The Role of Social Media
Alex Bremer says: "Social Media is the Internet growing up...!"
The only thing you really need to learn about Social media is that you don't need to learn anything!
As bold as that statement seems, its truth lies in the simple fact that the steps and measures required to execute a successful Social Media strategy are facsimiles of how everyone interacts and converses all day, every day. Once this "leap of faith" has been made by a brand looking to engage with its community then a strategy that is scaleable, fun, intuitive, easy-to-execute and ultimately rewarding can be assembled and actioned in very short order.
This article outlines just a few of the elementary facts that ought to steer a brand towards engagement...
Recent brand marketing has evolved from a small number of large-spend marketing pushes to continual smaller and more regular "mini-campaigns" (see image on the right). This stream of mini-campaigns and content allows brands to build up a "social database" that acts as a mid-ground between standard advertising and interacting with a brand's own database. While a brand will not own the data of those interacting with the them in social spaces, a social database offers a continually expanding group of consumers with whom a brand can communicate for "free" (recognising that the cost of developing good video and copy content is not free, but there are no advertising or distribution costs), and through whom quality content will drive online word-of-mouth on behalf of the brand.
Quality content (and consequently links) also drives significant improvements in your SEO ranking as Google themselves advocate in their own SEO guide: “Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.” A social database can significantly add to the number of consumers that a brand can direct quality content at.
The reason that brands are moving to this approach is that any consumer who has engaged with a brand online is far more likely to recommend to others, and a social base maximises that opportunity for brands.
Social media engagement is therefore a vital marketing component that ultimately drives sales - in fact it can blow traditional ROIs out of the water if it's done well. The key is to create content that sparks a conversation, which is an entirely different approach to producing an advert. 3B have done exactly that in managing social media engagement on behalf of both Marshall Arts and FESPA. We believe that our experience will facilitate key influencers advocating the brand/product, which is dramatically more valuable than a brand telling consumers how great their product is.
