Ask Michelle Carvill, ‘Why get involved with social media?’… her response will be; ‘Why not’

Many people I speak to are often confused about ‘social media’ – when I talk about my passion for Twitter and blogging, I am bombarded with responses such as – ‘I don’t get it’ – ‘isn’t it a waste of time’ – ‘it’s not relevant for our business’.

I’ve written extensively on my carvillcreative/blog about social media tips and tactics – lots of practical how to’s.  And I’ve coerced a few of my clients to dip their toe into the water – they were very sceptical initially, but with some close handholding, now that they’re pretty much into the swing of things – they are starting to see the true power of social media.

So, I thought I’d have a stab of attempting to explain what social media is about – and what is means for ALL businesses… so here goes:

Firstly, I read an excellent blog post recently by Robert Clay – @marketingwisdom (for those that follow Twitter).  It was an intensive piece about the creation of a social media strategy.  I myself had written something in a similar vein – and so it was good to see a fellow respected marketer concurring with my tactics.

What was particularly great about his piece was a ‘social media description’ by David Meerman Scott (whose recent book I am actually currently reading, but have to say, currently not getting a lot out of) – the description went as below:

You can buy attention (advertising)

You can beg for attention from the media (PR)

You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales)

Or…

You can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a youTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page.

So let’s take the first three areas David points to (buy, beg, bug) – they are all ‘pushing’ messages down the throats of participants.  Hence why traditional marketing tactics are now referred to as – ‘push marketing’.

The latter one – earning attention – this is about publishing something that ‘attracts’ – as a magnet, it ‘pulls’ the user towards your business.  So we call this ‘pull marketing’.

These two areas are also referred to as outbound and inbound marketing – but whatever we call it – whether outbound or push – they refer to the more ‘traditional’ mediums.

Social Media enables a new way of marketing activity – the pull or inbound or ‘conversational marketing’ – as it’s sometimes referred to.   By sharing content about yourself, your products, services, your business etc – then you ‘attract’ people / customers / influencers – and hopefully they’ll share your content with people they’re associated with too.  A powerful medium indeed.

And it’s not just about creating content – it’s about ‘listening in and having conversations’ – Dell are a great example of a big brand that has embraced the power of social media. Not only are they using Twitter to provide sales support and customer advice – but they are also engaging customers and potential customers to advise them about product development and innovation – getting users involved in the features and developments of new products, or product enhancements.  Very powerful.

And it’s all 100% free!

A big attraction for social media – it that it’s accessible to absolutely everyone.  You don’t have to be Coca Cola with a huge marketing budget to run billboard and TV commercials – social media is truly an ‘all inclusive media’.  As many, indeed most, of the applications are 100% free to use!

So let’s take a very ’surface’ look at what some of the Social Media Platforms out there enable you to do:

Twitter

You can create personal profiles or business profiles – or even profiles based around the products you provide.  By sharing and communicating on a regular basis – you can develop an ‘online personality’ which may mirror your own – and the values of your business.  Transparency is key on social media platforms – it does become very apparent when users are running profiles in a ‘spammy, pr and sales’ way.  Authenticity rules online – and so I would advise my clients to share – a little of who they are at the same time as sharing the values and ethics of the business.

The key element of Twitter is the fact that it enables you to ‘listen in’ to what potential and current; users, customers, partners are talking about – in your sector – and then start joining in the conversations and engaging in a relevant and ideally, useful way.  This post is focusing on ‘Social Media’ rather than just on Twitter – but you’ll find in previous posts on my carvillcreative/blog – that there are many resources you can use to target your listening activity, so that you are honing in on relevant conversation threads (eg see my: How I am using Twitter by a relatively new Twitterer post).  But what’s key about Twitter is that you can hone in on targeted conversations – and therefore, follow targeted users – growing your audience base in a targeted way.  I’m sure you’ll agree, a task which is impossible to manage on any relevant scale offline.

Linked In

Here you can create a personal profile to showcase who you are, your business and your previous experience – and the objective is to ‘add relevant contacts’ – either who you have worked with, been to business school with etc – and ‘hook up’.  Make recommendations on peers / colleagues and effectively create an online profile.

What I personally think is very useful from a business perspective – are the Linked In Groups. Groups have already ‘linked in’ relevant groups of users with a common interest in say, marketing or legal technology or start up business – so what you have is ‘targeted audiences’ to engage with.

Facebook

Personally, I was never a big fan of Facebook – I didn’t and still don’t like the ‘privacy’ issues with it (I much prefer Bizzbug.com). However, I can see it’s uses for tactical social media activity. It’s a great medium for sharing – and again, has lots of relevant groups you can become a fan of and ‘share’. We recently ran a marketing campaign for a client using Facebook – which consisted of purely Tweets, Facebook sharing via relevant Groups and some targeted Facebook advertising – and it was a complete success.

YouTube

The power of showcasing who you are, what you do – all via a simple video stream – uploaded onto YouTube and then shared via your Twitter, Facebook or Blog or website.   Again, the transparency and ease of video communication

And, all these platforms converge – you can share your tweets via Linked In and Facebook – and share your Facebook offers or wall on Linked In etc – so it all ‘joins up’.

Content is King

Of course, all of these (and there are other platforms too) create content – and, in my view, content is still KING.

Another quick and easy way of generating authentic and unique content is via a ‘blog’.  Blogging is the epitomy of ‘sharing’ (I run 3 of my own blogs now, as well as managing others for clients).  As online publishers of content (which is what we are when we interact with these social media platforms) – the power has been transferred from the few – to the many.  Ok – so that makes it a tough gig – as the landscape is more competitive – but that’s no reason not to participate – after all, isn’t that the same case as with ‘traditional media’, and yet businesses are far more comfortable spending money on advertising in magazines than participating with social media.

So if I’ve convinced you that you too should consider engaging with social media as part of your marketing activity – how do you get started?

It’s not just as simple as signing up for Twitter, Linked In or Facebook or creating a blog – you probably will do all of those things – but just as when you are planning any campaign or marketing strategy – plan your approach.  Ask yourself the same strategic questions – to name but a few:

What are your objectives?

Where do we send people?

What is our message?

What do we give them?

What’s our target audience?

Where do we find them?

What are our tactics?

How do we participate?

What’s our USP?

What are our competitors doing?

For businesses of all shapes and sizes, getting involved in social media is a must.  Right now while it’s still pretty ‘emerging’ – businesses will get away with the ‘aloofness of not wanting to waste time on it’.  However, if you continue to bury your head in the sand – then in the not too distant future, that hesitancy to participate will be perceived as ‘I don’t want to others to talk about my business’.  And as a business owner – I don’t think that’s a great message to share.

Tags: Facebook, Linked In, Social Media, Twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.