Social media has dramatically changed much of the standard, old school marketing paradigm. The key difference is that traditional marketing consists of a carnival barker-like approach: one voice shouting out over a distracted crowd, trying to entice people to buy a ticket to see the Wild Women of Borneo. Social media marketing is having people in the crowd who have already seen the Wild Women, loved it, and are telling everyone else about it. While there are some obvious similarities (carnival, Wild Women), the differences are key. Here are some of the best and worst practices for social media marketing that highlight these distinctions.
Best Practices
Start with an overall plan. Who is your audience? What are your objectives? What is the best strategy to achieve those objectives? What tactics will make your strategy a success, and what tools and assets do you need? Finally, how will you measure your success? Unlike standard marketing and advertising, the goal of social media marketing is to influence purchasing decisions, not drive them. Therefore, metrics need to take into account goals such as increasing the number of connections, comments and repostings as well as more direct ROI, like increased sales.
Give before you get. You're not the carnival barker anymore and you need to encourage people, not brow-beat them. For example, offer anyone who becomes a Foursquare mayor of your business a discount or gift certificate.
Reach out first. If you want 100,000 people following you on Twitter, someone needs to invest the time in first having you follow 500,000 people. If you want people to read your blog or watch your video, then leave comments on their sites or channels.
Be upfront and honest. The carnival barker will tell you the Wild Women of Borneo are ferocious; the happy customers in the crowd will tell you they're sexy women in fur bikinis. If you're not transparent, you risk alienating the very people you want to establish relationships with, and they, in turn, are going to tell others.
While you need to protect your brand and trademarks, you cannot control your message. This hard fact makes being honest even more important. In old-school advertising, you can control the message, but in this brave, new world, once something hits the Web, people are going to adapt it and change it as they see fit.
Encourage participation and feedback from your customers. It's one thing when a customer, whether she is happy or not, posts something on Yelp or Twitter about your business. It's something completely different when she gets a response from you that lets her know you're listening, thereby building or strengthening your relationship.
Don't forget about search-engine optimization. You can have the hottest website in the world or be putting out the wittiest tweets ever written in 140 characters, but if no one knows you exist, it's all for naught.
Make a commitment to all of the above. It will take time and resources to be successful, and that's where NewMediaPlus can step in. You wouldn't print up a bunch of flyers and then fail to go around and put them on windshields, right? We're here to guide your business through this process and ensure that your online marketing efforts are a success.
Worst Practices
Going the hard sales route is a mistake. Taking your traditional marketing or advertising campaign and funneling it into Facebook is not going to work, and many online communities will even ban you if your messages are overtly commercial. Going back to the carnival metaphor, imagine a friend telling you about what's really inside the Wild Women tent when the barker comes over and starts screaming in your ear.
Know the culture before you get involved. All sites have terms of service or use guidelines, and knowing those is important, but even more vital is having a sense of the pulse of the users. This requires spending time on the platforms, reading posts and comments, and getting a feel for the virtual land.
Don't lie or be fake. Certain practices have even become illegal, such as hiring people in chat rooms to pretend to be fans of your product or service. Other bad practices include starting fake blogs populated only by employees. The blow-back once you're discovered (and you will be discovered) could permanently harm your business' reputation.
Ignoring feedback. Social media marketing is about making the flow of information into a two-way street. If you're not listening to what your clients and potential customers have to say, you will fail. While it might seem like a daunting task to monitor every online channel out there, tools do exist.
Don't over-post. If you don't have anything valuable to share to your community, the best thing to do is not share it. Posting the same information about a sale, for instance, several times a day, will cost you far more followers and fans than you'll gain in purchases. Unlike traditional advertising, repetition will do more harm than good.
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