After posting an article, “How Important is Social Media in a Marketing Plan?”, a “virtual” friend of mine and follower of my blog, Tim Negris, shared with me his thoughts on social media. Last week I shared the first half of his thought in a post entitled, “Rules for Attending the Social Media Marketing Party.” Today I share the second half of his thoughts.
Another common mistake that many people make is using the wrong kind of social media for their particular marketing objectives. So, let’s now look more at which social media are best for which kind of marketing.
“Social Networks” are for making lasting connections between people who are related in various ways, e.g. family members, friends, colleagues, shared interest, fans, professional contacts, etc. Some are better for making new connections with other network members, like LinkedIn, while others are more typically used by people who are actively connected in some way outside the network, like Facebook.
Networks like LinkedIn are best for finding employers or customers and marketing skills, expertise, information, specialty products, and professional services. Networks like Facebook are best for marketing new products and promoting events to existing customers or people with an established interest in your products or services. Social Networks are not good for aggressive promotion to strangers.
“Review Sites“ present information about products or services supplemented by opinions, reviews and experiences shared by network members or visitors. Some are focused on specific categories, like Angie’s List for professional services, while others are more general, like Yelp, which covers many categories, including restaurants, travel, entertainment and others, including professional services. Some are free to participants and funded by advertising while others charge for presenting and/or searching for products or services. And, some are subdivided by geographic location, others cover a variety of specific geographies, and others are not related to place at all.
If you are marketing a business that provides a specific service within a limited area, depends on referrals and repeat business, and must provide free on-site estimates, like, say painting or gardening, a site like Angie’s List, which charges people within a particular areas to find you and allows them to share their experience with other searchers, will save you money and provide free, highly focused advertising and you pay by delivering good service.
If you are marketing a product with no geographic focus or infrequent repeat business, like musical instruments, a narrowly focused site that is free to searchers, like Harmony Central, might work better. You pay to advertise or spend time participating in discussion groups and the like, but you reach a large, focused national audience. Review sites are not very good for promoting products or services which require explanation or resist categorization.
“Presentation Sites” like Flikr and YouTube enable the posting of picture albums and videos, respectively, of any length for free, to be viewable either by the general public or only those you allow. Viewers can publicly share their unregulated opinions and responses as they wish.
These sites are best for illustrating or demonstrating physical products or practical services and finding customers from the public at large or for directing people who know you to your content. To get positive feedback you will need to ensure that you post content that looks and sounds good, holds the viewers interest and is not too long. Presentation sites are not good for presenting complex graphics or lot of information and should not be used with an on-screen presenter just talking through a complex topic with no supporting title graphics.
“Micro-Blogs” like Twitter are, in effect, broadcast services for text messages. Twitter allows you to post very short (140 characters) text-only messages to be received by designated subscribers (your “followers”) or other members who find you on the site based on your profile information or word search. The followers can post comments about your tweets on their page or “retweet” them to their followers.
Twitter is best used for broadcasting breaking news, event notification, your thoughts and movements, or links to other content to a potentially large group of identified individuals and providing a context for them to post responses and comments in place where others can see them. A good use of this capability is to build confidence in existing customers with announcements of new deals or products. Such services are widely misused as a mere reminder of the tweeter’s existence or for providing a digest of information that few people care about, e.g. “On my way to the airport.”
“Blogging” is like writing a public diary. Either on a blogging site like WordPress or using such software on a company or personal web site, the software makes it easy to post text, pictures, or even audio and video and provide a place for people to post comments and responses. The word “blog” is short for “web log”, which implies the original idea of something that is posted regularly and frequently.
A blog can run the gamut from a pithy thought for the day to a lengthy article. Blogs are broadly treated and used like a form of journalism presenting either news or viewpoint. The main differences between a blog and any other web page are that a blog invites and presents comments and is instrumented to employ RSS feed or other facilities to inform subscribing users when new content has been posted.
Blogs can be used for a wide variety of marketing purposes, including communicating thought leadership on industry trends and news or keeping customers and prospects informed about products, events, financial results and so forth. Especially if your product is knowledge of some kind, e.g. you are a lawyer, analyst, or adviser, a blog is a good way to give prospects an idea of your capabilities and interests and to stay visible with customers.
Also, more so than any other form of social media, because they are public, blogs get “crawled” by search engines, making it very easy for potential customers to find you or to learn about you on the basis of relevant key words used in your postings. Blogs are most effective when you make regular, frequent additions, if they are concise and well-written, and if they invite and receive plentiful reader commentary. If you lack the discipline, ability or funds to ensure these things, a conventional web page would be a more appropriate communications medium.
Once you have matched your marketing goals to the most suitable social media types, remember: effective social marketing is not a monologue; it is not even a dialogue. At its best, it is a group discussion that is equally enjoyable to everyone participating. Pretend you are hosting the best cocktail party ever. Make everyone feel included, get them talking, provide plenty of appealing refreshments, and have a good time.
Click here to read Tim’s thoughts on the difference between “brand” and “branding”. If you would like to contact Tim Negris, you can do so through LinkedIn or tnegris@gmail.com.
Those who enjoyed this article also enjoyed:
Rules for Attending the Social Media Marketing Party
How Important is Social Media in a Marketing Plan?
Using Social Networks for Marketing
Why Many Small Businesses are Still Struggling
If you would like to contact me, you can do so by emailing me at mike.clough@bestbizpractices.org or visiting my LinkedIn page.
Posted by: Mike Clough
