Social Media Marketing – how & why?
Web 2.0 is providing many challenges, headaches and opportunities for marketers - all at the same time. Users are spending more and more hours in social networks and other highly interactive sites. Resources are being shared via blogs, micro blogs or link sharing platforms. New ways how all the content that is being created gets blend into data feeds with 1000's of widgets or plugins. And every day something new pops up.
Key Components Of Social Media…
We are giving you a brief overview in the following section. We just list some of the main elements for a social media marketing mix. This is just a sample list. We estimate that the total number of providers of social media tools is somewhere in the 5 digits.
| Weblogs |
Dynamic websitse where entries are listed in a reverse chronologic order |
conceptbakery blog |
| Wikis |
Online content collaboration |
Wikipedia |
| Social Networks |
Online gathering spots |
Facebook, LinkedIn, Hi5, Orkut, StudiVZ, Xing |
| Social News & Bookmarking |
Collaborative link sharing |
delicious, StumpleUpon, Digg, Reddit |
| Micro Blogging |
Text message style entries with max. 140 characters per message |
Twitter, Plurk |
| Photosites |
Saving and sharing images on the web |
Flickr |
| Web Video Portals |
Video viewing and sharing |
YouTube, MetaCafe, Revver, Blip.tv, Hulu, Vimeo |
| Crowdsourcing & Open-Source-Production |
Collaborative development & of ideas and content production |
moviebakery, Zooppa |
| Social Aggregators |
Central collection spots for activities on various other sites |
Friendfeed, Facebook |
| Blog Widgets & Plugins |
Interacting with the visitors of a blog and providing additional information |
Lijit, IntenseDebate, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog |
Please note that this list would need to be updated every 5 minutes in order to stay current;-)
Bottom line:
This area is offering numerous new and seemingly unlimited opportunities.
But what exactly are these?
How can you use social media to reach your goals?
How can you incorporate social media into your marketing in meaningful ways?
Your challenge
Are you ready to revolutionize the way you interact with your consumers or target groups? Social Media is not a one way communication channel like classic media. People will actually talk back to you! Yes this involves risks and means less control on our end. Not everyone will love you unconditionally;-)
We won't try to tell you at this time that this is all good. The point is that everyone is doing it. This is not just a little trend. This is a massive shift in one of your core fields of activity: marketing yourselves.
Customers are being enabled and validated in new ways every day. Brands engage them emotionally via social media. Customers are being heard and enjoy being able to post at websites and share their experiences - good or bad.
It is like the biggest concert in town that everyone is attending and that you as a marketer simply can't afford to miss.
Todays' buzzwords and must haves for brands are authenticity, credibility and personality.
How do you get that?
You can't buy any of these in a bottle. You can't hide and be credible at the same time. It means you need to present yourself in ways you might have never thought of. It means trying out news things and being experimental. It means showing your face - not just your brand but YOUR face - and directly engaging with your customers.
What's the upside of social media marketing?
You can get a constant real time feed of valuable data from your customers. You can learn about the perceptions of your brand by directly engaging with your target groups. That can save you huge $$$ in marketing research.
Many consumers simply think of companies as being evil. But they won't think of people the know the same way. Social media offers you way to build a personal relationship with consumers and circumvent this issue.
In a time of crisis you have a chance to react if you follow the conversation and actually know who is talking. You can put out fires before they threaten to permanently damage your business.
Is there a social media killer application?
Starting a blog? Joining other communities? Creating your own community? Joining Twitter? Unfortunately there is no one set formula to engage in social media successfully. Your goals and the profile of your target group will determine where to start. But at the end your underlying intensions are the most important factor and will determine if you'll succeed:
Are you in this for the long run?
Are you willing to be genuine?
Are you going to listen to others?
Are you willing to admit to failure?
Are you ready to take the plunge?
Where do we come in?
We are here to help you to take the next steps. We have teams in the US and in Germany that can guide you and define a meaningful strategy. We have community building experience. We can do some of the work for you but every successful strategy will also require your personal involvement.
We've been around: Way before social media marketing turned into a major trend we were practicing it already. The underlying concepts stem from word of mouth and guerilla marketing. And we have been making our living with that for quite a long time.
Still not being sold?
How about a personal story shared by one of our co-founders. It shows how to turn somebody who is complaining about your company into a happy customer.
"A few months ago I posted a complaint about my cable provider Comcast on the micro-blogging plattform Twitter on a Sunday afternoon. Comcast replied to me on Twitter within 5 minutes and made it a priority to fix my problem. They went the extra mile. They made me feel important. They took care of me.
In the meantime I have also met the person who is in charge of their social media activities. Frank is a great guy. I really like him. Are you getting where I am heading with this? Of course Comcast isn't always perfect. But I will think twice before I will complain about them the next time."
That's where you need to be as well - unless you are already there.
Is it online or mobile marketing if a user gets access to a website via their mobile phone? How about taking an image and uploading it to a website? Or watching a YouTube video on a mobile device?
You can see that the borders between mobile and online marketing are getting blurry. This is why we use the term "electronic media" instead of online and mobile. New opportunities pop up every day and we would be excited to show you some ways how you could benefit from using electronic media marketing.
Interested?
Social media marketing is most likely on your agenda. Are you ready to learn more or "get started"? You are just a few clicks away from talking to the experts...
Social Media Marketing In action..
Here are some of our social media marketing showcases:
Additional Info..
