Should more companies consider a multi-page social network strategy?

Examples showing the benefits of a multi-page social network communications approach

There is no doubt that social should be an important factor in digital marketing strategies going forward. Whether you are trying to improve brand awareness, build customer relationships or stay on top of the search rankings, social media should not be omitted from your digital marketing campaigns.

There are a few big brands that don’t invest in multiple pages, or can get away with minimal investment in social media. For example Apple, who according to Branddirectory.com were the No1 global brand last year don’t have an official Twitter page and although they are on Facebook they have obviously made the decision that updating it is not on their to do list for now. With a reported $1billion marketing budget in 2012, they most definitely have a vast array of other options than most marketers in terms of how they spend their advertising budget.

Large companies who have multiple pages for different purposes and communicating with different audiences often group them in company social hub page. Dell is a good example of a brand with a well thought through approach to hosting multiple pages united in a social hub.

In contrast Google, who incidentally came second on the same list, have a Facebook page a serious amount of different Twitter profiles, for each of their different Google entities (Google Maps, Google Analytics, Google Chrome to name a handful), and of course their very own bespoke Google social network. Google plus, where it just so happens I have one of many of my social networking pages!.

I think it is fair to ascertain from this that if the search engine giant that is Google feels the need to be all over social in this way, we as marketers should probably follow suit.

A multi-channel social strategy, as Google are demonstrating, is one way of making sure you can target as many potential customers as possible and gives you a great opportunity to show off the different media that you have available to showcase on the different social platforms.

Having a greater presence online can only be a good thing as this will mean there are more opportunities for you to show up on the SERP and more chance of your messages being shared and going viral.

Before planning your social campaign

Before starting your social campaign please take note. Social media is not a quick fix.

To build trust you need to be active and provide positive interactions with your audience.  It is time consuming and can be hard work and it is a long term investment.

On the flipside, it has many great points:

• It’s free
• It’s easily accessible
• It can help raise brand awareness
• It can help you raise your websites visibility within the search engines
• It gets you closer to your customers
• Allows you to build trust
• It offers direct and immediate interaction.

But be warned if you get it wrong, as ITV know, it can be more than a little bit embarrassing

Whereas when social is used correctly to connect in conversation with your customers in their own language, it will not only get you some social props, but can help build positive reinforcement for your brand and spread your message around many people through social sharing or in this case with Tunde and 02 thousands of RT’s

A nice example of humour there, having separate customer service pages can help separate these messages from other customer promotions.

Thanks to Jane Nriapia for sharing her advice and opinions in this post. Jane is a Director and Online Marketing Consultant at Cloud9 Web Solutions, and her main area of expertise is social media. She was an early adopter of Facebook and through hands on experience she began to integrate her love for social into her job in corporate responsibility. Her passion for social quickly evolved into a passion for blogging, and when the blogging bug got her, Jane decided it was time to leave the corporate world where she had spent over 15 years, and start her own business providing social media management to business.  You can connect with her on LinkedIn or Google+  or follow her on Twitter.