So Many Social Media Sites: What’s the best Digital Marketing Strategy?
So many social media sites…So little time. What is a digital marketer to do?
The other day, from a college newspaper, there was an article about a guy who was trying to use LinkedIn to get a date. That is not a typo. He said he wasn’t having the best of luck with the ladies. “It seems like they all wanted Twizzlers and I was just a Red Vine.” He heard that 20% of couples now meet online and figured it was worth giving it a shot. He was on Eharmony, Match, Okcupid, Idate, Christianmingle, Amishcrush, you name it. However he had no luck except being matched with his recently widowed mother. So on LinkedIn, he posted all the answer to the usual date background questions, but then it got a little weird. Attempts at sexy photos, experience listing past dates, education listing 50 Shades of Grey as well as his human anatomy class, skills and expertise listing romance techniques. He asked for recommendations from past dates. He didn’t understand why it wasn’t working.
Personally, I am really hoping this is all a playful college prank.
Does anyone recall this helpful “social media explained” joke?
What a great perspective!
But all of us serious digital marketing people need something a little bit more, especially when trying to explain social media sites in a way that persuades someone to participate as a part of their ongoing digital marketing strategies. As part of your entire ecosystem of marketing tactics, it fills some important gaps, leverages some emerging opportunities, and positions your company as a leader. So, here’s quick reference chart that will help you to get: a) budget b) personnel c)permission to set up social sites. (Please tell me you are not stuck on “c”.)
SOCIAL MEDIA SITE |
PRIMARY GOAL |
EXAMPLES OF DIGITAL MARKETING — USE CASES |
| Know who your customer is and post information that they will share with their network of friends. This is the place to show more of the human side of your business – keep it light. Given Facebook’s news feed control now, you must also place ads to be truly successful here. | Exclusive Facebook offers, Contests, News, Events, Branding, Cause marketing, Great customer stories, Get customer feedback on marketing ideas or current campaigns and ads, user generated tips on your product/service uses, lots of pics and videos, fun things, educational informative things. | |
| Linked In | Super professional – impress your followers and connect with your business partners. | Careers, Company News, Great business articles. Connect with your industry influencers. Advice – give and get. Actively run an industry group. Post college networking. |
| Worldwide exposure on views, being in the know now, exposure for spokespeople for your brand. | Things that the world should know quickly. Best place for real time marketing. Best way to be heard is by using trending hashtags. Listen to what others are talking about and participate. Start a conversation by leveraging trending topics. | |
| Speak to your audience in pictures. Inspire, Wow, Excite their visual senses. Start a collection of unique pins so that your followers are mesmerized and want to repin. | Encourage board startups with narrow theme. Use diverse images – photos, infographics, etc. UNIQUE is name of the game. Make sure your own site has PinIt as part of your sharing functionality. Reward your Pinners with recognition. | |
| Google Plus | Reach people using google apps in a way no other channels can. | Still emerging, however try communities for finding customer groups with like interests, hangouts for live broadcasts, events to coordinate with hangouts. |
| Share spur of the moment happenings. | Use to feed all social pics posting areas so they cross feed traffic to each other. Emotional connections mandatory. | |
| YouTube | Entertain and Educate your customers with videos and use them for natural search boost. | Separate channels please within your YouTube page – Senior executive messages, Commercials, Employee testimonials, Customer testimonials, Branding videos, How To videos for customer service. Keep them short to keep people’s attention (3 minutes is ideal) If you have a longer story to tell, divide them up into segments. |
| Vine | Share spur of the moment short videos | Best uses still emerging, Branding, Out takes of commercials, User generated, Your products/services in use by others. |
| FourSquare | For consumer oriented businesses, encourage people to let others know they are at your business. | Find out where the most popular places are for your next location based advertising campaign – billboards, street signs, and events like flashmobs. Know who your loyalists are that spread your brand message. |
| Yelp | Encourage reviews of your business so they can be highlighted as digital content in other channels. So much more than its humble beginnings as a restaurant review service. | Learn who your passionate influencers are and either hire them or reward them. Post specifics about your business here you can’t elsewhere. Compare your business easily to others. |
Would love to get more input from others on the newest successes here and perhaps feature your work in a future case study. Reach me at your favorite social channel.
Remember this. Since social media sites are still an emerging media, there can not be one source of truth on the best way to use each. The best uses I am sure have yet to be discovered. So, use this as a guideline. Then innovate, invent and investigate. Try new things in new ways and see what happens. You may discover you can use twitter for writing dissertations. Well, maybe not….
Originally published by Dawn Kole on EcommerceConsulting.com
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