Photo credit: Automotive Social
Businesses often charge ahead without a defined objectives or clear strategy. They may pick a social media platform and dive in without forethought. Remaining active on multiple networks their customers don’t visit or posting material that doesn’t interest their audience creates no concrete marketing benefits. Social media without a strategy invites social media tragedy.
Strategy mistakes often result at the start of a campaign when marketing managers ask what social media platforms and technologies to use. A better starting point is to ask who you’re trying to reach, what you want to accomplish, and what set of social tactics best fits your goal, advises Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott. Think about platforms and technology tools only after answering those questions.
A Four-Step Plan
Elliott outlines a four step process called POST. It stands for:
1. People.
2. Objectives.
3. Strategy.
4. Technology.
People
Get to know your people (your audience). Determine how much your audience uses social media, how much social media influences their purchasing decisions, how much they engage with brands, and how likely they are to share a brand’s message. If it’s low, stick to more traditional marketing methods. If it’s high, forge ahead. Forrester offers a tool, the Social Technographics Score, for that purpose.
Objective
Pick an objective. To put it another way, define the behaviors you want to encourage based on the metric – reach, depth or relationship – that best matches your marketing goals. Concentrate on reach if your goal is to build awareness. If you want to your audience to discover a new product, reaching many people is the best strategy.
Seek depth if the goal is to increase sales. To close the sale, prospects must receive depth and detail about the product.
Focus on relationship to build awareness and maintain loyal customers. If customers are engaged, they’re more likely to remain loyal.
Strategy
Consider what the actions you wish to encourage based on your objectives.
Word-of-mouth marketing and paid social advertising are ideal for increasing reach. For example, SodaStream invited 2,000 people to host sampling parties in their homes and sent the hosts free SodaStream machines, supplies and discount vouchers.
Add content and social tools to your website. Webroot posted videos of satisfied customers praising its security soſtware on its product information pages.
Place branded profiles on social networks to build and maintain relationships. Dr Pepper encouraged social media fans to live the “Pepper lifestyle” and stressed its iconoclastic image.
Technology
Selecting technologies is the last step in developing and implementing a social media marketing strategy.Multiple tools are available to support different strategies.
Some software tools extend marketing reach by identifying and recruiting influencers or by buying and managing paid ads on social sites.
Social media development platforms help build and manage blogs, communities, ratings and reviews, and other social features.
Social relationship platforms help publish content to third-party social networks and manage customer posts.
SEO tools and services help improve search engine results.
A Google search of keywords identifying the type of tool you need will turn up many different tool vendors. Each requires careful assessment to determine features, benefits and total costs – Most of all, the screening requires careful matching of tools to the social media strategy and need.
Bottom Line: A well-developed strategy produces more powerful social media marketing campaigns. Audience research, determining objectives and identifying the key metrics to track are the most important steps. In addition, aligning strategies with business goals is a critical for developing a viable marketing plan.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
Hello William,
Yes ! I do agree with you, that it is very very important to create a perfect social media marketing strategy for business and you also told us to how to do it, really that is more important, because for success of strategy you need to execute it with proper manner.