How to Get Your Company Excited about Social Media Marketing
How many times have people at your company told you that they just don’t “get” social media – or understand why your company needs to join Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter?
These aren’t just idle comments. Misconceptions about social media can hurt your brand and hamper your ability to compete in your marketplace by limiting your company’s participation in the social media dialogue. And if the people who hold those misconceptions also control the marketing budget, alarm bells should be ringing in the marketing department.
Here’s how to get your company onboard with social media marketing and help everyone understand why social media is a powerful element of a smart marketing strategy.
- Educate. Create training sessions to help others at your company understand how social media works and why your company should be part of the social media conversation. You may need to begin with the basics for those who are unfamiliar with social media. Profile social media use in your industry, especially by your competitors. Share examples of effective social media marketing campaigns by organizations like yours.
- Ask for ideas. Encourage everyone, from the CEO on down, to suggest ideas for social media content and customer engagement and to follow your company on social media. Create an easy way for people to share ideas with the marketing team. If you have a company blog, ask for help with content.
- Partner with other departments. Reach out to customer service, tech support, product development, and other units for help in preparing prompt, accurate responses to product-based comments and questions on your social media pages.
- Keep score. Create and distribute a regular social media “scorecard” to report the results of your social media marketing and track competitors’ social media efforts. Keep it simple, straightforward, fact-based, and user-friendly.
- Equip your sales team. Everyone who has direct contact with customers and prospects should have easy-to-use tools, such as branded premiums or sales collateral, to share your company’s social media addresses.
- Keep social media visible. Ongoing high visibility for your company’s social media efforts will help others recognize how much emphasis you are placing on social media in your marketing plan. Put your social media links and information on all your marketing materials and company communications.
- Plan for negative comments. Develop a plan for rapid response to any negative comments that are posted on your social media pages. Share the plan widely to reassure those who worry that social media will expose your company to criticism.
- Establish a company policy on social media. Employees should know your company’s views on appropriate social media behavior and understand who can and cannot speak for your company in social media, especially in response to a complaint.
Help Your Company Succeed with Social Media
As a marketing consultant, I believe that social media marketing should be among your top marketing priorities, whether you sell to businesses or consumers.
Get your company excited about social media so you can become a visible, active, and engaging participant in the social media conversation in your industry and connect more effectively with your customers and prospects.
Bob Nemens
If you step back you are likely to find two “elephants in the room” that will get in the way of implementation and ongoing support. The first to measure is the CEO and top executives’ comfort level–both in their understanding (fear factor) and how it will compliment the marketing mix (competitive differentiation). Second, many do not understand the light-speed of the medium and especially how to organize to accept and quickly respond (or not) to negative comments. Some standard rules apply, like who you contact and with what and how often–but now accelerate that to Mach 5 and with no control of what customers say about you. Be prepared to learn and act on what they REALLY feel about their EXPERIENCE with your products and services–not just the features and benefits in your product brochures.
jeangianfagna
Excellent insights, Bob-thanks. I agree that the comfort level of top executives is key; that’s why education is so important. You have to help them understand it to get them to embrace it. You’re also right about the mach speed of the social media conversation. Small social media sparks can catch fire fast and before you know it, you can have a full-blown PR crisis on your hands. All the more reason to be prepared to act when negative stuff occurs in social media, and to be forthright and sincere in your responses.
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jeangianfagna
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