An Eye on the Long-Term Payoff

Social media marketing is an ongoing investment with the payoff coming from a culmination of activities versus coming from disjointed, intermittent efforts.

Brands get excited when they execute something new (they should be... it’s exciting!), but doing something new and different that’s disjointed from other efforts or isn’t given the proper support is only going to end in disappointment.

One example is in community recruitment (whether it’s a Facebook Page, Twitter profile, etc.). Brands want to let their advocates know they have a presence and invite them to follow them on a specific platform--a worthy goal. One tactic to achieve the goal might be to use Facebook ads, but those ads executed in a silo are a waste of resources because you may see an increase in fans. However, without a program to activate those fans to take action, it’s a pointless exercise. At the end of the day, you’ve increased your fan base, but you’re only going to reach less than 17% of them through content alone. That’s not exactly the payoff you’re looking for.

Just as social media marketing shouldn’t be done in a silo separate from other marketing communications, tactics shouldn’t either. They should be tied to a larger plan tied to business objectives.

Have a Vision.

Before you leverage the social space, you have to understand what you’re driving toward. What will be the long-term payoff for internal and external stakeholders from social media? Understanding this piece will help define how tactics build on top of each other and pick up where the previous effort leaves off, so the program is building to something bigger.

That vision should drive everything.

Know What You’re Truly Striving For.

Know what you want consumers to do and why. Then give them the reasons and means to achieve it. The example above is perfect. You don’t want the fans.  Those are meaningless. You want the potential for those fans to take action and expose your brand to their social connections.

Understand what you really want from an effort.

Social Media Marketing Is Cyclical.

At the end of the day it’s about using social media marketing to drive consumer action, and we should focus on giving them the reasons and the means to do so. Marketing efforts done bit-by-bit and in a silo get you into the mindset that social media marketing has a beginning and an end. Really, it’s cyclical. Drive consumers to take action, capitalize on that action and use that action to make your next efforts more effective.

Getting Social Media Marketing Out of the Petri Dish

Social media marketing too often finds itself stuck in a silo. The question of ‘who owns social’ has led it to be relegated to internal experts and/or small teams. That’s understandable because that’s often where social media marketing has to get its start within an organization, but that should be by no means where it stays.

The Social Petri Dish

One of the biggest issues that putting social media into a silo is that it leads to isolated results. Marketers demand results and find it frustrating when social media results appear unintegrated. What else did we expect?

Real success comes when social media is part of the larger marketing plan and tied back to overarching business objectives, not just the number of followers or views. Those may serve as KPIs, but the overarching objectives for social media should tie back to business objectives. Get social media out of the Petri dish and see a real impact on business.

Marketers can start by:

• Improving customer service by integrating social channels into their existing approaches to customer service and see customer satisfaction improve and a cost savings from making customer service more efficient.
• Encouraging referrals and driving trial by offering an incentive that gets better each time it’s shared with someone else.
• Generating earned impressions to support a campaign by working with online influencers and giving them the reasons and means to share brand efforts.
• Gaining additional consumer insights by forming an online, social media focus group of passionate advocates who offer advice and insights for new products and services.

These are just a start, but each of them will only be stronger when they break free from the Petri dish and are both supporting and being supported by other marketing initiatives. Social media shouldn’t be forced to stand on its own. Just like other marketing channels, it’s stronger when it’s working with other parts of the overall plan. That’s where integrated execution delivers on overarching business objectives, and that’s the secret to taking social media marketing to the next level.

Integration Only Happens When We Push.

It’s on us as social media marketers to tell others within the organization how social can help them, not vice versa. We can’t expect colleagues to come to us. Instead, we’ll be more integrated when we make it a point to visit others at their desks and ask them what they’re up to and what their challenges are. That allows us to opportunity-spot and offer ways social media can make everyone’s job easier and more successful.

It’s on us to prove the value of social media marketing, so don’t hesitate to reach out and not just tell how social media can support the business but show it, too.

It's the Ends, Not the Means

A quick Google search can, for the most part, allow anyone to find the most common social media best practices. Everything from knowing your audience and goals to developing strategies and social media policies is information that’s easily available.  Sometimes these best practices become company mandates, but a combination of limited staffing, time and knowledge can lead to stagnation and not moving forward because they're just not feasible.

Simply put, best practices are sometimes too much to ask, and they may not be best for the business.

Best Practices Exist for a Reason

Don’t get me wrong. Best practices belong and are important. A solid social media strategy allows marketers to be more effective because they understand how they’re going to take action versus throwing out tactics to see what sticks. Internal social media policies allow businesses to protect their online reputations.

