes in social networks, with
the focus placed on establishing long-term relationships
that can turn into more sales.
• Somebody has to be responsible to monitor each
network, respond to comments, answer questions and
post product information the customer deems valuable.
• Businesses without a service to manage these social
networks will find it difficult to compete.
• Some avid social network members feel that
marketing and advertising is intrusive to their
privacy.
• Many users feel uneasy about sharing personal
information and place social networks low in security
confidence.
• The practice of shaping ads and campaigns off
member information collected from social
networking sites has stirred a wave confidentiality
controversy, and marketing efforts can be met with
bitterness and offensive reactions.
• One aspect of social networking that is especially
damaging to marketing campaigns is negative post
responses.
• Unhappy customers or industry competitors are able to
post disparaging or offensive pictures, posts or videos
and there is not much a marketer can do to prevent
these occurrences.
• Still, negative or other non-constructive feedback cannot
be ignored.
• Social networks must be managed efficiently enough to
immediately respond and neutralize harmful posts.
• Most social networks are free to join and operate, but
without paid advertising to firmly target their customer
base, local businesses often end up with followers who
are not local.
• The best use of marketing through social networking
sites is to collect information from customers regarding
their interests and motivations for repeat business.
• Social marketing can fall flat when customers and clients
are not around to frequent local businesses and
accurately provide data through using the service.
• To some extent, e-commerce options can optimize this
disadvantage by offering online products or services.
• Another potential downside to social network
marketing is that it easily attracts current loyal
customers, but much more effort is required to attain
new business.
• Of course, this is excellent to rouse existing patrons
into making repeated purchases.
• Current patrons can influence new consumers to try
services and products. The marketing balancing act
is to avoid pure advertising that social consumers
detest and create relationship bonds.
• The wrong online brand strategy can doom a
company, and put you at a huge viral social
disadvantage.
• Just ask Sony.
• Sony had a great platform in the PS3 but they chose
to neglect the value of effective social media and as
a result the sales of the Microsoft Xbox soared while
Sony’s always remained number two.
• If your company decided to start a blog, twitter feed,
or Facebook page, then designate someone to
maintain it.
• There is nothing worse than going to visit a
corporate blog in September and the last post was
in June. It tells potential customers that if you are
too busy to maintain your blog then you are
probably too busy to provide them with customer
support.
• Blogs and Twitter feeds tend to take on the persona of their authors
and this is a bad, bad thing!
• It is not an individual’s feed or blog, it belongs to the company and
they have designated you as the representative to post.
• Many Social media marketers forget this and think that they are the
blog or feed. This will only end in a bad way.
• Corporate blogs and feeds should be agnostic. They need to be
interesting and represent the company, but they should be designed
that authors can be swapped out with a limited drop in following.
• Social Media is a marketing tool that needs serious content. No one
cares that you are in Switzerland for a conference and seeing the
local sites.
• Keep it relevant.
• Getting involved with Social Media is very time
consuming.
• A company may need to designate an individual to
constantly feed their pages and profile with relevant
content. This individual also has to monitor
comments and respond to questions.
• For small companies this can be a serious
problem as they need all hands on deck to keep
the company afloat.
• The commitment of time is why many small
companies choose not to engage in social
media to boost their marketing efforts.
• They realize their limitations and simply do
without. This is where an outside consultant
becomes invaluable.
• Social Media Marketing is a long term strategy.
• Seeing a return could take anywhere from a few
months to a year before a company sees the
benefits of increased customer loyalty and sales.
• Any time a company opens itself up to open criticism
there is the possibility of negative comments about a
product or service.
• Consumers want to know that the company that
they bought the product from is fixing any issues
quickly and listening to them.
• Above all Social Media is a fantastic tool if used properly,
but it takes time and dedication.
• Imagine a scenario where something goes wrong with a
product line. Social Media can be used to get your
corporate apology and statement out extremely quickly
to do damage control and get a statement out before
your customers start forming a negative opinion.
• It is a great tool, but every tool has to have safety
precautions when using it.
• Ultimately, deciding if you should employ social networks as
part of your marketing plan comes down to what is right for
your business.
• Can you afford to commit the time and effort to reap the
rewards?
• Social Media is definitely not a “Band-Aid” solution to a poor
marketing plan, or to give you a sudden surge of sales.
• Social Media is a committed effort to building relationships
and a client base for the long haul.
• What are customers saying about your products and
services? Is it good or bad?
• Improve your messaging strategy based on realtime feedback of what customers are saying.
• Trump the competition by understanding their
customers’ needs and improving your product
offerings.
• Are there signs of interest in particular products or
services that your industry hasn’t been able to fulfill?
• Listening to what customers want can lead to your
next innovative product or big deal.
• Manage customer complaints and improve
communication channels to disgruntled customers.
• Ensure customers that you are listening to their
challenges and needs.
• Engage with your customers to encourage loyalty
•
Big data essentially refers to the conglomeration of as much customer-
related information you can get your hands on.
•
The concept behind its importance is that the more you know about your
customers, the more you can connect with them -- and therefore make them
more loyal customers.
•
For example, if we can combine proximity data with search history and
purchase history with social media comments or discussions, we might be
able to orchestrate addressable messaging to drive a prospect into a store
or click and call without being "interruptive" to that consumer.
•
Wearable technology, like Google Glass, changes the way we think about constant connectivity. In fact,
they just announced broader distribution and sales channels of Google Glass, and it will not be long
before major eyewear brands license the technology.
•
Companies must make sure all of their content, sites, and certainly all of their social media platforms are
ready to take advantage of this shift.
•
For social media, this means not just posting text heavy content, for example, but utilizing video, tappable
post elements, and other tools to increase the richness of the customer experience and interaction
•
They should look beyond text-focused social media platforms and consider adding some that are more
visually centered to the mix. Their complete strategy should engage users in the mobile experience and
encourage them to generate user content (pictures, videos, and reviews) and to share it.
• Smart marketers have long worked to integrate
marketing efforts across media vehicles and
channels.
• Brands will focus on mobile interactivity because
that is where consumers spend more of their time.
•
• Instead of looking at social media as simply a way to
communicate and sell to your customers, you should
look at it as a valuable way to connect and build
loyalty with your customers.
• Doing this within the context of a layer on top of all
your marketing efforts (online, offline, in-store)
makes social marketing central, not separate to your
brand communication.
• Stop promoting to them and start relating with them
leveraging your marketing communications efforts
all the while.
• What better way to do this than via social media?
•
It is no secret today that content is the currency of visibility.
•
It is through relevant, useful, and informative content that companies can reach
customers and even increase results.
•
However, the challenge for many businesses is bandwidth. The ability to easily and
efficiently create and publish content has traditionally been a big stumbling block to
content marketing.
•
New technologies will emerge that will help businesses automate content creation
tasks by empowering and equipping employees and other customer facing entities to
easily create/acquire, format, and publish content.
•
Brands that win in the future will be able to "power up" their network of employees, franchisers, or
dealers to increase visibility and sales.
•
We will move from the "wisdom of the crowd" to "the power of the crowd."
•
As the internet becomes a crowded, content-filled place, it will be increasingly hard for businesses
to be visible on social media. Coordinated strategies, particularly national to local marketing, will
provide an advantage to businesses that can mobilize their networks first.
•
These changes are not really radical so much as they are a logical evolution of social media
today. They are happening in part because fads come and go but also largely because social
media has finally found its place in the smart marketing world.
•
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