Things I’ve Learned from Lately #9

“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.

Why Should They Care? – Danny Brown explains what a brand needs to do in social media, a space in which many brands are trying and saying the same things.

Key Takeaway: Making consumers care comes down to understanding what the brand can say that consumers will also care about. Brands can say a lot, but the key is identifying the relevant intersection of what a brand has to say and what has value in the lives of consumers. Both elements must exist. That’s the only way a brand will prove that it deserves consumer attention.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place – Digiday breaks down the challenges Facebook has with proving the value of its advertising.

Key Takeaway: Are Facebook ads effective? Are Facebook ads ineffective? The answer to both questions is sometimes. Facebook is losing the PR battle. Brands have been burned. Brands are skeptical. They don’t trust Facebook, and I’m wondering if the time is coming for Facebook to take a pro-brand stance.

Stop Skipping Strategy to Get to ROI – Danna Vetter outlines the necessity of establishing a social media strategy before determining ROI. He states, “…giving yourself no real direction or the accountability of a strategy, your channel has a high probability of dying a very public death, joined possibly by a hallow Twitter egg, months or years of inactivity, and, oh yeah, the company name.”

Key Takeaway: ROI cannot be an afterthought. It also can’t be a question that’s raised before a strategy is in place. What’s the ROI of Facebook? That question gets you nowhere if you don’t know what you hope to get out of Facebook. Determine the return you desire, and then evaluate your ability to deliver that return.

Small Business and Social Media Stats – AllTwitter featured an infographic on the impact of social media on small businesses. Stats including 73% of small business use social media and 81% of small businesses plan to increase their social media efforts make a good case for going social before being left behind.

Key Takeaway: Social media has evened the playing field with businesses. Both large and small businesses have opportunities to beat each other. Large businesses can appear to be smaller and more personalized, while small businesses can take their ability to deliver customized, expert information to their customers on an ongoing basis and at greater scale.

The Social Media Bubble Didn’t Pop – Mitch Joel puts perspective on CNN’s article regarding the popping of the social media bubble. He explains that social media is a blanket term that encapsulates very different kinds of companies, that businesses are looking in every corner to be social and that social media is very, very young. There’s time to evolve.

Key Takeaway: Social media has been classified by far too many as a “silver bullet” of sorts. It’s not. As Joel points out, the hype may be dying down. Expectations are being tempered, but the excitement is still there. That’s where we should be. Let social do what social does well, and don’t put it on too high of a pedestal.

Avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome

Leading social media within an organization is a challenging job. There’s a lot to manage and countless things to keep in mind. There’s also the challenge that there are almost always others within the organization who are as enthusiastic about social media as you are, so you can always count on an email or two in your inbox regarding a new tool or platform with a question along the lines of, “How are we using X?” or “There’s a big opportunity for us here.”

All of that may be true. It may be a big opportunity. It may be a chance for the brand to create a presence before the platform hits mainstream. The challenge is separating shiny object syndrome with real opportunities. This is the difference between testing simply because it’s new and testing what is a real opportunity.

The challenge is platforms come and go all the time. Social media marketers have a seemingly impossible job of 1.) keeping up with what their brands are doing, 2.) where their brands are going, 3.) industry trends and opportunities and 4.) new platforms. It’s a big job, and marketers are forced to separate the meaningless from the meaningful pretty quickly.

Depth Beats Breadth Every Time

One of the key things to remember is that having a presence on a platform that’s meaningful and delivers results takes time and resources, which marketers should constantly keep in mind. They may already be spread too thin. Don’t get on a new platform unless you plan to invest in it. Otherwise, you risk sacrificing what actually is successful for the brand.

What Would Your Customers Do?

Social media is people-driven, not platform-driven, so check in on your customers. Find out if they’re using the platform. If so, determine what they’re using it for and what they’re getting out of it. 

Maybe they aren’t there, but it seems like something they’d find useful. Instead of creating a presence, keep an eye on it. It might be worth creating a personal account and learning the ins and outs before your audience comes, so you’re ready to go with a thorough understanding of the community and how it works.

Tell Your Brand’s Story

Successful social media marketing is tied to determining the story the brand has to tell, the people who will care and the time and places to tell it. Evaluate the platform and determine if it’s something you can be a part of. It may require large amounts of photography or video. Determine if you have the assets to tell your brands story effectively or if something needs to be created. But also determine if your brand story has a place on the platform. Sometimes a brand just doesn’t belong! There are a lot of options for brands out there. If a platform won’t tell your brand’s story, move on. There are other options.

Stack It Against Your Strategy

The most important factor in your decision should be determined by your strategic framework. Does the platform tie back to delivering results against your objectives? Will you be able to prove success and that the investment was worthwhile? You also need to look at how you are planning to achieve your social media objectives. If the platform doesn’t fit, save it for another day or take a test-and-learn approach.

What Should We Do?

It's the first question we ask but one of the last things we should answer before execution. But that's pretty tough. Budgets need to be allocated, management needs to be bought in and a plan needs to be in place before anything can move forward. It's a difficult situation.

It's difficult, but that's the commitment required for social media marketing success. It's the difference between approaching social media like a broadcast channel or an engagement platform, another thing to cross off the checklist or action that delivers on business objectives and executing only to find that you need to pause because someone wasn't brought in or moving forward strategically and showing success across the organization.