If social media marketing could be described with one word, one worthy candidate would be agile. No organization has the same needs or the same path to accomplish those needs, and best practices can be molded to meet those needs.

Moldable Best Practices in Action

Aimee Roundtree spoke at SXSW in a panel I attended called Big Social Media Results at Small Organizations.  In her panel she discussed real results being seen by businesses using social media without best practices.

One example, included #RiotCleanup, a hashtage campaign following the London riots to get local businesses running again. The movement was intended to mobilize users, and it attracted 50,000 volunteers before the hashtag was created. Essentially, the campaign developed and the purpose took hold after action got started.

Another example was @AnimalGeneralHospital, which empowers employees to provide an inside look into the hospital. When asked what their strategy is, there isn’t one. The staff isn’t formally trained. It’s just empowered to share the hospital’s story.

Responsible for the Business, Not Best Practices

In the end, it comes down to knowing what the business needs, and using best practices to define how they apply to the end goal. The standard may not be set by what others are doing. Businesses should hold themselves to their own standards and ensure that all internal stakeholders’ expectations are met. Focus on the end goal first. How it is accomplished is secondary, and it may mean choosing the best practices that apply and tweaking the ones that don’t.

When Everywhere Means Nowhere

Social media planning comes with a lot of questions, and one of those questions often is, “Are we present on enough platforms in the social space?” There’s Twitter, Facebook and others, but now, Pinterest and Tumblr are gaining attention.

There are a lot of tools out there. Some might help your brand. Others probably won’t, but that’s why setting strategy with goals and objectives is so important. It will be your go-to guide when it’s platform decision time.

It’s vital to maintain that level of focus.

Everywhere Can Mean Nowhere

When hearing about the growing popularity of Tumblr or the referral traffic potential of Pinterest or even after seeing a competitor take off with a Facebook Page, it can be difficult to stay focused. Instead, brands can find themselves feeling that they need to present on every platform out there, but that’s not the answer.

Time, money and resources are limited, and every platform must be evaluated through that filter. Maybe referral traffic from Pinterest is really important, but it might be less resource intensive to incorporate more tactics that will drive referral traffic in on an already established platform like a Facebook Page.

New platforms don’t come with new resources, and without the people, processes and tools in place to support them, brands can find themselves with such a light presence on multiple platforms that they’re not being effective anywhere.

Evaluate and Re-evaluate

Social media isn’t stagnant. Brands should always be evaluating their current efforts, thinking about additional opportunities and identifying if what they’re doing is as effective as it once was or could be more effective.

It comes down to a few key questions.

First, what budget, time and resources can be devoted? If there’s just enough for a small number of platforms (or even one), that’s fine. Invest in them to their fullest, measure and prove their value to earn additional investment for more.

Second, follow the customer or prospect. Don’t jump on a tool because it’s new and grabbing headlines. Jump on it because your audience is.

Third, think about the story your brand has to tell and how consumers interact with it. Some platforms are better than others, depending on the brand and the content it has to share. The type of media has a big impact. More visual brands might look to a more niche platform like Instagram (pending the qualifications above, of course), while brands that connect with customers through thought leadership might look at corporate blogging as a potential outlet.

There isn’t a magic formula. Some brands can and should be present across multiple platforms, but brands shouldn’t try this unless they have the infrastructure in place to maximize each of the platforms’ potential. Social media marketing is an investment of much more than money. It takes a lot of time, too. Invest where it matters.

Strategic Experimentation

eMarketer released some numbers this week revealing that marketers see 2012 as being the year they move beyond social media experimentation. 37.1% of marketers see it happening in 2012, 14.6% see it happening in 2014 and 5.6% see it happening later than 2015.

The idea of “experimenting” is starting to lose its flavor, particularly because marketers are starting to establish their footing in the social media space. 68.5% said that their increased understanding of the benefits of social media is one factor that’s pushing them beyond social media experimentation. Increased budget allocation toward social media marketing is another reason.

All of this is good news. Social media marketing is becoming more formalized, sophisticated and responsible for achieving business objectives. However, the need to experiment will always be ingrained in social media marketing.

The Need to Experiment Will Never Fade.

This year we saw the rise of social media platforms like Quora, Google+, Pinterest, Empire Avenue and countless others. 2011 was like many years before it. New platforms rose, while others fell. Already established social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube evolved in how users can access them and brands can leverage them.

