Is social media actually good for my business?
The answer to that question is not always yes. It depends largely on your social media mindset. As much as I might be an aficionado and evangelist for social media, the reality is that it is not the panacea for all businesses. For example, where social media can be utterly fatal is when the business doesn’t have a good product or value-added proposition. Also, it can be unfortunate for companies where there are more bad things to hide than good things to talk about, or where the executive team’s mindset is more about fear & control than it is about long-term customer fidelity. The issue, of course, is that your company is on social media anyway, regardless of whether or not you have the right product or an appropriate mindset.
If your brand has a good story to tell, then social media can be a great channel in which to invest time and as a way to amplify intelligently your message. Conversely, if your product is rocky and traction is poor, social media can be a way to investigate, improve even innovate. The key is making sure that your social media activities (and resources spent on social media) are firmly linked back into your business objectives. {Please click to tweet if you agree!}
Social Media Mindset – The Big L
I like to refer to the Big L as a way to encourage the right social media mindset. At its heart, the Big L embodies core components of a Learning Organization. Here are the 4L’s that should form the backbone of any social media strategy:
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1. Listen
The first great benefit of social media is the ability to listen. One can gain real-time access to what one’s customer base is feeling or doing. Naturally, what is being typed on a Facebook post or a Tweet may not be a perfectly accurate reflection since it is merely declarative. However, listening to what is being said (or typed) can provide formidable insights. Listening does not mean necessarily responding. That said, the best course is to create an action flow for all incoming messages. Each piece of information should be categorized and channeled to the right people.
The killer question: do you and your organization believe that your customers’ opinion truly counts?
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2. Learn
Social media is a very humbling space to be in. Every day there are new platforms being invented and/or terms and conditions being changed. What worked yesterday is not guaranteed to work tomorrow. However, just as one wants to be smart about one’s marketing activities, the issue is that one still needs to learn by doing. The glory about social media is that it invites — if not necessitates — action. Social media marketing means trying out new things, probing, creating, testing. By doing and failing, one learns. Learning must be indelibly inscribed into one’s social media mindset. {Click this to Tweet!}
The key question: where and when do you explicitly take stock of the lessons learned and share across the organization?
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3. Let Go
Conversation — as in a two-way conversation — implies joining and participating as well as initiating. It means that there may be a period of small talk or warming up, in order to earn, at one point, the right to ask for something in return.
The key question: how immediately is the return on investment needed or expected?
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4. Loop back
As part of a learning experience, it is important that there be specific moments to allow for digestion and exchange. It can be such a fast-paced environment, that one can forget or lose the plot. Are all the right people involved? To what extent has the social media strategy contributed to the business objectives? What needs to be improved? As brands and marketers can tend to return in pavlovian manner to “barketing,” it is important to take stock, make sure that the listening is still going on and cycle back into the learning and letting go.
The key questions: do you have smart one-page dashboard that collects the right data points that helps keep the top executives appropriately focused on what matters? Also, is there enough spontaneity and reactivity in your programme to take advantage of the real-time nature of social media?
Social media marketing is still in its infancy to the extent that the effectiveness of so many brands is still well below optimal. Whereas CPC and Facebook ads continue to be the “easy” option in the absence of a strong brand and content marketing strategy, the challenge is that the CPC, SEM and social meda ads prices are going to continue to rise since brands are not prepared to do the hard work first. Hopefully, implementing a social media strategy with the 4Ls embedded is one way to smarten up one’s results.
Your thoughts welcome!
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