Blog: Marketing and Social Media

What Works?

There’s a virtual explosion of social media tactics and tools available to help you in your online marketing campaign. How do you choose those that ‘fit’ your company?

Start with a great social media STRATEGY. Developing one always revolves around your marketing goals and objectives. Examples of some of the more fundamental social media goals include:

• To increase overall awareness and/or goodwill
• To increase engagement
• To increase referrals
• To increase conversions/sales

Ideally, you want to build a loyal base of Brand Advocates – individuals who “blow your horn” for you. They absolutely LOVE your company –  and they will trumpet the benefits you provide – a totally unpaid army of PR agents.

Real World Social Media Strategy – Case Examples

Strategy – Brand Advocates:

360i Digital Marketing invited select bloggers to an exclusive screening of NBC’s “Kings,” which included a set tour and Q&A with the cast and Executive Producer, resulting in advocacy well above traditional Digital Word Of Mouth benchmarks.

Strategy – Tie-in to Offline TV:

NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” Facebook Page leverages the show’s interactive nature.

Strategy – Make a “Task” Fun:

H&R Block found that in order to truly engage taxpaying consumers in a meaningful way, they’d have to set up shop in a variety of social environments, making taxes funny, interesting and/or personal – depending on the audience and unique attributes of each platform. On MySpace and YouTube, H&R Block created the spoof character Truman Greene, who sang parody songs about his love of taxes.

Strategy – Focus on the Consumer

Skittles took quite a different route. In a bold move, the candy brand re-launched its Web site and put the focus almost entirely on consumer-driven conversation. For the new site, primary navigation was designed to overlay three main conversation hubs: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, along with “official” content such as product information.

Strategy – Celebrity Attention:

Vitamin Water launched a campaign starring LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, putting an existing social platform, Facebook, at the center of its hub and spoke architecture.

Commonalities

Successful strategies all have one very important thing in common – they KNOW their audience. Keeping their audiences’ passions in mind, strategies directly appeal to them, their online content engages them, and they have areal opportunity to achieve their objectives by developing these relationships.

(Thanks to 360i Digital Marketing for the inspiration.)

What online strategies have worked for you? What HASN’T worked?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

Ms. Chapman’s new book has a name change! The Net-Powered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide will be available very soon. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com