The results are in, Social Media Marketing, despite all the hype, has demonstrated accountability for only 1% of the total sales accumulated from black Friday through Cyber Monday 2012.
While many consider this trend to be an indication that the Scial Media Marketing honeymoon is over, its our contention that it is more indicative of the fact that most businesses are not aware of the best methods for engaging customers on the social media platforms.
The real take away from the dismal initial holiday season results may not be that Social Media Marketing methodology is dead, but that businesses need to re-evaluate how to use SMM. And following this re-evaluation they should change their SMM tactics. Social Media is not a stand alone marketing strategy, but rather a tactic that should be used in conjunction with an overall internet marketing strategy. And the real objective of a solid Social Media Marketing tactical approach for businesses, is to drive traffic that is interested in your market niche to your website, where a constantly evolving base of content will keep them interested in your products or services.
If you accept the notion that Social Media Marketing is simply one tactic in the online marketing strategy, you must then define how it should be utilized. How can businesses create a positive ROI with a social media marketing effort. How can a business generate conversions and new revenue using social media?
One may argue that the first step would be to simply follow the rules already well established by successful Social Media marketers, send out good content whether its your own or curated, and seek feedback in an entertaining manner. Link your social posts to your ???money??? site, and provide real and interesting information that engenders engagement of the following, and captivate your audience with irresistible offers.
Far too many companies are simply pumping out direct sales appeals, and never posting anything with an entertainment appeal, or any valuable information to their followers. Facebook is turning into a Spam farm. Twitter is an affiliate marketing exposition. Many users are posting nothing of any informational or entertainment value.
Here are some suggestions to help businesses to put marketing strategies in place that will start converting their social media marketing efforts into revenue.
Curate The Content of Social influencers
Robert Scoble is a highly influential technical blogger, found on many social platforms and his own popular website. His average of 21.21 tweets per day was quantified as a social media measure of irritation in 2008. But the fact is that he creates a positive buzz around many technical topics he addresses across his chosen internet platforms.
The marketing team at Ebay has borrowed his concept of the wish list, to help drive sales for electronic technology. Wish lists have been around since Kris Kringle first entered the holiday scene, but the concept is taking on a new appeal for the marketing team at Ebay. If Scoble wants a product, why wouldn't you? The 2012 Holiday season may well be the first in which the ???wish list??? goes viral. Stand by for the results.
Create A Positive Business Avatar.
The idea of a positive avatar has been a part of marketing strategy since long before Twitter, YouTube and Facebook were a part of the marketing scene. And the best example I can recall in my life time is still from a global marketing campaign created by the Subway Corporation in the Early 21st Millennium. Jared Fogel first came onto the marketing scene as the subject of an article written by his former college roommate, in 1999. When the room mate was unable to recognize Jared as a result of the hundreds of pounds he had lost in a relatively short period of time.
The room mate wrote an article for the ???Indiana Student Daily??? that was then published in Men's Health magazine, Subway latched on to the initial reaction and created one of the most successful business avatars of the decade, with the Subway diet, featuring Jared as the personal spokesman for their new ???healthy??? menu. Subway went from being a fast food franchise, to a diet plan. The resulting revenue increase was unprecedented in the company's history.
Not every company is going to be able to generate a viral response to a positive avatar, but you can identify a positive image within your organization, and put that forth in your marketing efforts. The avatar does not even have to be human, witness the GEICO Gecko.
Understand The Metrics of Engagement
Too many Social Media Marketers believe that the metric for measuring social engagement is the number of followers, likes or subscribers in a given social channel. The real measurable metrics are found behind the scenes on the social platforms. In Facebook you can measure the likes, comments and reach of a given post. On Twitter, you can count clicks to your content from your tweets, direct messages and re-tweets. YouTube has comments as well as like and dislike metrics, that provide a reliable quantifiable feedback for your uploads. Analytic tools are available on each social platform's dashboard.
The theory is constantly evolving, but the core concept remains constant. Put solid, informative or entertaining content onto your social feeds, and you will reap the rewards of your effort. Spam or post random events like ???going to the gym now??? and you will generate random results. In most cases, no one who can forward your marketing effort cares what time you're going to the gym. Dig into the analytic tools provided by the social platforms and website analytics to determine the effectiveness of your social media effort. You can not improve, if you don't know what you are looking at, where your traffic comes from and what the traffic does once it lands on your website. No matter what market niche you are involved in, you can find a way to engage your target audience on social media.
The process of measuring ROI on your social media marketing effort, may not be something that fits into your current work schedule. If you want to learn how to use Social Media Marketing in a measurable manner, make sure to contact Lili Teixeira, or Kenneth Ford, at Mass Internet Marketing Media. MIMMCO's experts will help you place a value on your Social Media Marketing Effort.
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