Friends, Followers and Fans.

Should Social Media Be a Part of Your Engagement Strategy?

It’s a marketer’s dream. A low cost, high impact  way to deliver your company’s message directly to the people you want. Yet, so many companies are uncertain about how, or are unable to actually implement an effective social media campaign that works. This generally results from one of two things. They either don’t understand the core principle behind what drives social media or they fail to effectively implement a process that sustains this model.

The Social Principle
Too often companies focus on a business objective when formulating the content for their social media campaign. We want sales of XYZ product to be up 30% this quarter. They then create content that tells the target audience why their product is better, more effective, innovative or a better value. This goes against the core principles of a truly successful social media campaign. They’ve created nothing more than traditional, old-world advertising content and are attempting to deliver it in a new-world way. The core principle being missed in this situation is that our new-world isn’t flat. It’s actually quite round and as a result, their efforts fail miserably.  Instead of trying to sell their audience (be it internal or external) with volumes of information, they should have been trying to connect with them. Understanding their audience’s concerns, providing them with insight and giving that insight real meaning is a crucial first step. Social media is about building a connection and choosing to engage in a relationship. In order to build that relationship you have to give your audience what they want, show your worth and earn their trust, and respect—this takes time and effort so don’t expect it to happen overnight.

What a social media campaign must have.
A good social media campaign must have three key things. it must be relevant, relatable and regular in order for it to be effective.

Relevant—Whenever you’re creating content, whether it’s a tweet, blog post or a video, make sure you don’t confuse the medium and the message. Twitter, Facebook and blogs are all just means for delivering your content. Think of them as a distribution channel to your target audience and nothing more. It’s the content that engages. And if your content fails to be relevant (appropriate, timely and engaging) for your audiences, you’re likely to be doing more damage than good. Your brand won’t be adding value to their lives and they’ll trade yours for one that does.

Relatable—Not only should the content be something that your audience can relate to, it should in turn relate back to what you do. Demonstrate your expertise on a subject matter by providing insight that only someone of your knowledge level or experience might have, and then give it meaning by showing how this insight may affect your customers’ lives. Make sure you deliver it in the form and length that makes most sense for your audience. They will appreciate content tailored to their particular taste and needs and will likely come back for more – the start of the relationship you wish to build.

Regular—At first glance, this may seem like the easiest of the three principles to apply. Yet in reality, it’s the most difficult one to determine. Regularity in a relevant term. What’s too much and too often for one audience is not enough and too little for another. You must identify your target’s rhythms and patterns and make sure you’re providing them with a frequency of communication that matches their lifestyle. Communicate too often, and you’re likely to overwhelm them. Communicate too infrequently, and they’re likely to forget about you as they go on with their routine.

A tasty case study.
For years now, Twin Cities-based Punch Pizza has been running an incredibly successful social media campaign following these very rules. By rewarding it’s followers and fans on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr with coupons and discounts leading to a huge following of very loyal customers. The offers are usually very relevant/timely (free pizza, tonight only). They make sure their content is relatable to their audience and their business (announcing the release of a local brewery’s new summer beer that pairs well with their pizza). In their case, Punch’s regularity appears to be based less on a schedule and more on pattern of behavior. Coupons and offers don’t appear on a specific day of the week, month or year, but fans know these offers happen often so they have an incentive to stay up-to-date on what Punch is doing. They’ve even learned that the interaction between company and customer can be incredibly valuable. When a blogger criticized Punch for restricting customers from taking photos of their food in their restaurants they responded by inviting guests to take photos and turned it into a photo contest on Flickr with content not only driven by their customers, but created by them. Creating an active dialogue between company and customer and ultimately between customers.

There’s no such thing as a free meal.
In order to successfully build a social media campaign, you’ll need someone monitoring the pulse of your audience and managing your outreach efforts to ensure you’re able to build a strong and sustained plan. This means you should be prepared to commit resources (both human and capital) to make sure your social media efforts work and that you’re delivering valuable and engaging content. But don’t let this be a deterrent for getting started, because the potential return on investment is not to be overlooked.

A recent study by Syncapse placed the average value of a Facebook fan for the twenty largest corporate brands on Facebook at over $136 per fan based on Product Spending, Brand Loyalty, Propensity to Recommend, Brand Affinity and Earned Media Value. Considering that most companies are looking for new ways to optimize marketing spending and that most traditional media resources are still very expensive and far less targeted, the social approach seems like a very wise investment when partnered with a smart strategy and valuable content.

Jason Hammond is the brand director and a partner
at Bolster. Contact him at jason@bolstercreative.com or 651.338.1244