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With all the buzz about Social Media Marketing, what are the core concepts and ideas that continue to separate successful campaigns from failures? What can a widget do for your strategy, and how does it differ from an application? Let’s answer these questions and start thinking about your Social Marketing Initiative.
Time/Sony Homepage Takeover Screenshot
It seems like everyone in online marketing is looking for the silver bullet. And while some say widgets are the answer, still others are of a mind that an application is the solution to their non-existent social media strategy. Let’s start there first. Even if your social media strategy is small, something is better than nothing. As long as you follow at least some of this good advice, you will achieve your social marketing objectives.
First, please consider your target audience. When sculpting your message and approach it is of the utmost importance to keep your audience in mind and to be consistent with your message. While creating your value added proposition keep in mind function and form. What does your target audience want and need? What can you give them that will encourage their brand loyalty to you? How can you engage them in an activity that benefits you while benefitting them? How will you present your message?
Here are the top 10 things to consider when forming your social media strategy:
o Start somewhere – Something is better than nothing
o Always consider your target audience first
o Be consistent – This helps a lot with the next one
o Be clear – Don’t confuse the user
o Be Engaging – Bring something to the table that adds value
o Widgets or Applications – Applications are viral and engaging, but generally exclusive to one platform while widgets are cross-platform
o Keep it simple – Choose your content wisely
o Decide what to do with Audience Voice – Who is being social for you?
o Cross Promote – Are your TV commercials driving installs?
o Change it up – Don’t let your message get stale
It’s really important to be clear in social media marketing. Don’t confuse the intended recipient of your message or you’ll loose them before they love you! Remember that a social media user likes to know what’s in it for them first. If you can build (or pay someone really good to build) a clever social media strategy you’ll be viral in a really great way and people will grab you. If I lost you with the Viral grabbing comment than please remember that if you succeed in doing this right, people will grab your message and share you with all their friends.
That brings me to the next section of this informative blog. Do you know that many people still ask me what if any difference there is between a widget and an application? Well, there are a few MAJOR differences I’ll point out that will help you to distinguish this for yourself. A widget is a small collection of branded content and value propositions (ie. Contests, form subs, games ect) that is intended to be grabbed and virally shared across multiple platforms, while an application is usually designed for just one platform or site.
The viral map of an application is also much different from that of the widget, because although the widget can and is often shared from one friend as a recommendation to another friend, the viral nature is far more engrained in the functionality of an application. This is part of what makes the application a perfect place to target an engaged audience and a widget the perfect way to promote a brand.
A widget is also something that we tend to use alone. It is a small promotional device that a user downloads to their page. It does one or two simple things very well. Simple.
How will you be engaging? Musicians use music videos and exclusive download content. The Motion Picture industry uses trailers and games, while news channels use rss feeds and polls. So next, let’s think about how we are going to engage your audience. Consider your brand and chose a value that makes sense for you. Again, the value is the reason that the user wants to keep your content on their page and should keep them coming back over and over again.
If you are marketing an application, marketing with banners on an application or distributing your own widget, please also keep in mind that even your most loyal fans don’t want to see the same thing over and over. Change up your content enough to keep the audience you’ve earned engaged over time. I strongly promote A-B multivariate testing for even the smallest social marketing initiatives. This is possibly the hardest concept to grasp for many new social media marketers but once you get it down you’ll find greater success when you change things up often and keep it interesting for your audience!
I always find it interesting to see how brands choose to respond to their audiences voice and how they choose to apply their own voice in social media. It’s almost always the conversation that goes a little like: “Yes, let’s hear what everyone has to say.” Then it kind of goes “Wow. People are talking to us. What should we say?”
Nobody wants to say the wrong thing, so this is where your social media representative needs to have a great idea of your business philosophy and know when to ask questions. With the right points covered they will know how to reply on your behalf. This should be a productive experience for you and a great way for you to monitor your campaigns overall sentiment. I encourage you to start your own enterprise profile on Perfspot or Facebook for your brand, or for the personalities that are important to your brand. Make some friends and open up the conversation slowly to get acclimated. Although some moderation is necessary for any social media plan you will be pleasantly surprised to find out that little is needed.
Lastly, cross-promote your social initiatives wherever possible. So if you have a huge contest for your widget, talk about it in your standard media placements like radio and T.V. This is a great opportunity for you to drive more social media traffic to your web page, contest or widget.
That’s it from the peanut gallery. Hopefully this is informative for those of you looking to learn, entertaining for those of you just browsing and reassuring to those of you already doing all of this! Feel free to leave your comments here or contact me directly about your social media marketing questions.
Widget ninjas and influential minds from all over the world converged on the New York Mariott for a two day symposium on the most effective form of social marketing. They discussed the future of what some believe will be a 36 billion dollar yearly industry.
Marketing media gurus like Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research and Ivan Pope (the “father” of the modern widget) also spoke about other topics, such as long term strategy and setting realistic campaign goals. Key topics included widget standards, cross domain functionality and the value of open social to name just a few.
Jodi McDermott of Clearspring addressed a crowd of expert online marketing professionals about web analytics and how Clearspring is forging new ground, making it easier than ever before to deploy a thoughtful, measurable widget strategy. Jodi also pointed out a simple but effective point. “Keep the end in mind” she says. Don’t ever start a campaign without having a clearly defined set of achievable goals.
Linda Boland of ComScore gave her audience her professional insight on tracking widgets in the wild and effectively portrayed a deep insight into the life of a widget once it is released correctly. Linda gave us a high level view of widget migratory pasterns that go “viral” and shared her insight of the viral loop.
Notable companies like Clearspring, MuseStorm, Sproutbuilder, MindCandy, Nokia, Motorola, Plusmo, Newsgator, Platform-A, Mixercast, Splashcast and Perfspot spoke in open forum discussions and private meetings about the future of online and mobile marketing.
A concentrated group of companies that are leading the charge against static banners and stale advertising tactics gathered to talk about the widget; a small thing that is changing the advertising world as we know it. Outside the box engineers and creative thinkers like Khris Loux and Chris Saad enlightened us to the tomorrow of data portability and Open Standards. Patrick Sexton of SEOish who came to the second day admittedly hung over and still delivered a presentation that rocked the foundations of what we thought the rules were. Patrick taught us new ways to enhance our SEO strategy. He also reminded us of an important point that I feel should be mentioned here. Brands: take controll of the conversation or you will have others doing it for you. Take a stance with your brand and continue the conversation in social media on your own terms with atainable goals and the appropriate degree of prudence. Don’t let your affiliate marketers define your brand for you.
Who knows what the future of online marketing will be or the eventual outcome of the social media frenzy? The pioneers and engineers of rich and engaging advertising online and the early widget brand adopters have an idea. The widget will inextricably change every experience we have online.
PerfSpot is happy to embrace the future of the web and it was a pleasure to meet the best and brightest artists of the code and widget. Thanks to all that participated. We look forward to continuing to socialize, discover and create with you!