In this kind of environment experimentation is essential. The only way brands can understand the ins and outs, pros/cons and specific executional needs is to experiment. Social media marketers need to feel the need and have the freedom to play with new tools, create accounts, test and learn and so on in an effort to understand a constantly evolving landscape.

Social media marketing looks very different today than it did one year ago, and it will likely look very different one year from now when we look back on 2012. Platforms are constantly evolving, being created and being destroyed. User attention is fickle, and it shifts from platform to platform quickly. Just look at the very swift downfall of MySpace.

Marketers who fail to experiment will also fail to be at the forefront of the next great marketing opportunity.

Strategic Experimentation

It’s fantastic to see social media marketing start to establish its role within organizations with more definition. Still, marketers need to have the flexibility to explore and try new things.

Be an Anthropologist

Marketers need to try new platforms to see how people are using them. Identify how people share, what degree of connection users have with each other (are they close, personal relationships or more distant), the methods in which people gain and establish influence and so on. 

The point is marketers should understand the differences between platforms and how they are being used. The best way to do this is to log-on and join. Play as a consumer to then execute as a marketer.

Be a Marketer

Never dismiss a platform without looking at it first. At the moment, Facebook is the de facto social media marketing platform of choice, but it wasn’t six years ago. Today, Facebook is pretty saturated with brands, making every brand presence a little less important. What’s the next opportunity to really stand out. Get on new platforms and look at their potential.

Identify marketing opportunities. Can your brand pay for advertising? How does advertising work? How could your brand establish a presence here if it wanted to? What kind of people use the platform? Are they your customers, or could they be?

Every evolution in social media is an opportunity. Some are bigger than others, and some may not be opportunities right away. Experiment to find what will work, what won’t and what has the potential to in the future.

Experimentation Evolves Marketing

Before social media, customer service was relegated to telephones, the store, the mail and eventually email (which is social media in many ways), but today, social media allows us to use platforms like Twitter, Facebook and so on to scale customer service. Marketers can now identify in real-time how customers are responding to their decisions. The effect social media has had on marketing is paramount.

This isn’t going to stop. The only constant is change, and marketers that invest in the tried and true will be successful in the short-term, but the marketers who will be poised for success in the long-term will continue to invest in what works today and experiment with what may work tomorrow.

The Platform Battle for Attention

It’s almost unimaginable to think that seven years ago Facebook was barely around, Google was starting to gain traction and online gaming was just starting to make its way onto videogame consoles. Today, we’re sharing and producing an astounding rate of content and sharing pieces of information, and to top it all off, we have seemingly infinite avenues to do so.

How Long Can It Last?

An interesting question (or questions) is raised when you think about how much has changed and how quickly: Is this sustainable? Will people get burned out of Facebook? How many social networks is too many? Is there a saturation point at which people decide to cut themselves off with social media?

The bottom line is there isn’t a limit to social media usage. Humans are innately social creatures, and as long as there’s an outlet, they’ll use it to connect and share with others, but there is a limit to the social platforms people use.

Battle for Attention

As marketers we need to be aware of where consumer attention is focused. Facebook may have scale, but for some audiences, it doesn’t have attention. We need to identify where our consumers are spending their time and investing their attention.

That is, after all, what online platforms are after, attention. More time is spent on Facebook than any other platform, but that could change (and probably will eventually). For example, Spotify has launched an app platform that encourages developers to create experiences to build upon the Spotify platform. This may shift how users approach Spotify: moving it from being a music streaming program run in the background on a computer screen to being a user’s focus when on the computer. I’m not saying this will replace Facebook by any means, but it illustrates how platforms can continue to erode time, which isn’t unlimited, away from each other.

People will always share, but the platforms with which they choose to do so should always be something brands are paying attention to. User attention may shift for a variety of reasons. For example, Facebook overtook MySpace by revolutionizing social interactions online and making the experience straightforward.

Platforms that bring value to people’s lives and allow more effective ways to connect with others will win out. There is a saturation point, and users will prioritize the platforms that deliver the most value. The reward for platforms that succeed is user attention, which they can monetize. The battle will continue to wage on, but at the heart will always be humans’ desire to share and connect.

The Only Constant is Change

It’s easy to have predisposed ideas of where consumers are and how they’re behaving, but everyone prioritizes their attention differently. As marketers we need to know where our customers’ attention is now and where it might be in the future. That way we can anticipate change and understand where they’re connecting and where we can potentially connect with them, whether that’s Facebook, Google+, Twitter or another platform that already exists or doesn’t.