Photo credit: the tartanpodcast
I happened to stumble upon a blog mentioning that social media can save your brand. This blog post triggered my thought about using the social media as part of your marketing strategy. I thought of mentioning my two cents worth about social media strategy…
Background
There are many companies out there who are very excited to use the social media as part of their marketing strategy. I don’t mean that it is not a good thing to use the social media as part of your marketing strategy. But they have to understand what they are really looking for when adopting such a strategy.
What is your objective?
Like many other media space that you may have purchased for your marketing strategy, social media is also one place where you need to seriously look into its objective before getting yourself into this.
My Japanese ex-director used to ask me “What’s your objective of doing this?” whenever I plan something out. It really gives me a chill, and it is actually helping me to achieve the whole project into the right direction. It could be done in a simple fashion, or it could be really difficult. But the whole idea is that it really helps the project to steer towards its objective when you have a clear objective!
Should you jump into the water first before planning out your strategy?
Frankly speaking, there isn’t many agencies who are experienced with using the social media to their advantage. They are so excited about helping the companies to get into social media. As most of these big companies already have the presence in the offline world, they naturally will get some supporters when they come into the social media. Can I say it’s because of these agencies’ expertise? They are just helping to put up the social media strategy, and pumping in massive traffic hoping these “targeted” audience will get the drift and be their fans.
Seriously speaking, I believe that we should have a sound strategy on paper first before we get into the social media. I know it’s difficult to get that on paper, but this will simply reveal how much experience our agencies had about social media since it’s all in theory and they have to put in “real” scenarios.
Should you really start jumping into social media even if you have a plan?
Sometimes, it may be a good choice not to go into social media if you are not confident enough. That’s because it can be disastrous if you don’t have enough personal experience using the social media.
There’s someone I know who is actually very active in being a brand representative in the social media. Whenever people speaks about that brand, he will stand out and help to answer those questions. As times go by, the questions simply went too deep and way beyond his technical knowledge… He had no choice but to “disappear” quietly in the social media by deleting his account…. Don’t you think that is such a sad story?
Not that I want to be a wet blanket… I think that if anyone were to jump into the social media, they should have a certain limit where they can stand… And if the questions asked were over their limit, there should have a strategy to tackle that and to bring it offline for a better settlement.
What is your termination clause?
For everything that has begun, there must be an ending to it. We know that there is termination clause in every contract as well. I have asked quite a couple of agencies how they end a social media project gracefully, and it seems to me that there isn’t any thought put into this area at all. In fact, that was quite expected when I asked such a question.
For example, if you are going to start a social media for a product launch, have you ever thought how you are going to close a community of fans who have participated in your product launch when your product has ended its life of sale?
I can say that it’s fairly easy to terminate in many other media space… Number 1) We can start a microsite (as an online brochure) and ended it gracefully without anyone complaining since we only have visitors and not participants. Number 2) We can start a TV commercial for a certain period of time with different “episodes” and ended gracefully with a final “episode”… Number 3) We can have radio commercial or magazine advertisement or anything else… They are all just a one-time thing!
But social media is a different platform! Social media is a website where we build communities… we build tribes who are out there to be our evangelists! We are building a team who are enthusiastic about us! And when you come to think of closing that community, it’s suicidal!
Do you have enough manpower resources?
Lastly, I think it’s all about allocating enough resources to maintain the social media. Social media is all about being two-way communications. It’s all about how we can consistently contribute to the social media and tribes are formed to support us by being our fans…. And it’s not about building a one-time media and forget about it… It can be disastrous and dangerous to our brand if we were to leave it deserted for many months!
Question for you
Do you work on social media for a company? Or are you from a social media agency?
What do you think of companies adopting social media for their marketing communications?
Do let me know in the comments below. Thanks!
