“Social Media”, the new catchphrase… time and again we hear of a successfully executed social media campaign from the big names like Starbucks, Coca Cola and Dell. These are among the few brands that have managed to carry out social media campaigns successfully in Facebook and Twitter.
Social media in the western world (the Americas and Europe) has met with relative success whereas our part of the world (South East Asia) social media marketers such as myself face an uphill task explaining social media to local businesses and SMEs and convincing them that a portion of their marketing budget should be set aside for social media.
Here are some of the misconceptions and questions we have been asked.
ISN’T FACEBOOK SOCIAL MEDIA? MY SON SET UP A PROFILE FOR ME, I HAVE SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE.
Yes and No. Facebook is a social networking site that has grown exponentially since 2006 and it has been used to great effect by some of the biggest brands like Starbucks and Coca Cola due to its large subscriber base of about 400 million. Just this week it overtook Google for site visits.
Facebook only represents a facet of social media presence. Facebook’s ubiquity in many parts of the world makes it a very useful and effective channel to touch and interact with your customers and prospective clients. It is just one of the many channels available for businesses and proprietors.
SOCIAL MEDIA IS JUST FOR YOUNGSTERS, MY PRODUCTS AND OFFERINGS ARE FOR OLDER PEOPLE WITH HIGHER SPENDING POWER.
How many times have you come online to look for a product that you are thinking of buying? Visited a forum to discuss the pros and cons for a specific product or service from a motor vehicle or new camera, to a physician? Visited Wikipedia to get background information on almost anything.
These are all forms of user-generated content, and a part of a business’ social media presence. True enough that the 18-35 demographic group are known to be more active on social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Friendster. How about LinkedIn? A social networking site for professionals and most of the people I’m connected to there are in their late 30’s to mid 40’s. Forums are also known gathering spaces for communities with a vast demographic profile. Wikipedia allows users to share information to benefit other users on any given topic or subject.
WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?
“Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.” (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media)
Based on that definition, I will put to rest the misconception that social media is about building web infrastructure. Many businesses jump on the social media bandwagon by building a blog site, get a Facebook account, Twitter account, set up a forum, putting up a Facebook social advertisement or even buying Google Adwords.
By doing any of the above, you’re just behaving like mainstream media where you literally shout out to the public engaging in a one-way monologue. These are merely channels businesses use to connect and interact with your public.
HOW THEN SHOULD I GET INTO SOCIAL MEDIA?
A social media campaign is an overall strategy that covers not just a blog or a social networking profile, but includes finding out where are people talking about you, what are they talking about, how are they talking / feeling about you, why and when do they talk about you?
Like any marketing campaign, you have to identify your target audience and this is done by having a social media audit to identify the platforms where conversations are taking place.
Armed with that knowledge, you will be able to formulate a plan that will target these communities by means of social advertising, search engine marketing and optimization. Giving the right information to these communities about youself and your value and at the same time open up the doors for them to interact with you.
Still unsure? The floor is open for you…