marketing
Social media: the hype and the reality
Social media – a paradigm shift in technology marketing or just another way for kids to exchange inanities about the X Factor? Otto Tromm takes a look at the hype, the numbers and offers six practical steps that you can take to make your efforts with social networking more successful.
ecome my friend. Join my network. You’ve probably received these invitations from friends, family colleagues and even people you have never heard of quite a few times by now. It’s nothing new though. Social networks have always been around. The platform is different these days. We don’t communicate in person, but do it over a network - whether that’s Linked-in, Facebook or Twitter. Using these public forums, it’s not just the fact that it’s a new platform. Relationships have become a lot more visible.
B
Connections
Some would have you believe that you can’t get around social networks these days - and that as a company, you really are nobody if you’re not on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
But is that actually true? Let’s from first principles:
To have a network of any value, there must be more than just a simple connection.
Malcolm Gladwell, in his book
‘The Tipping Point’, identifies three categories people: con- nectors, mavens and salesmen. The first type of person is some- one who is well connected. In Facebook terms, he would have a lot of friends and in Twitter terms, a lot of followers. Mavens are people who have a strong urge to help other people. In Facebook and Twitter terms, these are the people that would answer your question.
Salesmen are people who can
convince and influence behav- iour. In Twitter and Facebook terms, these are the people you would listen to, because they have gained your trust. For a business, a network should consists of a mix of all these types.
Value
OK, if you accept that a network is valuable, does this mean you have to open accounts on every social network available? Not at all: If you have a person- al network already and find that working for you, great. Nurture it and enjoy the benefits. You still might want to bring it online just to have an overview. Linked-in is a great tool for that.
For the businesses that don’t have a developed network or want to scale it to the next level, social media can be a great tool. But don’t believe the hype for a second. Twitter poster boy, Dell made 2 million in sales from Twitter – but that’s with 1.5 million followers. Let’s put that in perspective and look at some figures for other Twitter business accounts. Beamax, for example, has 30 followers; Chief 677; CEDIA US 981; and Epson (US) 2313. This allows us to make a sim- ple, yet revealing, comparison. Taking Dell’s haul $2 million from its 1.5 million Twitter fol- lowers as the metrics, Beamax should make about 40 euro from its followers, Chief about $780 and Epson around $3,000 from the whole of the US.
Laughable, I think that you will agree.
Solutions
So what can you do to make your efforts with social media a success?
I have six steps for you that are a great guideline. These steps will help you focus on what real- ly counts, so you’ll waste less time trying to figure out things. I am assuming that you have a goal set for your efforts like: ‘get 100 more visitors weekly to my web site’, or ‘sell 5% more product’.
If you don’t have a goal, that would be your starting point. Once you have one, I would sug- gest that you try the following:
1. Go where your market is
There’s no point in trying to convert people. You should go where your potential customers already exist. Find out if they are members of a forum, mem- bers of a trade organisation or heavy Twitter users.
If you know where they are, you know where your first efforts should be directed. If you have no clue, check out what the competition is doing and see what their success is (that is in terms of followers or friends) and the level of interaction. Last but not least, make sure you aim to find a mix of peo- ple who qualify as connectors, mavens and salesmen.
2. Think about WIIFM
WIIFM stands for ‘What’s In It For Me’ and is a make-or- break element in your strategy. Rather than thinking that it would be easier for you to communicate via Twitter, you should think about the benefits for your customers. They’ll be
thinking WIIFM, so make it worth their while.
If you can’t see the benefit from your customers’ point of view, either rethink your strat- egy, or just let it go.
This is where many compa- nies fail with social media.
3. Match your offering to visi- tor intent
‘WIIFM’ is different for people and can be linked to the stages in a buyer’s purchase process – typically, information gath- ering, comparison and finally purchase.
Make sure you cater to the interest of people in each dif- ferent stage.
For example, a discount would be great for someone in the com- parison or purchase phase, but not in the information gathering phase. Similarly, a white paper would be of benefit to someone in the information gathering stage, but not to someone who has his credit card out to buy.
4. Make it a process
You will not get results easily. It takes a while to build up an audience and gain trust. By making social networks part of your process, it’ll be a lot easier to keep it up. Habits beat good intent, so ensure you have a process and use tools for automation where possible. I use Tweetdeck for example to automatically update my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, so I don’t have to log into different sites and retype.
5. Test
There are a lot of gurus around to give you advice. Take from advice what you can, but
don’t forget that testing things yourself will get you the best results.
sible.
Again, automate where pos- My favourite tools are:
• VisualWebsiteOptimizer (paid) for A/B and multivariate testing, with Google Website Optimizer as a free alternative
• Clicky (paid) for website ana- lytics, with Google analytics as a free and very good alterna- tive
• Clicktale for website heat- maps (paid)
All these tools will help you see if you reach your goals. In addition to this, they often give you surprising insights which you can then build on.
6. Dominate
The attention from your audi- ence is limited. So make sure that within your chosen net-
work and expertise, you or your company are the number one go-to source.
Conclusion
Don’t believe the hype and just jump into social networks because you think you should. Do your research, find out what works, make it a routine and become the authoritative resource.
If you find out it doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to invest zero time in it.
I realise this is a big topic for a short feature, so there will be a follow-up next month. I will look at the trade-off between investments and benefits of different communication chan- nels, including social media. In the meantime, if you have questions or want some more specific advice contact me at
otto.tromm@
avnews.co.uk.
By Otto Tromm, international correspondent
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