Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [231]
One of the best pieces of advice in dating is to “be yourself.” Don’t try to be someone else. This applies as well to companies that try to be something they are not in the world of social media. Many large brands (McDonald’s, Sony, Wal-Mart, to name a few) have attempted to build a grassroots campaign by pretending to be regular users. However, it was not hard to figure out that an agency was behind the campaign, attempting to be someone they weren’t. Social-media users can spot a phony pretty quickly, so it is best to be who you are and talk in your own language.
Finally, don’t brag about your previous “conquests.” No one likes to hear how great your company is and how successful at social media you are and how many sales you received as a result. A sure way to turn off followers in your network is to let them know that you are only there for the sale, and not for the relationship or the conversation. If you present yourself as only being there for a quick fix, then your followers will drop off quickly. Your market and your audience want to know that you are dedicated to building a conversation and contributing to the market, rather than solely taking away for your own personal gain.
Step 3: Participate Actively
Once you have gotten past the dating stage, then you can continue the relationship by actively participating in the conversations. In fact, you may even begin by starting your own conversations in a discussion forum, commenting on other people’s blogs, or actively blogging yourself. The next step in this stage may also entail creating and managing a group on LinkedIn, Facebook, or other social service where you can have specific market-focused conversations.
This is the proactive part of social media, where you are learning just as much about others in the market and about those in your market as you are learning about your company and how it is perceived. You are actively applying new information to your campaign in order to help your company and build your reputation online.
This is the phase where you are very comfortable in your online social marketing and have confidence enough to try new things, develop some small campaigns, and test some messages. Of course, this also implies you are working closely with your analytics to track the efforts of your campaign and the conversations surrounding you and your business.
Tracking the Conversation
Tools that you may want to look into for tracking conversations at this point are far-ranging. Trackur, Brand’s Eye, Radian6, and BuzzLogic are just a few of the more well-known applications for tracking social-media efforts. Just a simple search on social media monitoring tools will provide a substantial list of offerings.
Social-media tracking is a matter of finding all the places where your business is mentioned. Some programs will even take it to the next level by finding the opinion leaders in your industry and measuring the tone of the conversation. It does take an investment of your time to track these conversations and develop plans of action with all the information you will receive.
As an example of some of these tools, take a look at the images here, which show a Trackur social-media report for Pringles. Trackur makes a very easy report of topics based on keyword and has different tiers of access. The report is based on the keywords being mentioned on Twitter, News, YouTube, and other social media. You can then mark whether the mention is positive, negative, or neutral as you track the conversion around your brand.
Step 4: Cultivate a Fan Base
This is the step that separates the social-media practitioners from the social-media experts. Again, just like with dating, the goal of social media is to not continually talk about yourself. The goal of social media is to build an army of fans of your business who will promote your company to their friends. (Ideally that is not your goal when dating, though!) Ask anyone—it is more powerful to hear about a company from word-of-mouth than from advertising. Word-of-mouth carries the credibility