Business Solutions

With 2012 in Sight! Do You Know Where Your Social Media Strategy Is?

Any marketer who has been in the social media game for a while should understand exactly why companies continue to struggle with social media. There is obviously a great deal of misunderstanding that happens between the concept and the tools, and their benefits. There is uncertainty and confusion as to exactly why social media tools can’t still be used just like traditional e-mail, direct mail and advertising. There also exists power struggles within enterprise organizations about who internally makes social media marketing decisions including who has control over content for public consumption.

What are You as a Marketer to Do?

The answer is really simple. Start a conversation. But before you go diving into any conversation you need to understand the new rules of communication, why they matter so much, and the five trends turning the business world upside down, that represent evolutionary shifts.

• Consumer Skepticism
• Fragmented Media
• Loss of Control
• Niche Marketing
• Customers are in Control

Your customers will thank you considerably with their business for taking the time to understand this market evolution.

Things Have Changed… Now What?

Get your great attitude on, because now it’s time to clearly focus and get to work. Now, I know what most of you are thinking and considering… Why can’t you just share your press releases on Twitter and Facebook and quit for the day? Well, you might be able to, but there would probably be very little ROI to show for it.

By the way, isn’t that what Management is looking for and demanding from social media? (Psst! We all know that asking for ROI is secret code for “We don’t get this, so we’re going to challenge it.” Be smart and prove them wrong!) Ready?

• Business Blogging
• Social Networks
• Niche Online Communities
• Micro-blogging
• Video
• Podcasting
• PR 2.0
• RSS, Tagging, Bookmarking
• And more!

The Digital Greeting

Nothing you hear will ever be truer than the fact all the strategies in the world mean completely nothing without a comprehensive plan of action in place and agreed to that includes in the order of importance:

• Listen – to the Customer
• Engage – the Customer
• Measure – Everything

In order to establish the greatest value for your business in the eyes of the customer, “Listening is the New Marketing.” Yet, marketers traditionally aren’t very good at listening much…only talking too much.

Now is your chance to develop the essential understanding of listening before engaging, and by doing so determine whether your social media plan will ultimately be successful and the level of success achieved.

What is the first thing you normally do when you meet your customers? You shake their hand. Now you can do that digitally. We call it engaging. Engaging in online conversations with your customers is where you have a chance to really LISTEN to your customers. They will eventually tell you many things including what they like and most importantly, exactly how you can best help them.

Finally, understand that all of those digital greetings and conversations can be measured. There are many tools to help you along the way to social media success. Of course, some are free and others you will have to pay for, but either way you decide, you’ll have more than enough to select from.