Consider subscribing to my blog's RSS feed. It's sticky
I’ve been asked to give a lot of talks lately on the fast changing social marketing and media world and the questions I inevitably get from the audience go something like - “Should I use Facebook or LinkedIn?” or “What’s the value of Twitter?” or “How do I combat negative comments on my blog?”
In the end, these are all good, legitimate questions when dealing with an evolving topic like social marketing, but in the beginning, they are absolutely the wrong questions.
When planning your social marketing strategies, tools and tactics the ultimate question you must ask is this - “What do I want the relationship with my customer to look and feel like?”
From that simple, but holistic point of view comes the filter for how you might analyze every social marketing tool, tactic, avenue and investment. (Frankly, it’s the question that can inform every marketing decision, but many of the social tools are much more about relationships.)
Once you have a picture of the way you want your prospects and customers to experience you, your products and services, your people, your brand you will be much more equipped to determine if you can enhance and amplify that relationship by setting up a Facebook group, finding and being found on LinkedIn, installing Twhirl to keep up with your Twitter world, creating and promoting company videos on YouTube, building networks within StumbleUpon or, lest we forget the obvious, blogging.
From the ultimate social marketing question you may actually conclude that you don’t need any social marketing tools, that your relationships are about conversations, connections, community - holy crap - I just defined social marketing! Now what?
So, what do you want the relationship with your customers to look and feel like?
Comments
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at Jun 05, 08 | 8:38 am and is filed under Blogging, Small Business Marketing, Social Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
That feels so good! There are few social media that fit me; the blogging part does. But the guilt of not being everywhere sometimes begins to nibble at blogging energy. To know that it is alright to not make massive use of other social media is a comfort.
@JudyAnn - Glad I could use your guilt a little. I’m guessing you’re not alone. I get some version of your comment run by me almost everyday. Now go work on your FriedFeed profile!
Social Marketing is daunting as you say. There are so many people saying that I must do it, yet I just dont have the time to do it at present. Thanks for the great post.
Keep in mind where the vast majority of people are and what they are doing online.
According to Pew, Email and Search make up 91% of web activity. Social Networks <16% 80% of all web interactions begin with a search…
It’s very tempting for all of us marketing monkeys to want to reach for the new shiny thing
But let’s not forget, Email is the first and most important social tool. All the social phenomenon is telling us is that people want to deal with and be treated like human beings vs. “consumers” or part of some list. Before anyone runs off to Twitter, think about how you can make your email program better and more relevant.
Blogging is next. Blogging gives an organization the opportunity to show their human side…expose the passion and expertise of their employees and frequently discuss how they help their clients.
The ROI of blogging comes from reaching out and driving traffic by winning searches. People will tell you their problems….our job as marketers is to be listening….effective blogging…winning searches is really about listening….answering that search with a human voice that relates to the search term and engaging that prospect or customer.
Chris Baggott
CEO
Compendium Blogware
http://www.compendiumblogware.com
@Chris - as usual you’re comments are spot on. We can get and give enough reminders about doing one thing well before moving on to the next new thing.
Great post. I certainly agree that every company should evaluate the relationship first before running pell-mell to implement every social media tool. I do have a question about the “ultimate social marketing question.” Do you think the question might more appropriately be, “What does my customer want the relationship to look and feel like?” It seems that if you are able to answer that question, you get a lot closer to touching them in the way social media is meant to do.
Great post as always John. I love all the new social networking/media/bookmarking techniques, but there are a lot of people I know who have barely heard about it, let alone used it. I was interested in Chris’s stats above, but I think taking your point that it’s all about building relationships, it doesn’t have to be about either email or social networking, but a mixture of both, based on not just the relationship we want to build with clients, but the type of relationship and communication channels that they want from us. In these times of information overload, it’s becoming even more important to tailor how we communicate to suit all types of individuals’ needs and circumstances. You are so right though, as marketeers, it’s up to us to listen and do that rather than just jumping on every social networking bandwaggon!
@Ron - on one hand I agree with you - on the other I see a lot of companies trying to design themselves for what they think the customer wants only to sacrifice or hide their authentic personality. That can be dangerous is any relationship. I think both parties have a responsibility and that’s often achieved if you know what you want and who makes an ideal customer first.
