Strategic Social Marketing for Communities

When options are abundant; and social media networks are available in many niches.... which websites do you think TOP the list for strategic social marketing? Here is a quick breakdown of the top 3 which I believe should be your starting point for researching & building a community around your brand or idea.

1) Facebook

According to Alexa rankings, Facebook is the second most popular place in the world today. With that type of reach it’s a no-brainer if you are looking to build a community around a niche, idea or a brand. Facebook is the right place develop relationships online and now boast over 500 million users online with a 50-60% of this user base returning every day. This offers community managers opportunities for social community building & marketing as long as you are willing to build relationships first.

Some best practices:
- Minimize the sales pitch
- Ask open ended questions
- Engage/Interact with your audience
- Offer promotions/Give-a-ways
- Build a FAN page over a GROUP
- Work the FBML or hire someone who can

2) Linkedin

Although Linkedin is number 21 according to Alexa rankings; it’s a huge source of relevant and targeted people which are decision makers and thought leaders. It is B2B unlike Facebook which leans more to C2C, but gaining interested users to your community will be possible by engaging with current groups or even starting your own.

Since there are thousands (if not more) of groups which range in size from 10 members to 100k or more you will be able to ask your peers questions about your community while engaging them on their levels of interest. If what you have to say is interesting to them or appeals to them they may very easily join your social community.

Use Q & A section of LinkedIn to build up your personal network and then tie the communication back to your goals; to build community either on Linkedin or off Linkedin.

Some best practices:
- Minimize the sales pitch
- Know your facts
- Ask open ended questions
- Ask for feedback
- Find collaborators

3) Twitter

Love it or hate it; the 140 character microblogging platform is here to stay. Your peers, business associates and top brands are all using Twitter.com these days. With this type of reach a 140 character message can travel the 7 continents in seconds with just a few retweets. Your community is there just waiting for you to give them the information they need and desire (as long as its 140 characters or less).

Search is your friend; the twitter search allows for a multitude of various regular expression searches. This alone should be where you spend your time finding your audience and determining how they communicate. Make a plan and use your knowledge of your space to speak to your potential audience and have a goal of ultimately re-directing them to your community.

Some best practices:
- Minimize the sales pitch
- Know your facts
- Always add followers who fit your community requirements
- Interact with your followers
- Search, Search, Search – do your market research!
- Make lists to organize your space


Now that you know where to start; or if you have already started and plateaued - it's time to think about next steps.

EVOLVE.

Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies is a unique event that focuses on the business value of social media for established brands, as well as entrepreneurial companies. It brings together community experts with lines of business leaders who are using social media strategically to drive their business.

From setting the strategy, to operationalizing it, to measuring the results – this event is a high-level overview of the Social Media & Community space.

Why Attend? Social Media is an evolving business that is reinventing how we interact. Learn about campaigns that have worked and ones that have failed.

What's New? Everyone has invested in Social Media, NOW find out how you can operationalize, measure and make money off of this investment

Walmarts Black Friday Ads Go Viral Early

Walmart (in a brilliant strategic move) "Black Friday" ads have been leaked ahead of time. Most major retailer wait for these Black Friday ads to be printed and distributed traditionally but this move (if Walmart did it on purpose) is very smart on a few bases:

1) People are getting the info far enough ahead to plan a trip to walmart and purchase specific black friday deals.

2) To VIEW the deals, all you have to do is search for retailer+black friday on google.com which *many* people are doing since they want deals. Plus they are spreading like wildfires on various coupon/deals sites.

Social media channels have allowed retailers to get their products and low prices infront of millions of eyeballs at a much lower cost then traditional methods. How does this apply to your social marketing efforts? Are you using social media channels to capture people at different touch points?

If we think about building a community; which TOOL or social media platform would you choose to get the word out or word of mouth campaign going?

Recently I have been looking more closely at Facebook and what advantages there are for B2B applications. The users are there; of course mostly for personal reasons but they are there.

Gettting users to FAN/Like a page is the 1st step in building the community around a brand, event or whatever your product may be. It seems more and more that incentivizing the "Fan/Like" is where the call to action comes into place and you can gain a stronger userbase around your brand.

In Walmart's case, each and everytime they lower a price, their fans are interested in knowing about these deals so "FANS/Likes" are much easier to get.

For B2B organizations it seems like the incentive has to be appropriate to the audience. Since we are not selling a Plasma TV we have to think about what our users would want within their work environment and appeal to those needs/wants.

Some ideas:
Product/Service Discounts
Starbucks Giftcards
Unique White Papers
Case Studies
Members Only Content
Ipads/Tech Gear

What does your company do to get FANS/Likes?

Will NetFlix take over the internet?

In a recent article at Slate, they reveal that when Netflix opened for streaming business in Canada, 10% of Canadians visited the webpage. In the United States, at peak internet usage hours, it accounts for 20% of traffic. It is not yet available yet to the rest of the world, but how will bandwidth hold up?

Netflix clearly found the sweet spot of their consumers. In addition to streaming much of their video collection, they made deals with major television and movie distributors to increase their offerings to consumers. What can your company learn from what Netflix has done? They found what their consumers wanted, and offered it to them. What can you do to increase the satisfaction of your customers?

Common objections to social media in large companies

Doug Lacombe at the Vancouver Sun recently spent some time working with companies to figure out why they weren't using social media, and what their objections were.

According to the article, many of the common objections to using social media are:
1. Our audience isn’t on social media

2. I don’t have time or resources to deal with social media

3. People will say mean things about us
4. IT says it’s a security risk

Have you heard these objections in your company? I firmly believe that stance #1, our audience isn't on social media, is false, and can be proved. After all, the fast growing segement using social media is older adults.