Social media is about MUCH more than the tactics
This instagram has been doing the rounds during February, there's a fair chance you've seen it?
I like it! It has been shared tens of thousands of times and rightly so. Anything that simplifies our increasingly complex marketing approaches has to be a good thing. Or does it? It maybe oversimplifies, it it's applied to social media marketing?
Well for one thing - it perpetuates the myth that social updates from people or brands are just broadcast, rather than interactive. If I were to grab a marker to explain social media interactions it would look more like this:
From social tactics to social strategy
But a bigger issue I fear, it's yet another…
To celebrate the launch of our new social media strategy guide, Dave and I thought we'd share our top 21 tips to help with social media planning. We'd love to hear your thoughts from recent experience, too…
This post follows on from the new research on how businesses use social media from the CIM we summarised yesterday. It showed that while some companies have a clear champion or a dedicated resource for social media, few have this focus. That's where our recommendations start.
Social media marketing plan recommendations
1 - Have a purpose and a vision - why are you doing this, what are your goals? Is it a marketing directive, or are you evolving into a social business? Make sure the vision is communicated across the business so that people are comfortable and understand who,…
7 techniques to drive website interactions that generate leads and how to measure them
We find that there's lots of discussion online about how to reach and convert audiences, but not so much about encouraging the softer interactions. We reference this as "Act" within the RACE framework, it's about encouraging interactions on site or within your social outpost. You can think of Act in the context of the Forrester Social Technographics Ladder, where you are encouraging those that are watching or “lurking” to contribute, to get involved. These are people most likely with a problem or question, maybe a passion for a topic area; your challenge is how you get them to contribute.
These are the tactics I'm talking about:
Blogs
Social networks integrations
Widgets, tools and objects
Community
Content
Gamification
Review and ratings
The whole idea is to design specific communications techniques that encourage interactions on your websites or social outposts, an area we feel is more often…
In this case study, we talk to Kate Webb, the Online Marketing Manager at Vision Express. Kate talks about how they have developed a strategy and manage social media marketing across the Vision Express teams. Thanks for sharing your experiences, Kate!
How big an impact has the increase in popularity of social media with consumers had on Vision Express?
It’s had quite an impact in terms of time and resource, especially in the early days.
As a company we’re relatively new to social media, we’ve only been active for just over eighteen months. We spent a lot of time during the first 3-6 months listening, watching and learning what consumers were saying about our brand/looking for from our brand, in order to decide on how we should communicate, and where – which platforms.
During this…
6 key management issues to include within all social media strategies
Social media marketing is now a mainstream business activity. The State of Social Report 2011 indicating that almost two-thirds of companies say they are now beyond the experimental phase, and are integrating social media efforts with other marketing channels and across business functions. This compares to just over 50% a year ago.
Given this emphasis on social media marketing, in this post I'll review what I see as some of the most important issues arising from marketplace and technology developments in 2011, that need to be considered as part of planning and implementing a social media strategy in 2012.
1. Outsourcing social media
There was a time last year when businesses were being warned away from outsourcing their social media functions. A number of high profile social media mishaps were attributed to the disconnect that can occur when social profiles are out-of-house social, including Eurostar’s…
8 practical techniques you can apply today to increase your online audience
There's much talk and some great examples, around how to best use social media to grow your reach online. But, how do you tackle boosting the audience you reach in a planned, structured way. We've picked what we feel are the most practical and important techniques to help you do just that. We'll add to and evolve this list throughout this year.
1. Target the most relevant audience segments
The fact is that your audience demographic, all the people that you could market to, vary in their importance in two ways - how commercially relevant they are - are they likely buyers, and also how likely your content is going to motivate them to either share and amplify your brand, or drive them further towards purchase.
Though you could theoretically appeal to lots of people, the reality of time and resources…
And what to do about it
Social media is not a standalone skill-set, nor is it even a vocation in its own right. It's a mindset, a set of specific tools and most importantly, it's a process weaved into content and social media marketing. Our post showing the scope of Social CRM shows how social media marketing activities occur across the whole business - this Altimeter image clear shows how wide the scope of social media is.
Beyond that even - social media has to be increasingly integrated into an organisation, not owned by marketing or PR types. Social media doesn't (or shouldn't) belong to someone or just to one team unless they're the only people who care about the customer. Why? Social media starts with your customer, or worst case your fans and brand advocates (who are usually happy customers, right?). And, because…
Changing social engagement from an afterthought to a first thought
I really like the “social by design” expression as a way to guide marketing thinking in a company today. It’s like the “digital by default” or “Digital First” mantra we’ve heard for a while now which can communicate a new vision for marketing. Simple summaries to colleagues can help get the message across.
You may have seen the quote recently, which is from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg reported in Advertising Age. She went on to say that:
“Facebook shouldn’t be the only thing marketers do online, or in marketing. It should just be part of everything they do”.
That’s probably overstating it for many companies, but certainly a form of “social engagement” should be built in to campaigns whether that’s offline or in the most suitable online channels, which could be your site rather…
Are you a Creator, Critic, Collector, Joiner or Spectator?
If you've not seen Forrester Technographics tool before you are missing a treat. Showcased in the book Groundswell, Technographics is Forrester Research's methodology for surveying customers. Its similar to segmenting by demographics or psychographics but segments based on degree of engagement with social media - so it's a behavioural segmentation for social media and related technology.
Many reading will know this, but I thought it was worth flagging-up for those who don't, it's new to many in my classes. The tool can be really useful for setting realistic expectations of what social media can deliver amongst your non-marketing colleagues also since it shows how degree of engagement with social media and blogs varies.
Forrester divide people's online behaviour into six categories. You can see these below.
Its important for organisations to know…
Manchester United show the way
I posted last week about Facebook and their (I feel) vastly over-stating of the value of Facebook as a part of the marketing mix.
Now, this week I read that Manchester United are building their own, not-so-small social network for an estimated 350m supporters and a total estimated global audience of 660m!
A perfect strategy for Man U since they're already mega publishers of content - through the print magazine and MUTV content and of course their website. The traffic to their site will be huge given their global appeal, the advantages of being a global brand of course, yet fascinating how they're now appending the 'social' to the already existing 'media', the cart following the horse, as it should be. Can you imagine them successfully limiting their reach and interactions just to Facebook? Not…
