Our firm, since inception, has held the view that digital marketing efforts should lead all corporate marketing efforts. As the use and application of the Web has evolved, we now believe the Internet is primed for a more subtle shift to socially engaged Web design and development. The fact is a customer of yours may buy your product or service not solely based on the effectiveness of your advertising, salesperson, or ecommerce site. They are becoming more influenced by the image and reputation of your offering provided to them through their social network.
• 90% of consumers seek advice before making a purchase decision
• 1 in 3 who read reviews rely on them for purchase decisions (Source Forrester)
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Even after the purchase decision has been made there is a very real possibility that if that customer requires service they may not engage your support staff. In today’s world, consumers are banding together, seeking out those with similar problems, and addressing their issues without your involvement. Or possibly worse, they can’t find the answers or they get wrong information. Social media is now interrupting your speech to prospective and existing customers. The group has questions, comments, and concerns. They are talking behind your back.
The corporate involvement in social media networks adds tremendous brand value. The willingness of the company to engage its customers in their communities fosters a culture of transparency that is appreciated by the community members. In addition, the corporate involvement in social media networks adds a positive image as it relates to being cool, with the times, and progressive.
It is not a question of should your business be involved in social media but rather how can we maximize the return on our investment. That’s where we can help. It’s time to join the conversation.
Listen / Monitor We recommend that our clients engage in "conversation monitoring" for several weeks before taking any action. This is necessary to fully understand the "conversation" or community that already exists before taking any action that may potentially damage the image and reputation of the client’s brand.
Conversation monitoring is an essential starting point to build an understanding of the participants or players in the "conversation" you are attempting to create a presence in. Throughout the evaluation and monitoring of social media conversational areas, knowledge needs to be acquired, stored, and organized.
Build Knowledge Building knowledge and wisdom of the conversation and participants is the next logical step so that you have a deep understanding of how participants are communicating through social networks, social media and social media applications. These social media and networking areas need to be evaluated for their overall value to the campaign based upon openness, participation value, traffic quality, content quality, and fit with the campaign focus.
Throughout the evaluation and monitoring process, relationships with site owners, editors, alpha users, and the general audience need to be cultivated to create conversational partners for a highly effective social media marketing campaign.
Content Creation Content creation is the next logical step of any social media marketing campaign. Based upon the conversation monitoring and building of wisdom from the conversation you can now create fresh, relevant content that can add value to the conversation and enhance your presence in the conversation.
After a clear focus of the campaign is determined and a healthy awareness of the existing social media conversation occurring within focus is established, the campaign then can start the process of developing content to add to the conversation. Content can be as simple as commenting on blogs and social network activity streaming all the way to fully produced videos, podcasts, slideshows, widgets, and mobile applications.
Content should be created as part of central production plan, in sync with campaign objectives, and bring real value to the conversation targeted by the campaign.
Activity Streaming Activity streaming is the act of taking your content created around a focused set of topics or a production and broadcasting it back out into the social media space. This stream will be focused and deliberate based upon knowledge of social media conversation and provide true value to the audience at large.
With a clear campaign focus, wealth of knowledge of the conversation, and rich content developed to add to the conversation the campaign can now begin to syndicate the voice and content developed by the client’s campaign back out into the targeted social media conversation.
In order to better understand the consumer/client gains that are made utilizing social media strategies, it is important to interpret how customer/client actions demonstrate intent (illustrated in chart below).
We measure results through a variety of metrics, including referral drill downs in site statistics; mentions on blogs and in media; comments on the content; real-time blog advertising results, and click through activity to the company website.
Using this understanding, it is possible to forecast how intent at each level can bring revenue and profit performance from social media campaigns. We can forecast the percentage of customer/clients that will buy your product or service at each stage. In a constant review of these engagements, we can best determine areas of strength and weakness in the process and maximize results.
