With as many sites as there are out there which claim to have the answer to getting into Social Marketing, you would think that people would follow some of the simple guidelines. For the purposes of this post, we’ll simply define social marketing as the use of social media as a tool to assist with marketing / public relations.
I was recently at a conference and sat in on a presentation on a SharePoint application which combined the many social marketing tools. All the groups in the session could probably enhance their customer satisfaction and possibly increase their customer base through social marketing.
The session failed to address two key points, and no one at the conference knew to ask the most important questions.
- Are these the right tools for my organization?
- Who is going to create the content?
Until you have asked and answered these two questions, the answer to the correct form of social marketing is probably: None.
Social marketing is about finding the tools that will deliver the content to the users to keep them coming back. It is estimated that fewer than 10% of the users will contribute content to the site. Given this, it is important to identify these people and determine the types of content they will create. With something like blog posts, the contributors will most likely be internal. With discussion forums, the contributors will more likely be both internal and external.
I’m not going to claim to have a secret formula for what is the right type of social marketing. This is a question that requires a more intimate knowledge of the customers. The biggest key to success is to determine the best course of action and then follow that plan.
Tags: blog, discussion forum, social marketing