Four Things Your Social Media Consultant Won't Tell You
Thu, 09/03/2009 - 13:02 — indymike
It takes a year or more to get results.
Building up the relationships you need takes a lot of time. Most people buy into a social media program thinking it's going to happen by tomorow morning. It will not. Profiles and pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter take time to grow (especially Twitter.com since it's now rate limited). Blog audiences take time to develop. Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups also take time to develop.
Blogs are the center of the universe when it comes to social campaigns
Every social media campaign needs a way to drive content to connected sites, engage friends in conversation and capture email addresses. You can do some of these on social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, but when it comes down to it, blogs are uniquely suited to plug into social networks to act as the hub of your campaign. Blogs make a perfect hub for distributing content, they make a perfect hub for discussion and they make a great place to covert visitors into prospects if that is your goal.
Writing your own blog is really expensive.
I just finished a cost study for Professional Blog Service - a company I started and now work with as a marketing consultant. I was a little surprised when I looked at the cost of writing business blogs in house. Companies using the blog as the hub of your social media strategy really should consider outsourcing - the ROI on hiring an professional blogger is 180-230%.
Email is the difference maker.
Your social media campaign will live or die by the quality of email campaign (I still sometimes have trouble describing email that goes with social media a "campaign" -- it just gives the wrong impression) you run with it. Social media serves to capture interested people - but you still have to convert those people into customers, evangelists or whatever you are trying to do. There's a reason FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter all email you multiple times per day - it's to reengage you. I'm not saying you should email your followers four times per day, but I am saying you should have a strong email program that compliments what you are doing with your social networks.
Copyright 2008, Mike Seidle.
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Comments
I agree with your top three
I agree with your top three points but I disagree completely with your bottom point. What if your target base doesn't use email? If you are marketing to the younger business owner the last thing you want to do is push email across their desk/computer. There are times when an email marketing campaign is not necessary in a social campaign. We have produce multiple social media campaigns that have been successful without email (driving both traffic and customers).
Good post overall and being a social media consultant.. I pretty much say all of this... well other than that last point.
Well...
I thought a lot about leaving email off the table because you *can* do a social media campaign without it, but it's getting old seeing clients harvest out an email list from their social media campaign and then plug them into the same old spam list. If apply a little thought to email, you can use it to do great things both as a catalyst (e.g. emailing key people to retweet or comment on a blog post) and as a direct communication. A lot of people don't even think about the email side of the equation, and it probably is diminishing their ROI a little bit... or a lot.
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