me, my passion & digital marketing
Posts tagged social media marketing
What’s The Strategy?
Dec 4th
“How can social media improve my business?”
“It depends…”
“You mean…?”
Its funny how people expect a quick one liner answer to a question like this. I wished there is a quick answer but unfortunately its not as simple as it sounds.
Social media is not just about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, internet, online banner advertisements. These are social media tools. To get into social media, the first thing you must have in mind is your goal and what strategy you want to use. The strategy must be unique to your business, and no blind copying because a strategy custom-tailored for another business (though might be in the same industry) might not have the same effect to yours.
There is an interesting article I came across, “Social Media Not The Answer for Weak Brands” which quotes that social media is akin to better weapons & bigger army strength in a war, but ultimately it is the warfare strategy that leads to a win. The emphasis is to get the strategy right, then use social media as a platform to execute the strategy.
Although I truly believe in the strength of social media, I’d not want business to think and believe that social media IS the ULTIMATE everything to help improve businesses. Social media is a tool and a platform that can help businesses reach out to target audience, engage with them, interact with them, understand them, maybe even as a channel to test responses for new product/service roll out. All these information leads to better understanding of the business, which can then be used to improve business processes, realign products/services offerings, offer new products/services and of course (hopefully), lead to a bigger bottomline.
Thinking about using social media for your business? My advise – start with the end in mind, that is what is your goal, then think about the strategy to deploy, then only which social media platform to use. 
6 Ways Social Media Can Help Businesses
Nov 28th
As a marketer myself, I am very well aware that digital marketing is fast gaining a strong foothold and almost every marketing plan today include as least one of the many social media or some sort of online aspect. But as to really put it into a marketing plan, ensuring that the objectives are met while ensuring that the bosses are happy with the type of resources taken up, it can be a real challenge.
However, having said that, businesses today have to understand how and what social media can do for you before jumping into the bandwagon. Because most do, and for the wrong reasons and later feel that it doesn’t work for them when its not the case. Here’s my list of what social media can do for you :-
(1) Build a network who agrees to receive your broadcast of marketing messages & engaging with your customers & potential customers
Those who has done direct emailing know that every email address must opt-in to receive your marketing messages. Unsolicited messages can lead you to a lot of sticky issues ~ getting a call from the internet provider is not pleasant & damaging, having your domain blacklisted means that even your emails will not reach your customers (these days email servers subscribe to these blacklists to keep spam low) and you definitely don’t want to have your email server blocked (I’ve experienced this in my previous company). But with social media, they are following you voluntarily and you can broadcast your messages to them ~ of course with a proper strategy & execution.
(2) A channel to listen to feedback/comments
The truth hurts, and some companies choose to ignore constructive feedbacks or ‘listen less’ of such feedback, and assume that they are the minority. With social media, even the minority’s voice can become major if not handled carefully. People are talking and sharing thoughts/ideas/experiences all the time ~ you don’t want a multiplication effect for the wrong reasons. So, listening is important, and social media can help you reach out to listen.
(3) Knowing what’s hot / being discussed in your industry
Because of the nature of social media, news and latest updates gets discussed so very quickly and you want to make full use of these conversations – to know the latest trends/issues/challenges so that you can make a business decision on how to react to it.
(4) Opportunity to clarify/correct misconceptions
You can immediately rectify misconceptions by offering clarifications and these messages are going to be read by all who follow you. Your voices gets heard and you can reach out to many at one go.
(5) Participate in the conversations, reinforce your message
When you see a topic concerning you being discussed, this is your opportunity to strike while the iron is hot. Not only are you able to participate, you can even reinforce your message and subtly promote yourself.
(6) Opportunity to be the voice of authority
Its not easy, I know. People don’t trust you overnight, it has to be done consistently over a period of time. Start with providing good information with interesting information and real value. If you can offer tips that can help and yet subtly sell yourself, that would be best! Track your click-through rates for your to know the effectiveness. When you offer tips/interesting information, people tend to take note. Now you’ve got their attention and their trust!
I’ve seen some companies thinking and believing that social media is HARD SELLING when its not. No one wants to be a fan of Facebook to be continuously bombarded with endless promotions and hard-sell marketing messages. You have to engage with your audience, build the trust, and listen in order to get people to buy the idea. Some get impatient by the day because the expectation has been set wrongly in the first place. The other things is also the tendency to OVERDO because its a free tool. A strategy in mind and proper execution is key to successful social media use.
