Demonstrate that you are really able to do something.It will be readily apparent if your employees on social media are not really empowered to actually help customers. It’s great to listen, but if you don’t take action, listening will prove to be a hollow exercise.
Provide links on social platforms to information, discounts, and special promotions.It’s all about the customer, so make sure that your response always has real, demonstrable value. Ask your management what options you have for rewarding the customer. How about a private briefing about your next product?
Offer tips and video from customer service on FAQs.Don’t wait for a hail of tweets to show up. If you know there’s a problem, create content that speaks to it. Then go back and show the customer how your solution cut customer service calls in half. That will get management’s attention and buy-in.
Use different platforms for different kinds of customer service.Make sure that you have several levels of response available to the customer. For example, you can use a specific Twitter handle that’s separate from your primary brand’s Twitter handle for quick responses. For questions that require more investigation, you can direct them to your website or set up an outside service like Get Satisfaction, as shown in Figure 3-5, to answer questions.
Use photos to show that real people are doing interesting things.With a camera in every phone, it’s hard not to take snapshots of events, celebrations, and charitable activities. At every event, pick someone as the designated picture taker. This serves to authenticate your staff.
FIGURE 3-5: The home page of Get Satisfaction.
SMM with offline marketing
When you see a heading that includes “offline marketing,” your first thought might be, “Why are they including this as part of SMM?” There’s a good reason. Marketing doesn’t stop at the digital water’s edge. People still spend a majority of their time offline. We think that’s a good time to grab their attention and funnel them back to your social media platforms.
This means that you don’t miss an opportunity to pair your social media venues with your offline ones. For example, if you send a postcard, you’d make sure to have all your “connections,” such as your Facebook page and Twitter address, listed on the back of the card.
You should always be thinking about how your marketing universe ties together. When you look at each of the following tactics, think about how you can offer online tie-backs:
Offer 30-minute training at a local venue.Give out the URL of the training notes online.
Host an event for charity.Make sure to secure donations from a safe online environment.
Send postcards.List your Twitter address on the back.
Go to a conference or trade show.Have several types of handouts available. They could be a tip sheet with your web address or even a USB drive with company information.
Call your customers.Most SM marketers encourage you to send online surveys. How about arranging a phone call to speak to a group of customers who have purchased your last product? Afterward, make sure to send them an online discount coupon or other bonus for sharing their ideas.
Create a joint venture.Work with another online marketer who complements your offerings to hold a meeting or event. Then create a bundled product to buy online.
Send an article to your local newspaper or trade magazine.Make sure that your LinkedIn URL is listed.
SMM in the world of real-time marketing
With the advent of social media platforms, the tools you need for real-time marketing campaigns are ready and waiting. For example, just search your Twitter feed or glance at Twitter trends if you want to see where the online attention is.
Earlier in this chapter, we discuss the marketing funnel. Your first goal is awareness. That’s what you’re aiming for with real-time marketing. If you can garner awareness with your real-time campaign, you have the chance to move customers through your funnel.
To make this information translate into traffic, leads, and revenue, you need an understanding of what goes into a real-time SMM campaign. The following are conditions that should be present to help you succeed:
Determine your goals for this type of activity.You could do a plethora of things with your campaign. The key is to focus it on one major outcome. Ask yourself, “What action do I want the customer to take after engaging with the content?” (via tweet, video, link, and so on). This helps you choose the right first step.
Invest in the right real-time marketing tools.Within the last two years, several technologies have been launched that allow you to truly understand what consumers are thinking, talking about, and doing on a real-time basis. Real-time tracking can be around your brands or around topics that matter to both them and you. Whether it be tools that help you identify real-time trends as they surface or technologies that let you observe how trends travel from one physical location to another, operating effectively in real time when your consumers most care about you requires investments in the right tools and technologies.
Designate staff to monitor real-time activity.Make it someone’s (or several people’s) task to monitor the online activity in real time. That may sound obvious, but when you have very busy people on your staff, people think that the other person will do it or that they can get to it later.
Have resources available to take action.If you agree that you are going all in on this campaign, make sure to let your creative people know that they may be required to create something in response to feedback. Of course, we’re not suggesting that your campaign will have to be as elaborate as what a Fortune 10 company may do. But you can get great mileage by simply writing back to the comments made. The idea is that real people are listening and talking back.
Monitor news in your topic area.When you are trying to decide how to make your campaign relevant, consider riffing off of some current event. This is an old PR trick. It’s why when something of note happens, you see headlines like, “What X can learn about Y from the Old Spice Guy.” When people Google “Old Spice,” you show up in the results.
Use the real words and phrases that customers use.Related to the item above is the idea that SEO (search engine optimization) should not be ignored. Pay close attention to the specific words and phrases that customers are using, and seed them in your campaign.
Determine the metrics that you will use.It’s important to understand the real value of metrics when it comes to SMM. You’re not going to be able to wrap up your numbers with a bow and present them to your manager. For this reason, it’s good to choose a simple metric, such as the number of retweets on Twitter or Likes on Facebook to start. This is not an exact science. You want to alert people to your message.
Treating SMM Differently from Brand Marketing
Because of the power of peer influence, social media marketing is increasingly approached differently from brand and direct-response marketing. The differences stem from the fact that the philosophical approaches, strategies, and execution tactics of SMM are more community and socially oriented.
Social media marketing is fundamentally about engaging with expert, referent, and positional influencers and strategically leveraging social media in all its forms to meet marketing and business objectives. As a result, you need to understand how social media marketing fits into the context of brand and direct response marketing.