Social Media - A Hearing Aid for Modern Marketers
10 years ago it was "You have to have a website", then 3 years ago it was "You have to have search engine optimisation (SEO)" and today the marketers tell us "You need to include Social Media Marketing" in your marketing plans. Just when you get your head around one digital universe, another raises its digital head.
But Social Media Marketing may perhaps be the most useful tool for marketers yet. So before you put Learning to Tweet in the "Too hard" basket, think about the benefits both direct and indirect to your business of putting in the effort. The opportunities available utilising the social media landscape (Facebook, Blogs, Twitter etc) lie not in the reaching of your audience (your web presence does that already), but in the ability to listen to your audience.
There are three general steps to take when moving to utilise Social Media as a marketing channel.
- Research - Start by identifying social media neighbourhoods, identifying activists and opinion leaders within these groups.
- Understand - Listen and monitor the tone of communications online. When you do start to communicate, you then adjust your "tone and style" to fit properly into the conversation.
- Be a "Stand" - Make clear what your company or brand "stands for". Social media participants are there to share views and if you share yours they will likely gravitate to the brand.
When your target audience knows why you do what you do (which includes selling what you sell), they are free to align or not with your philosophy. Those that align are likely to begin checking you out. You will be referred and re-tweeted and should do the same with their tweets and posts.
In social media the worst mistake any company/brand can make is to invade the space of your targets with ads, sales and promos unless they have asked specifically for them.
Listening is actually the cornerstone of all good marketing and strategic business planning. Organisations that develop a good habit of doing so are invariably in a stronger strategic position. Social media is one of the most immediate, honest and dynamic mechanisms to Listen.
For more information on how your business can effectively use social media in its marketing mix, contact jonathan.poynter@nimbler.com.au