Best Practice Article

According to the latest industry reports companies all around the world are planning to increase their use of email and social media in 2012. In Europe social media use is set to see the second largest rise to email, from 39% to 66%. This month Simon Bowker, UK MD, has prepared 12 hints and tips to help you boost your social media marketing (SMM) in 2012.

The benefits of social media for brands and organisations cover many areas of business including product launches, promotions, events and sales. By integrating social media with other channels such as email, these benefits offer companies a new, affordable and completely measurable communication strategy. Marketers are able to interact with fans, followers and friends using social media’s viral effects and its ability to generate brand awareness and engagement. When coupled with the individual interaction brands are able to achieve via email, marketers have unlimited engagement possibilities at their fingertips. To help you to boost your integrated SMM strategy, here are your top 12 new year’s social media resolutions for 2012:

1.  Market Your Social Presence As Often As Possible

It’s really important that you promote your social platforms on all the other marketing channels you’re using to encourage more ‘likes’ and ‘follows’. By plugging social media content in to your email newsletters you can show your target audience know where they can find you on social media and why they should follow or like you (product information and preview, special offers, customer care etc …).

2. Build Your Brand Awareness on Social Media

Using social media to build brand awareness is one of the key objectives for marketers as hundreds of millions of people are sharing, networking and engaging in this space. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+, to name the main networks, will help your brand to get extended visibility, will guarantee your website more traffic, give you access to new audiences and also will allow you to show thought leadership. Take your community relationships to new individual levels by promoting sign ups to your email campaigns via social networks to build long-term relationships with your consumers.

3.  Social Advertising: Test Different Ads for Different Platforms

Advertising on social networks can help generate extra visibility for your brand outside of your existing network. Creating effective and engaging ads is crucial for the success of your campaign. There’s plenty of choice for advertising on different social channels - from YouTube ads to sponsored Tweets. You need to test each network to see which best performs for you.

4.  Keep Building and Improving Your Customer Service

“A dissatisfied consumer will tell between 9 and 15 people about their experience. About 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people.” (source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs). The ease with which you can post comments, tweet and email, means it is ever easier for customers to share their opinions via “word-of-mouth”. It is extremely important that you monitor what consumers are saying about you and how you handle your online customer service using social platforms and taking more sensitive conversations over to email. Integrating social and email guarantees a fast and personal response to each of your customers via the platforms on which they prefer to communicate with your brand.

5.  Don’t Forget the Power of Video

YouTube is now exceeding 8 million unique visitors per month with over 3 billion videos viewed every single day. YouTube pages can be extremely effective in generating brand awareness and engaging with the target audience. Anything from branded “How To” videos, to detailed product shots can be placed on Youtube, Vimeo or any other video sharing site and linked to from email newsletters and social posts to extend your reach, your brand awareness and your search engine presence.

6.  Test Location Based Social Media

The use of location specific social media will definitely grow in the coming year. These platforms are excellent for retailers because they help to increase the number of visitors to the store, build brand or product awareness with “check-ins” and ultimately can boost sales. When using location services, always bear in mind that the offer makes the difference: freebies for the first check-in, special discounts for the ‘Mayor’ and offers via follow up emails can truly make or break your campaign.

7. Use Social Media for Product Launches

Social media platforms are an excellent tool to boost product launches as they help to build a buzz around the imminent launch. Product launches on social media also have the benefit of enhancing the investment in other media such as email and online/offline advertising.

8.  Reward Loyal Fans With Exclusives Offers

As with email, relevant content and offers can highly influence your recipients. With social networks, the number one aim should be to make sure you grow and maintain your network, by giving fans, friends and followers a reason to stay with you. Treat your community like they are VIPs, giving them access to “social only” promotions or special offers to strengthen their loyalty. They will be happy to share their satisfaction with their online friends and followers, helping you to expand your network.

9.  Use a Social Analytics Programs To Monitor The Effectiveness Of Your Social Presence

One of the most important issues that companies face with social media is proving its worth to keep campaigns alive … and this is where analytics come into play. With a professional social analytic tool like eC-social you will have a complete overview of your campaign results. Customer interaction, the number of followers, “Likes” and content shared on the various social platforms are only some of the KPIs that you can analyse to determine the success of your social media strategy.

10. Include Events in Your Social Media Strategy

Social media is an effective tool to promote events in the B2B and B2C fields. The key benefits of events are networking and communication: the same elements that make social media so powerful! Integrating social media with your event email campaigns will boost your reach, regularly sharing updates pre and post-event with your fans, friends and followers. On the event page/profile and with the dedicated hashtag you will also be able to involve your audience and stimulate the participation of attendees.

11. Use Social Media to Move Customers through the Purchase Funnel

A key objective for marketing strategies is to increase the sales and ROI for the company’s products and services. For most of your prospects, social media platforms are where they spend most of their time and therefore it’s really important to use brand pages or profiles to stimulate their interest. Use these to drive qualified traffic to your website and sign ups to your newsletters, where you can better sell your products. Conversations, content shared by other customers, product recommendations and information published are also very important to generate opportunities as these help to create a stronger engagement and influence the purchase intention of your fans.

12. Involve your Network

Getting your network involved in different activities will help to build a strong sense of community and raise the engagement level of your network. Invite fans and followers to interact with your brand by sending surveys and asking questions, give feedback on your comments and posts on social networks and have their say on new products you intend to launch with product reviews. Users who engage with you or take action on your behalf are more likely to have a stronger bond with your organisation. Each time one of your friends or followers likes a post, comments or shares content via email, they are sharing the message with their network. This helps to build brand awareness and indirectlyengages their networks.

This article is a summary of eCircle’s newsletter "Inside Digital Marketing". If this article was forwarded to you as a recommendation and you wish to receive further news from the email marketing sector yourself you can subscribe here.