Happy Friday All!
This week the SEM team here at Organic Development have been pretty busy attending Likeminds U, an intensive social media strategy course running over 6 full days for the next 3 months. The course has included fantastic tutorials from world class experts and hands on workshops.
I have sifted through the pages and pages of notes I made and thought I would share with you some of the great titbits we learnt and some of the highly entertaining case studies where social media marketing has worked better than ever expected.
Should you and your business be using Social Media?
One of the main problems for businesses is - why should they use social media? Some still fear social media and would rather stick to traditional marketing methods. Allocating some of their marketing budget to social media can be daunting and some companies still choose to ignore it altogether.
However, you only need to take a look at The Count to see the audience you can reach on social media channels is enormous and if you're not using it you're mad!
Facebook 600k new members per day
Twitter has gone from 4K tweets per day in 2009 to 200K in 2011.
The most popular brand on Facebook is Coca Cola with 31,762,653 fans. (Source: The Count)
Social media can be used in these sectors of your business: PR, HR, Customer Service, Branding and Direct Sales.
Where to begin
Start with asking yourselves some questions:
- Do you already use social media?
- If so, how?
- Do you have a personal or company account?
- What do you tweet about and how often?
There is one big thing that has been apparent over the last 2 days - NEVER jump into social media without a plan.
Using social media for the sake of using it is a waste of time; you need to make sure you are using it to benefit the company and to fulfil certain objectives. So firstly, you should identify the following:
- What are your objectives and how will social media help you achieve these?
- Who and where are your audience?
- What are they saying about you?
You're business or brand might already be alive in the social world, so before you actually begin talking to people you should LISTEN to what they are saying.
You can do this simply on Twitter by typing in your company name or # tags on topics/news in your industry, additionally look on forums for in-depth conversations and use more advanced listening tools such as Twitsprout.
Who will carry out your social media?
You will need to put policies in place and identify who you will allow to use social media on behalf of the company. You may want to select and train employees who will become advocates for the company in the social space.
To avoid social media disasters you need to implement guidelines for your staff to follow on social networks; they need to be aware of what they can and can't say!
Additionally, you can outsource all this to a social media agency.
Where will you carry out social media?
After listening, and knowing where to find your audience, you need to decide which channels are going to be best for you. However, just bear in mind that it isn't always plain sailing and a network that works well for some, may not work well for others. Some platforms may need to be trialled to see how well they work for you.
There is no quick fix
There is no overnight solution to social media marketing, whether you are doing it yourselves or hiring an agency, your strategy needs to be nurtured and you need to build trust and relationships with your audience.
You may think gaining 200K 'likes' on Facebook means you are smashing social media marketing, but if these people are simply clicking the 'Like' button, then never returning to your website or Facebook page then you haven't kept them engaged - these clicks are worth nothing.
Social media shouldn't just be used as a broadcast medium, but it should be used to engage, build trust and interact.
Here are a couple examples of what NOT to do on social media networks
Habitat – Don't piggy back
Habitat, made the decision to use Twitter Hashtag's to drive users to its products. The manner in which it was executed, however, turned out to be a high-profile epic fail. The lowly intern given the responsibility for tweeting exploited the controversy over the Iranian election by using the hashtags #iranianelection and #mousavi, which was not well-received by Twitter users.
Habitat was accused of piggy-backing on popular topics to market their products.
Ryan Air – Watch what you say
UK Blogger Jason Roe wrote a post about the poor functionality on budget airline Ryanair's website, as he encountered a bug while attempting to book a flight. Employees of the budget airline however responded to the post in the comments section by calling him "a lunatic", "an idiot" and "a liar".
Customers were in turn amazed, appalled and somewhat amused at Ryanair's rudeness and aggression. It would be wise for Ryanair to remember that negative feedback should be welcomed, politely taken on board and acted on, while showing respect for customers.
#McDStories Ruin Lives and maybe the brand
Here are some must see media campaigns (all about creating BUZZ)
I found some of these really funny and inspiring!
Old Spice delivering personal video replies to tweets (and now even YouTube and Facebook comments).
Prague 3D projection animation to attract tourism.
I personally love the Old Spice and KLM campaigns!
I hope this has provided you with some great starting points to your social media campaigns and this has been a hugely brief take on what the Likeminds U workshop has provided me with!
I am eagerly waiting for the next workshop in a few weeks!
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