engagement
Social Media Strategy? Spare Me
A friend of mine quietly sent me a slideshare presentation yesterday. It was created by a long established advertising and interactive agency in town. She sent it to me quietly because it was entitled “Why You Don’t Need a Social Media Strategy”. I guess she thought I should know I might soon be out of work, if word of this got around.
I enjoyed going through the slideshow.. and I didn’t entirely disagree with its point. However, there is an “it all comes down to semantics” argument to be made against it. Let me explain.
The presentation stated you don’t need a social media strategy. Instead, you need an engagement strategy, or an influence strategy. My take on the presentation was that it was capitalizing on the nausea widely experienced when hearing the ubiquitous phrase “social media strategy”. Fair enough. However, in our shop, engagement and influence are key parts of every strategy. Doesn’t that go without saying? Perhaps what the slideshow was trying to get at is the fact that it is vitally important to venture deeper than social media when designing an online plan. Mobile, website content, optimization, online advertising are all important, sometimes more important than social media depending on the business objectives for the strategy.
There is no question “social media” is getting way too much airtime. But for people new to the concept of having an integrated online strategy, this term can really help get them in the right line of thinking, despite its shortcomings.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?
Tags: digital strategy, engagement, influence, Social Media, strategy
Social + Search = Marketing (Part 2)
This is part 2 of the Marketing basics series. After discussing the 4 P’s of Marketing in part 1, I thought it would be useful to talk about brand positioning. In particular, the basic T-C-B model is a good, simple framework to organize your thought process and approach when creating social media and search engine marketing strategies.
Brand positioning is an enormous topic in itself. Traditionally, companies tried to create a brand image for their companies through broadcasting marketing messages to their audiences through advertisements on TV, radio, print, etc. With the advent of social media, online marketing and engagement focused communications, it is suicide to sound like a traditional broadcast ad when engaging with your audience.
Traditional messaging approaches and the notion that you can define your brand for your audience do not carry over to online marketing. So it is important to understand your company’s brand positioning.
Even though you can’t tell your audience how to perceive your brand, your communications and actions do influence how they perceive it. What you say and what you do must be consistent with your desired brand image.
What is the T-C-B model?
I was first exposed to the T-C-B model while reading a Marketing book by Rossiter and Bellman. T stands for Target, C stands for Category and B stands for Benefit.
Target
It is important to understand who is your target audience. With social media, your target audience may be just one person or a small, special interest group you engage with. Whichever the case, you need to understand them on a deeper, more personal level than traditional marketing.
Category
It is also important to understand what category need your audience will get from your product, service or interaction with you. By category, I mean the type of product. For example, the iPhone’s category is a mobile phone. The iPod’s category is a MP3 player. The iPad’s category is…I’m still trying to figure out that one… If you cannot quickly communicate to your audience what your product does, why they need it or why they should care about your company, they will not pay attention.
Benefit
As touched upon in part 1 of this series, the benefit of a product to its consumers is the value your audience will receive from your product. If you understand who your audience is and what category need they desire, then the key benefit is the “thing” that will satisfy that need.
Try considering T-C-B before sending that next tweet. Who are you engaging with? What is it you’re talking about? What value will your followers get?
Victor Chan
eMarketing Strategist
Tags: benefit, brand, brand positioning, category need, digital strategy, engagement, internet marketing, marketing basics, online marketing, target audience
Get In The Game: Re-evaluate How You Use Social Media For Business
Credit: Stefan Baudy
Many businesses are now entering the social media realm to meet current and future customers. But before your company creates a social media presence, you must first ask yourself, “What does my company want to achieve through social media?”.
The instinctual answer for most people is to increase customers, increase sales and increase profit. Therefore, some of them start setting up shop in their newly created Twitter account and begin tweeting about how great their own company is and repeatedly sending the same link to their online product catalogue.
Other companies might want to educate people about their industry and offer information to customers when they need help. The overall objective is still to increase customers, increase sales and increase profits, but this approach is anchored at providing the community with value – value that is appreciated.
However, sometimes by simply providing links to valuable industry news, tips, guides, and other information, your presence may become a bit dry, stale or dare I say, boring. So why not add a twist to engage your audience?
Your company’s social media presence does not have to be one dimensional. Think of different ways to engage or interact with your audience. You could ask a question, create a poll, start a contest or even, “play a game”.
Rarely do you hear of companies that simply play a game with their audience. This is most probably because it is hard to justify it against direct sales or profits. However, if your company’s goals are to engage your audience, create loyal customers and increase brand awareness, creating mini-games for your audience is a great way to achieve those objectives.
On Flickr for example, there is a group called, Guess Where Vancouver. Members of this group upload photos taken from Vancouver and other people try to guess where the photo was taken. The game is simple but effective for engaging members and creating conversations.
Can you think of a way to spin the game so it is relevant to your company?
Can you think of a way to adapt the game on different social media channels like Facebook, Twitter or even your company website?
Victor Chan
eMarketing Strategist
Tags: Business, engagement, flickr, game, Social Media
The Lego Strategy
As a child, I loved playing with Lego. I would spend countless hours putting together unique structures using these infinitely simple blocks. As I grew older, my structures became more complex and more technically challenging, but in the end, they were still created with these simple plastic blocks.
Photo Credit: Eric
Reflecting back on my childhood, I finally realized why playing with Lego captivated me for so many years. It was not the Lego blocks themselves, but the satisfaction of creating something new; something unique; something magnificent.
My passion continues to this day. Not for Lego, but for online strategy. The building blocks of an online strategy are a bit more complex than plastic blocks, but the idea is the same.
Everyone has access to the same set of blocks. What makes one strategy better than the other is how these blocks are positioned (branding), which blocks are fit together (integration), what types of blocks are used (social and search marketing tools) and how the strategy is built (engagement). The main goal and answer to these questions, of course, depends on the business’ objectives.
Will consumers view your product or service as magnificent (unique) or just another square box?
Victor Chan
eMarketing Strategist
Tags: engagement, integration, lego, strategy
The Answer Is C
You have probably taken a multiple-choice test sometime in your life. It could have been a dreaded exam in school or it could have been a survey taken for fun.
Photo Credit: slavin fpo
My friend once told me that if you don’t know the answer to a multiple-choice question, always pick C. I don’t know the logic behind that.
Surveys and polls have been around for a long time. It’s old-school compared to the latest news about Twitter, Facebook and the many emerging social platforms. So why still talk about them? The answer is C.
As social beings much of what we do is engage with Communities. Same holds true online. Therefore engagement opportunities on a website are fundamental; at least for websites looking to build community, to garner advocates and/or to foster loyal customers.
Decide which interactive elements to include early on in the design stage. Polls or surveys are great options. They can act as two-way Communication if results are shown immediately after the participant has taken part. The participant may also develop a stronger connection with other members as they can see how they compare to others.
Polls and surveys can also be a valuable source of information for the company or organization operating the website. It can give insights about the target audience or feedback about products/services or the website itself.
There are many options available for conducting online surveys or polls. The following are just a few:
Community + Communication – what are you waiting for? Pick C.
Victor
eMarketing Strategist
Tags: communication, Community, engagement, interactivity, polls, surveys
