Strategy
Integrating social media into your Marketing Strategy
There are many forms of social media now available on the web and Face Marketing has been involved with most of them. Social media is not about building buzz or pushing product and it has to integrate with the rest of your marketing mix to work effectively.
Integrating social media is about:
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interaction, learning, listening and reshaping organisations and supporting “word of mouth marketing” with your advocates
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building communities where your fans can share their preferences and needs and talk about their experiences of your brand or company with other fans
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making it easier to have two way conversations with your customers
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using shared insights to add value to the relationships between your suppliers, distributors and customers to spawn innovation and new ways of working
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bringing more transparency to your processes and customer service
Social media is enabling collaboration on a grand scale eg facebook video conferencing with up to 300 people. Is your company ready for social media?
Twitter Strategies
Personal identity is key to social networks
Research has demonstrated that a face and images of real people make a key difference to sign up rates on Twitter. It is for this reason that the hugely popular Twitter site for Mashable (link to www.twitter.com/mashable with more than two million followers has a picture of a good looking CEO Pete Cashmore as its main image.)
We recommend that you clearly identify who the key person will be that is responding to incoming tweets and many companies have now organised their customer service departments to use Twitter to deal with customer issues.
Follow the Twitter protocol
The secret is not just pictures of good looking guys as many of those using Twitter have now put in place key strategies to follow other key opinion formers and in return research has proven that 40% of those who are followed reciprocate so this can be a successful strategy for building your network of followers.
Using Twitter directories
Many of those successfully using Twitter like Mashable mentioned above are now using directory sites such as Twellow (link to www.twellow.com) to target other Twitterers who have clearly got an interest in the product and service you are offering. They then count on 40% of those they follow also following them as indicated above.
Not all Twitterers are created equal
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A recent HBR survey* showed 50% tweeted less than once every 74 days.
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The most prolific 10% of twitterers accounted for 90% of all tweets.
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1 in 5 people signed up to the service had never posted anything**
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On other online social networks the most active users typically produce just 30% of all content.
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The key learning here is that you need to target the Twitterers that are the most active opinion formers for your market to have the maximum effect.
* Harvard Business Review survey May 2009 with 300,000 Twitter users
**Sysomos survey June 2009, based 11.5m Twitter users