Thursday, September 30, 2010

5 Reasons Your Social Media Strategy Isn’t Working:

This topic seems to have come out of the woodwork this week, what’s up?  My discussions have been spawned by the Friday release of the new movie on Face Book; “The Social Network.” Frustrations abound with the folks I’m talking too as their expectations are “If you build it they should come by the thousands... Not so fast! 
 
Like anything website related in the last ten years the expectations may be overstated as to how easy it is to launch the next entrepreneur billionaire. 5 selected questions of reflection are:

*It’s not smart marketing to “jump the shark” and do “in your face” selling of products via your social media sites. Remember the dot com bust?  You certainly can sell stuff, but try to do it without ticking people off! Engage folks with relevant, original content, not copied and pasted links to news articles that they have already read the abstract of. If they like and trust you they may approach you about any services your company offers, start there.

*You are measuring the wrong analytics. It’s not merely a Hollywood popularity contest of how many followers you can get, rather how many relevant, targeted followers that come back and connect with what you are doing.

*Your content is great, but it doesn’t get distributed and dies on the vine. Can you broadcast across Twitter, Face Book, Linkedin, YouTube, Flickr, and your blog  etc with one click?, why not?  Do you utilize video on other hosts i.e. YouTube? Why not? Do you Podcast your content? Why Not?

*We still live in a high touch society!  Do you leverage your email signature to your social media via a link? Also, don’t forget any other “touch points” to your client’s friends, etc i.e.  URL addresses to your blog or website on your paper catalogues. Printing your web or blog link on hand held collateral materials is still very powerful marketing and should not be left to chance; get all your employees to have an auto signature on company emails linking back to your “official” site.

*You don’t understand what social media is supposed to do when it’s working. Your “Brand” needs to be consistent and when folks find you via any social media channel (Twitter, Blog, Website, Face Book, Linkedin, YouTube, etc) who you are needs to be clear and understood in 3 seconds! Be patient and keep writing…………………….. They will come!

2 comments:

  1. Agreed! To much flirting and not enough transactions. Social media has become the black hole of your time. If you don't have a clear strategy and processes in place, you are sitting on a mall bench looking for a mate. Petty entertaining, socially interactive, but not very effective.

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  2. Agree with most points. We live in transition age to this new technology and one must step back and still do the thinking of what is most effective. Combining the soft sell with specific targets and ease of communication.

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