How Social Media Marketing Works

When people talk about “social media” marketing, what do they really mean? What is a “social strategy”? How do you get started? How do you measure success? These are some of the the daily discussions we see that usually revolve around how marketers can get more “fans” or make marketing more “viral”. But these questions are questions about distribution, which is an advertising-centric way to think about it.

In advertising, distribution drives content. On the other hand, in social media marketing, content drives distribution – that is, you have to have something important or interesting to “say” in order for someone to be interested enough to engage and pass it along. It is the content strategy that delivers distribution opportunities, audience cultivation and, ultimately, how a social media campaign may play out.

So how do you develop content that provides distribution? Here are four ways to break down social media marketing into specific content and distribution tactics.

Social Broadcasting

This is the most fundamental form of social marketing. Almost all companies engaged in social media marketing are doing Social Broadcasting. This type of campaign is about pushing your message out through social media communities and hoping the story gets further distribution on the network. It is akin to putting a story out on the wire with the hope that it gets picked up for broader distribution.

The Basics: The most basic tactic is to push offers and press releases to fans on Twitter or Facebook pages, or to push blog posts and articles out on Digg or Reddit.

More Advanced: Social applications, videos, games, custom social sites, contests and promotions all fall under more advanced social broadcasting tactics. Distribution can be on any number of social networks that are general (ie. Facebook) or very specialized (ie. YouTube for videos, or industry-related social networks).

You also want to be sure that you are not just pushing shameless self-promotion out to the social media world at large. Mix it in with some actual content that may be of interest.

Social Recruiting

Social recruiting is focused on building an audience. The goal of Social Recruiting is to have as many people as possible subscribe to your social media profiles or communications. This is closely aligned with lead generation for email marketing programs. The general idea is that “friends” or “fans” or “followers” are people whom the business can communicate with directly anytime, without the expense of advertising media costs or paid mailing lists.

The Basics: Many companies start out sending a social media page to colleagues, friends and family with the expectation that their networks will also be interested in connecting via social media. And we are sure everyone at some point has received a new follower on Twitter in hopes that they would reciprocate the follower. You can tell this tactic when you see that the person who follows you is following hundreds or thousands more people than are following them.

More Advanced: Many companies will engage in promotions, paid advertising and extensive content creation to build dedicated audiences of fans, followers and friends. Some companies may build customized support areas for specific customers to create an installed base of experts or promoters.

Social Engagement

Social engagement refers to active discussions with people on social media networks. With social media, everyone is a media magnate with an audience; businesses that engage that audience have an opportunity to amplify their message with genuine endorsements from trusted sources – friends, families and colleagues – or head off trouble quickly if someone is unhappy with the product or service. This is a tricky situation because many companies have gotten in trouble for misrepresenting the true identity of the person engaging with customers on social networks.

The Basics: Having an open message board on your social profiles lets customers have a place to give you their feedback. Think of it as an open suggestion or complaint box.

More Advanced: Many companies employ “digital street teams” to constantly comb the web and engage where necessary. In some cases, automated messaging mechanisms are employed to find, connect and automatically message to people based on a set of business rules.

Social Monitoring

One of the aspects of social media most discussed is the ability for social media to provide access to unfiltered customer discussions and feedback. By listening to customers, businesses can learn a lot and address issues quickly. Social Monitoring is all about simply listening to the chatter on the web and analyzing that information for insights, and then turning those insights into promotional opportunities.

The Basics: The most basic way to do this is to use search engines on sites such as Google News, Technorati or Twitter to monitor news, blogs and tweets.

More Advanced: Many companies use proprietary or 3rd party search algorithms to comb the web for feedback and data related to their products, customer opinion and competitors. They then compile this data to analyze for trends, research and insights.

Concluding Thoughts

Our goal in providing this framework for social media has been to emphasize creativity and content as the driver of social media success.We hope you take this framework, improve it and make it your own as you take social media down new and interesting paths.

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