Great post John because it’s such a good reminder to not to jump on every social networking bandwaggon, but rather tailor what we do to client need. Interesting stats from Chris above that echo what a lot of my contacts would say, which is they barely understand social bookmarking, networking etc let alone use it.
That said, with the information overload, I think it’s good to have as many communication channels as possible to fit indivduals’ needs and circumstances - hence not either email or social networking, but a mix of both. I agree we should be looking at what we want our relationship with clients to look and feel like, but I also think social media/networking gives us a chance to tailor our communications to the different ways clients would also like to be communicated with, which can only be good.
@Tamsin - so true, that’s why I often tell people the trick is to open as many of these channels as you can but make it very easy to do and to monitor with toolbars and routines because the ROI may be very low in he beginning, but eventually may open into something big for you.
I posted a question on LinkedIn a month ago - this post would have been the best rated answer. Keeping that question in mind is the perfect orientation.
I see little or no value in all of the indiscriminate linking happening. It reminds me of MMLMGS - Manic MLM Greed Syndrome.
Hi John,
I think people need to realize that a community doesn;t have to consist of 1000 people, a community begins when you have just a few people (or even 1 person). It’s the quality not the quantity of the relationships that matter.
on a separate note, guy kawasaki recently did an interview where he said he think social networks should start charging a monthly subscription. I decided to ask the question on linkedin and have received around 60 responses. so i think another crucial social media question is, would you pay for it?
the post below gives my reasons for why i think social networks should not charge, it also links to the linkedin question i asked, check out a few of the responses, they are quite interesting.
http://www.jmorganmarketing.com/should-social-networks-charge-a-fe/
Helpful post John - there’s alot of questions out there - more than questions is just confusion or lack of knowledge. I was in a group last night and most in the group didn’t even know what Twitter is. That’s OK - It provides a chance to explain social media (another phrase that people don’t know what you mean!) I started blogging personally about 4 years ago, but only professionally (for my business) about 6 months ago. I see blogging having a great impact on my brand. Same for Facebook (which I admit, I thought at first, was only for college kids!) Twitter - I don’t know. Still trying to see how that’s helpful, but rather than backing down, I just keep trying it. If it catches on (like blogs and websites did years ago), I’d rather be ahead of the game and be an expert at it. It was funny last night - in a room full of 20 people, I was the Twitter expert in the room! Now that’s funny.
I often stick to blogging to actually “build” the relationship with customers in certain niches. I find that using a blog seems to give me the best of both worlds as my content can get syndicated and bring other people in.
I used to try having an active profile on Facebook, Twitter and all the other sites but found it very time consuming. If I do use them now, I tend to use them only to funnel traffic through to my blog, where they can then see my different sites and previous posts etc
We too believe in the power of using LinkedIN within the business community….up here in Canada, our big national newspaper, the Globe and Mail out of Toronto ran a feature on just that and featured my company too!
Try this link to see how their reporter covered the strengths of LinkedIn and entrepeneurs! See our Globe & Mail Report on Business feature - http://tinyurl.com/4y8jqu
Jim
Great post John!
Social media is just another tool (a very good tool) that should be in your marketing toolbox. And negative feedback might actually have positive results:
1. You can use that feedback to correct problem or perceived problems.
2. Negative user-feedback might actually increase the percentage of people who actually become your client.
If the negative feedback is genuine, then you should take a look at how to fix your product or service. I think social media is a force at improving customer service and product quality. The last thing any of us want to see is “yourcompanynamesucks.com”.
If you’ve ever viewed a blog, forum or user-feedback of a product or service where there’s nothing but glowing, positive, and raving reviews, what do you think? It’s fake! Or a Flog (fake blog). It has been proven (sorry I don’t have the source) that some negative feedback actually increase the chances of a visitor converting. Ever looks at Google’s feedback, blogs or user-generated help guides? It’s filled with negative stuff! But I bet you Google’s using it to not only fix problems but to come up with new products or enhancements.
As a marketing and design company, the number one reason I see blogs fail is a lack of content strategy. People hire us to design a blog and then don’t head our advice on making blog content someone’s permanent job responsibility. Without a focus and someone to manage it, interest wanes and the blog dries up. Great post John, I’ll point it out to our clients as a way to validate a good content strategy is as important as design.