Social media allows brands to communicate with new ways and on new levels with their customers. Facebook for example allows you to create a brand presence in a social space, allowing fans a deeper connection with the brand than ever before.
However, this new opportunity also brings with it challenges. What if fans of your brand speak more than one language and live in more than one country? Obviously you can’t communicate with people in a language they don’t speak, and also, it’s difficult to be relevant to users when you are trying to talk to users of multiple territories at once. (more…)
Social currency is a term that is gaining popularity in the social media community, but as a concept it is not a new idea. Social currency simply refers to the value that information has when it is shared between individuals, something has a good social currency if people want to continue to share it. (more…)
Social media is no longer new territory. Gone are the days where we are impressed by a brand interacting with users in social spaces. Social Media is tried and tested, with case studies from Starbucks, Dell, Wallmart and many other huge brand names.
Now attempting to create a social media campaign is outdated. Now is the age of integration. Creating any element of a campaign in isolation is not only the sign of a poor strategy, but it’s a wasted opportunity.
Social media should now be considered in the brainstorming sessions of fully integrated campaigns, and no longer reserved just for seeding or tacked on to the end of a larger campaign.
Just like any other medium, social media works better as part of a fully integrated offline and online strategic approach to campaigns, with each element complimenting and amplifying each other.
Just having a Twitter a page doesn’t cut it anymore. Having an isolated social media campaign is a stupid idea.
Contrary to popular belief it is not a good idea just to jump in to social media. It’s not important to “just be there” – you need to know why you are there. You need to have a clear understanding of what you want to put into your online presence, and what you want to get out. In other words you need to have a clear strategy for your online activity. (more…)
Marketing Sherpa has released a report titled “2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark report” which details the importance of strategy in social media marketing.
It demonstrates that we are shifting phase in the social media marketing roll out, from the trial phase, where companies dip their toes in the social media ocean, to the strategic phase, where companies begin to integrate social media into to their core business. It is important to note that in the trial phase, companies are concerned with learning what works, largely by trial and error. As we move in to the strategic phase the focus shifts to proving the value of social media activity through quantifiable ROI, among other success measures. (more…)
Here’s a very brief guide to social media platforms and how they are used for traffic generation and social branding. It’s based on my previous post, but has a more updated model. Let me know your thoughts, still a work in progress.
The social media landscape is vast, with different tools and platforms offering different services. Each of these platforms can be used in different ways by brands, so to simplify thing I’ve created this Venn diagram to show how the different platforms fit together. You can see a bigger version by clicking the image.