Brands often jump into social media marketing blind and try to figure it out as they go, but that's the most effective way to spend a lot of time going nowhere. Before too long, they’ll find themselves questioning whether or not this social media thing is really worth it after all.

The answer is that it probably is. The approach is the issue. Social media marketing success, like any other form of marketing, is the outcome of taking a deliberate approach and taking the time upfront for planning. It should never be off-the-cuff.

Social Media Isn't Cookie Cutter

No brand comes to social media with the same baggage, same assets or same customers. Every brand is different, unique and needs to approach social media with that mindset. Brands that take the time to understand where they are and where they should go will discover the unique benefits social media can deliver for them, instead of just trying to do the same thing as everyone else.

This understanding starts by assessing the social ecosystem to discover who's talking, why they're talking, what they're saying and where they're saying it. This could unlock a great deal of insight that can be used to understand where the brand can go. This can also help focus the brand on its vision for social media, goals and how social media can deliver on overall business objectives. It also helps brands understand the existing threats and opportunities in the space, so they can properly prepare and leverage what they already have.

Social Media Is for the Long-Term

No brand will enter its first foray into social media and see immediate short-term results. The best case studies out there occur after the brand has done the work upfront and started to invest. The value of social media is not in the short-term. It comes over weeks, months and years after the brand has proven itself as a resource for its customers.

There's no point in getting caught up with "turning on social media" right now because the big payoff won't occur right now. Take the time to invest and set-up for long-term success.

Social Media's About Being Relevant, Not Present

Your customers don't care if you’re using social media. They couldn't care less. What they do care about is whether or not your brand is relevant to them and their lives. Brands consumers want to connect with through social channels deliver value beyond being present. They enrich their customers’ lives in one way or another. Take the time upfront to understand the story your brand has to tell, the people who are going to care and the channels best positioned to convey that story.

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.

Marketing Without the Platform

Imagine Facebook, Twitter and all social channels have disappeared. Poof. They’re gone. That mindset would go a long ways in helping marketers develop social media strategies that achieve objectives that move the business forward.

Social Media Marketing Is About Action

Social media marketing isn’t about media at all. It’s about behavior—either amplifying it, encouraging it or making it spread. The reason marketers use social media platforms for marketers should be driven by the desire to influence consumer behavior in one direction or another.

That behavior might be sharing a brand or service with a colleague, discovering your brand’s content over someone else’s, contributing thoughts or ideas to make the business better and so on. All of these behaviors exist in the offline world. Social media’s potential is amplifying the reach these behaviors can have and the speed in which they reach others.

A Facebook Liker means nothing. Another follower on Twitter is worth $0.00. One more YouTube view does nothing for the business. It’s the behavior that these channels can drive that has business benefits.

Don’t Be Driven by Platforms

A social media marketer’s job isn’t to establish a brand’s presence across multiple online properties. Anyone can do that. The job of social media marketing is the same as any other marketing channel—affect consumer behavior. Our job is to tell the brand’s story to the people who will care about it through the right channels. Platforms don’t affect behavior.

The Social Glue

No brand’s successful social media efforts look the same as another’s. We’ve seen brands try to copy each other’s success in the past, but the bottom line is that those attempts typically fall short. Success doesn’t start at the tactical level, from the top-down. It starts from the ground-up, rooted in the brand architecture and social purpose.

Building a Social Brand

Whenever a brand gets started in the social space, it’s starting with what is essentially a blank slate. This is a reintroduction with a consumer in a space they haven’t seen the brand before. Everything matters.

Authenticity is important, but that doesn’t mean just going with your gut. Everything we say, do and think in the social space should be tied back to the brand. Consumers should be able to tell (or at least have an idea) from a single tweet or Facebook post what a brand stands for and wants to deliver.

The Ingredients of Glue

Creating this experience and feeling that can live in a single tweet, YouTube video or Facebook post doesn’t come by accident. No matter the platform, no matter the time, no matter the form content takes, every successful social media campaign has at least three components: tone, purpose and content. Each component builds off the other, and each will be unique depending upon the brand. That’s why copycat attempts typically fail. The ingredients are incompatible. Every brand needs to build these components for themselves.

Tone: This is how the brand feels and sounds in the social space. It’s the brand architecture conveyed with personality. The goal is to make it clear how the brand will sound, what it likes/doesn’t like and so on. This helps everyone understand the personality they need to channel when representing the brand online. For example, if there are multiple community managers, consumers shouldn’t be able to tell when one is talking versus the other.

Purpose: This is why the brand is sharing and connecting with consumers online. This should be focused on the purpose the brand is delivering to consumers, not the purpose of social media for the company (that’s another discussion). Brands need to deliver value to their social customers, whether that purpose is delivering exclusive content, providing entertainment or sharing valuable information. Does a post asking everyone’s favorite color deliver value to them? They can probably get that elsewhere. The point is don’t be disposable.

Content: This is where it all comes together. The tone and purpose align to deliver something tangible to users like content to consume, interact with, share or build off of. All of it is communicated in a tone aligned with the brand and in a way that makes its value clear to the consumer.

These three components make the glue that bring together the best social media marketing efforts out there. That’s why they always feel unique, authentic to the brand and customer-centric.