Social Media Strategy and Internet Marketing

I want to let you in on a little secret of mine. Are you trying to exploit social media to get people to buy your products? Is the only interaction on Twitter, you telling people about your store sales? Well guess what, you need to rethink your social media strategy.

Social media is not about your marketing efforts, and people will care very little about what you have to say if you continue this route. Want to use social media effectively? Create a personality, be a person, recommend sales that actually matter, tell people about products that are actually good. Be transparent, be honest.

Social media is about people connecting and people will have little care for your blatant marketing efforts. If you plan to spam your users, don’t expect a large following. Instead build a relationships, be friendly, and make friends, and you’ll see your profiles go viral.

Large brands always amaze people when they act human. When Frank (@comcastcares) gave Comcast a personality (someone who cares and is willing to the extra mile to make sure your problem is fixed), the brand saw a change in sentiment. Although, the negativity still lingers, Frank’s efforts have not gone unseen.

Earlier this week I wrote a post about small businesses and social media. I talked about how small businesses shouldn’t waste their time using social media because they already have the relationships larger companies are trying to build. That’s you… the larger company trying to build a relationship.

So remember, would you want to be friends with someone that called you every few hours to tell you about a sale that didn’t really matter to you? Introduce a personality, talk about what you like and don’t hesitate to move away from business. Showing a human side can lead to higher trust in consumers, and over time add weight to your recommendations. Subtlety is key in recommendation marketing.

Do you have examples of companies using social media wrong? How about the worst person to follow on Twitter? Leave a comment, share your thoughts.

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Is your company small enough that someone can pick up the phone and complain to the owner? Do you have a relationship with your biggest clients? Do you know their name, do they know what you look like? If you already have all of this, and most small businesses do, why are you wasting your time on social media?

Social media is a tool to create and manage relationships. For large companies, that are known by their brand, who are generally extremely difficult to get in touch with, social media is the medium for them to show their human side. Corporations are using social media to act more like small businesses.

The average consumer hates calling a support desk and hearing an automated recording. They want to feel that their call counts and want to hear from someone in the company. Businesses, however, realize that hiring employees is costly and want to find a way to maximize efficiency. That’s where they start to lose out.

Small businesses have the ability to keep a strong relationship with their customers. They don’t need to utilize social media to do it.

There is an exception to the rule. Some small businesses can indeed gain from social media.

A businesses that wants to strengthen its brand, social media can help with that. It’s cost effective, in that it’s easy to create a facebook page, or myspace account and just check on it every once in a while.

Small businesses can also use social media in a way that is not time intensive. If you want to create a Twitter account, think of something automated. Create a script that retweets any @’s sent to you, and ask people invite customers to tweet about the length of the line, what they just bought, or how the restaurant or store is.

To truly use social media effectively, requires a big investment of time. Large companies can invest money instead, by hiring someone to care for all online assets. For most small businesses, it isn’t cost effective to hire someone, and usually an employees time can be better spent doing something else.

Once social media matures and more people start to use it, it might become more useful for small businesses to utilize it. For now, build the relationship with a phone or email.

Are you a small business owner that did something extraordinary with social media or found a way to make it more time effective? I’d love to hear about it, please leave a comment and share with all of us!

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One thing a lot of people overlook is that social media marketing requires a lot of creativity. A good new media consultant will take the time to test new things, be constantly learning, and explore different ideas. A lot of “so-called” social media marketers, however, are stuck on social network advertising.

Whenever asked how a social network can be useful to a company, they give a canned response “Make connections, build a fan-base, do some advertising”. That’s bullshit, if you ask me (and you should feel free to ask me).

Social networking can be useful for the aforementioned strategies, but it can be better utilized for research and development. I’ve already made my case against advertising on social media, making connections has limited uses, and what good is a fan-base if it doesn’t do anything.

Major brands can leverage their prestige to put together a private social network, inviting only bloggers, avid fans, and early adopting users. Use the network to connect developers and users, putting your customers directly into the production cycle.

By making the social network part of your production work-flow, you’ve introduced the idea of a back and forth with customers. Ask for their input, what would they like, what could be different. Let them play with the beta version and give you issues and problems, cultivating an open conversation between your network and developers.

I remind people often that having an exceptional product means an easier time marketing it. You can spend all you want on your marketing, but if it isn’t a product consumers want, it won’t sell. Why not invite your customers, to tell you exactly what they want.

The problem with this method of research and development is that it requires an understanding of social media across the company. If the marketers know how to leverage the relationship but the developers hardly update or connect with users, the network will die.

Taking consumer input and ignoring it can be worst than not taking it at all. Unless you’re willing to introduce outside input, do not utilize this advanced social media strategy.

Secondly, it’s only useful for major brands with money to spend on a strong product development. Software companies would find strong returns with this, as would any other company with a nimble product.

Have you been invited to a private social network for research reasons? Are you a part of any product social networks, like Pepsi’s? Disagree with me? I’d love to hear why. Feel free to leave a comment.

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People keep talking about social media marketing. I have no idea what that means and it really makes no sense. It’s just as much social media marketing as putting a billboard up is billboard marketing. Social media is simply the medium upon which we perform, what I like to call, recommendation marketing.

What is Recommendation Marketing?

Recommendation marketing is simply facilitating a way for people to recommend products to one another. Whether it be a friend or a stranger, consumers tend to respond better to a recommendation than an ad.

This recommendation is powerful, because a good review is seldom alone. Usually, the product is followed by many more, meaning that a single person isn’t recommending the product, ma
One of the most obvious ways it’s done, is with the “email-this” button. Inviting users to email products to their friends is the most powerful of recommendation marketing.

It’s important to understand that this doesn’t happen often. However, receiving a recommendation from a friend can lead to a sale.

Think about an offline sale, and the power your friends have over you when they tell you they bought something and really liked it. The only difference is, online when a friend recommends a product it also takes you straight to the store.

Social media also creates a way for us to get ratings from people that have already used the product. Although not as powerful as a friend’s recommendation, people use ratings to rank and finalize their products.

When a market is full of potential items to buy, consumers can turn to user ratings to decide if the product is worth it.

After ratings, social media has introduced the idea of user generated reviews. It’s an interesting phenomenon that consumers are willing to trust, untrained, anonymous reviews, and yet it’s true.

A good product generally has many good reviews too. Some reviewers go much more in depth than others, but each review is a vote of confidence towards the item. Potential consumers count this as a recommendation towards the product, with each one bringing them closer to buying it.

Recommendation marketing is nothing different than what already occurs on the offline world. The idea of social media marketing is misleading, instead it’s just a new way to facilitate something in a new medium.

What makes social media special is that it requires an understanding of the community and its tools. Since it’s a new field, innovation is still possible, so smart marketers stand out. In the end we’re all just using social media to get our products recommended and sold.

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