Invite colleagues
When looking at 2010, I am one of the pundits suggesting "social media marketing" will be a core component of almost all digital campaigns. Given this, I would argue that marketing leaders should get their marketing organizations prepared for social marketing with the following three insights.
The three core features of social media marketing are:
- Having a specific persona/socialgraphic profile
- Having defined messaging plan
- Having appropriate measures and metrics
Before rushing off and doing a SMM campaign, identify the goals and objectives of your social marketing campaign. Start with customer profiles a kind of "socialgraphics." as it is now being coined. Just as demographics tell about a customer and psychographics describe what they care about, socialgraphics help marketers understand the social media behaviors of their customers. For example: Do they share information, read it or create their own media? Who do they rely on for trusted information? Which social networks do they use, and how frequently? Here at SinoTech Group, we use a persona template tool that helps us with matching ideal consumer to their social digital hangouts.
It is important to see social marketing managers enablers, not controllers. We now know that social technologies are pervasive and affect all digital assets. Yet to be successful, we should appoint dedicated staffers to coordinate and manage social marketing activities. Success will require these people to teach, provide resources and use measurement criteria that are appropriate and can determine success (or not).
Digital marketers now face a threat and an opportunity: Our advertising clients are telling us in the agencies that they are 'seeing' more content online about their brands, products or services. In a world where twitter can spread both good or bad branding messages to 1000's in literally minutes is a real one and marketers need to understand the implications and also understand what can be done in terms of listening (monitoring) and engaging where appropriate. Most major Brands are starting to consider these broader issues and I see social media monitoring as one core service being taken up next year; either in a crisis management role or to simply listen about what/where the clients products are being discussed.
Despite the risks, this is an opportunity for marketing to demonstrate leadership and provide a holistic experience across all customer touch points.
I have yet to see many digital agencies take a leadership role in developing best practice guides for Chinese social media marketing or the ones I have seen, are Western 4A guides that neglect BBS's or the local SNS here in China. That said, I would welcome anyone in our community to help me develop a Chinese best practice guide for our community.. not a vendor specific document but a collective piece of work for the benefit of our own practitioners.
Let me know :)
Written on Saturday, 21 November 2009 15:01 by Matt McDougall
