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| Staying Socially Afloat |
About 3 and a bit years ago it
seemed you couldn’t go a moment on facebook without someone sending you a BranchOut
shout-out. The app was touted to help facebook make the pivot from being a
place one visited to surreptitiously check back on one’s ex to the brand new
jobs supermart. Perhaps unsurprisingly nothing of the sort happened and today
BranchOut has transformed into a kind of workplace messaging app. This is a
salutary tale - a reminder that each social network has its specific place and
marketers have to choose wisely. Let’s take a brief look at some of the most
popular networks and how your brand can best leverage them.
LinkedIn: My agency, Midas Touch, does a fair amount of work with
B2B focused clients so it’s no surprise we love LinkedIn. The people here have
professional motivations – network with their peers, build up a profile that
attracts potential employers, seek information for their professional needs and
so on. This is THE place to go if you want to paint a professional picture of
yourself (or your brand). Research shows a significant percentage of
engagements with companies on LinkedIn eventually convert into purchases with
the operative word being eventually. Use the company page as a living breathing
extension of your website, the Showcase pages as mini special purpose websites
and the LinkedIn groups as a forum of your peers to learn from, participate in
and promote quality content to get the most out of undoubtedly the most
effective B2B Social Media Channel out there.
Twitter: Short, sharp, swift and ground zero for the momentary sensation.
This social network is best suited for making announcements and updates
including time-limited offers. If your brand counts on buzz then riding on the
“breaking news” of the moment on Twitter – a witty aside or a meme-worthy image
offers it the best chance of going viral courtesy the oh-so-easy RT. If you
want to participate in an ongoing conversation or show your interest in or
understanding of a particular market space Twitter offers that opportunity in
spades through the intelligent use of hashtags and the curated presentation of relevant
informative articles. Another unique opening that Twitter provides is the
chance to directly get in the eye-line of influencers, opinion makers and
possible large buyers – an organized, subtle campaign of following them,
sharing what they share and sustained engagement could get you and your brand
on their radar and eventually help convert them into trusted brand advocates.
facebook: Sometimes I wonder how did we keep track of the wonderful
vacations our friends were taking in the dark days before facebook? Checking
into facebook is now a many-times-a-day activity for hundreds of millions of users,
also known as potential buyers, worldwide. The consensus of opinion is that
these people look upon facebook as a personal space and are perfectly willing
to seek information that would help them reach buying decisions across a
variety of product and service categories that impinge on their personal lives.
Brand pages and Fan pages are as, if not more, valid surrogates for the brand
as the website or offline advertising. The marketer’s responsibility is then to
keep the page active and always reflective of the values of the brand through
everything it says. The potential is high for showcasing visual elements in the
form of photos, albums, videos and graphics. Content that elicits engagement is
king here – the currency of record is “Likes”. Fans happily “Like”, “Share”, “Comment”
and “Tag” their way into an abiding relationship with the brand. The brand page
is a close approximation of a customer community with all of the attendant
advantages and disadvantages. The warm and fuzzy feelings of certain fans of
the brand are just as likely to get airtime publically on the brand page as the
rant of the disillusioned former fan. The marketer’s domain overflows into the
customer service space here quite seamlessly and the brand has to be ready for
that. facebook is constantly evolving – opportunities for brands abound as long
as marketers stay in sync with the network.
There are several other social networks out there vying for the attention of your brand – Pinterest for creating special interest based communities, YouTube as a means of sharing video information and SlideShare (a part of LinkedIn) as a means of presentation format content dissemination all hold their own special promise – the challenge for brand marketers is to identify the specific purpose they aim to achieve and to then pick the right social media network best suited for that. After-all you wouldn’t go to facebook to look for a job or to LinkedIn to find a restaurant now would you?
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