The Importance of Consistency

I recently came across this blog post, explaining the importance of starting with a clear message and ensuring that all social media posts stay true to it. This week's blog post contains a commentary on the article.

With all of the social media marketing tips and tricks out there, it's easy to forget one of the most crucial elements: Determine your message, and remain consistent. Part of using social media to strengthen a brand is ensuring that every post either points to or is part of the message. Letting posts go through that are irrelevant ultimately hurts the brand -- or at least runs the risk of doing so.

"Businesses who want to engage customers in a sincere way, must balance between control and real conversation to get the most out of the enormous amount of social media options, says Patton."

This is especially important to remember for companies who emphasize relatability and customer involvement. While a company can control what is posted, they cannot necessarily control the responses or level of engagement. A marketer should be mindful of what might or might not spark responses, and how the company will interact with these responses.

"In using social media, Daniels says leaders in organizations must figure out what they want to achieve or increase and really figure out their objective when choosing a social media platform."

This parallels what we have been learning in class: social media is a tool to reach a destination, rather than the destination itself. Posts should reflect marketing goals and drive audience engagement and traffic towards these goals. Ensuring that posts travel towards these goals provides a sense of cohesion and can help to ensure that the audience has a clear concept of the brand image.

Another quote from the article reflects this idea:
"Daniels says he looks at social media in terms of a funnel. He says dialogue should be encouraged with the goal of getting participants to the next phase of the relationship. The dialogue should eventually lead to a transaction—buying a membership, subscribing, purchasing a product."

Marketers would do well to remember that nobody wants to be consistently sold a product. Posts should not always reflect the need for sales. It's important to share content that is meaningful towards creating sales or leading a customer to want to buy (as opposed to directly telling them they should buy).

Patton believes that it’s the content within the platform of choice that really matters.  “Entrepreneurs should steer clear of pre-packaged messaging. It’s much more engaging to keep the message on social media organic and relevant to the conversation,” says Patton. “When I first begin to work on a new project, I prefer to keep the parameters of the language and tone a bit loose yet controlled to allow my team to build and develop a brands voice.”

This aligns with the idea of authenticity within posts. The audience can tell if a post is genuine or if it's just a generic post that may be relevant to the product or brand. People react to authenticity and allowing content and discussions to remain organic rather than forced will ultimately strengthen the brand's image and help to solidify the progression to the company's goals.

"Shouldn't You Know Your Superfans?"

This blog post is a commentary on a post found on Inc.com. Here is the text of the article:
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Fiat has 627,000. SpongeBob has 41.6 million. Even Spam has 180,000 Facebook Likes. But what do all of those digital endorsements really amount to, in terms of the bottom line? Not a whole lot, say Kevin Clancy and Eric Paquette of Copernicus, a marketing and consulting firm.

You see, your company’s Facebook universe is largely composed of “regular customers” and “loyalists”--two groups of people who don’t feel particularly compelled to talk about your brand. Only a fraction of those Facebook Likes belong to “advocates,” or the 5 percent to 10 percent of superfans who “want to support a brand by helping other consumers interact with it.”

Attorney Matthew Rhoden, in a post for the HBR Blog Network titled “Create Brand Superfans,” describes a true brand advocate as someone who purchases the brand’s products or services for family and friends, provides unsolicited feedback, and is emotionally attached to the brand.

Target a message to your regular customers, and you may see an uptick in sales from existing clients. Target the same message to your advocates, and watch the new-customer referrals spike.

So, how can you identify your superfans? And what should you do to keep them happy? Clancy and Paquette offer a five-point plan in the white paper “Measuring and Motivating Brand Advocates”:

1. Track them down. Create a list of users who have recommended your company via social media, pinned your product to Pinterest, penned an Amazon review, or gifted your wares.

2. Invite them inside. Create a private Facebook group or other exclusive arena--less fan club than focus group--in which your brand advocates can interact more intimately with the company.

3. Dig into their drivers. Take a brand history survey that asks how your advocates found the company, what initially made them try it, and what important problem it solves for them. “Once marketers have determined that set of four to 10 measures of passion that best predict advocacy behaviors,” Clancy and Paquette note, “they can use them to identify advocates in specific media and internal databases.”

4. Estimate their value. According to Forrester Research, every Twitter or Facebook post reaches a minimum of 150 people. Know how many Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections your advocates have so you can accurately estimate their reach--and set conversion goals.

5. Collaborate with them. Ask your superfans what incentives, discounts, and special offers would be most meaningful to them--and begin testing, testing, testing.

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What I find interesting about this article is that it addresses something that I feel many companies neglect: rewarding extreme loyalty. While the group may only represent 5-10% of total fans, they are the loudest and strongest voice. This cannot be ignored.

This is a great way to figure out what the driving forces are behind creating superfans. Discovering what converts someone from a customer into a brand advocate should be considered invaluable information to any company. Additionally, interacting with individual advocates allows for a fuller perspective on the product or brand's strengths. Customers respond to different aspects of a company, whether it is their marketing, their product, their social media presence, their motives - the list can be endless. I know that I react to some of the most minute aspects that a company may not even realize can shape a perspective. (For example: I may read a company's Twitter responses to followers' tweets. How well their Twitter voice and interaction is an extension of their brand is something I personally react to.)

I only wish the article had perhaps been more clear about rewarding extreme loyalty. While the fifth point addresses this, I feel it does not stress the importance of the actual reward. An easy way to keep a superfan is to create such rewards available only to him or her. For example, an band's manager may offer a free ticket to a show for fans who purchase three tickets. This reinforces and may even increase the strength of the connection between the individual and the brand.

Why Twitter Marketing Is Still Crucial for Musicians

I recently stumbled across a jackpot for musicians and industry personnel. I can't get enough of <b>MusicThinkTank.com</b>. If you are a musician or work in the industry, this website is a great resource. I've been reading through articles all evening that cover a wide variety of topics -- specifically been reading up on merchandising basics and social media marketing. Which brings me to the article I'm going to share today. It's a few months old, but still a good and relevant read, outlining why Twitter is still a critical marketing platform for musicians despite the failure of Twitter Music.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Twitter Music, it was a recent addition to the site to create a stronger connection to musicians. And, well, basically, it failed -- miserably. Some suggest that this indicates a weaker marketing potential for musicians, but these points explain why the site is as relevant as ever for marketing.

1. Plugs You Into Global Conversations Surrounding Your Niche

Twitter as a platform allows you to not only follow people, but topics and trends as well. The latter is made incredibly easy to do through the use of hashtags (#).

By identifying keywords that are relevant to your niche (i.e #Vegan, #Yoga, #MusicEducation, etc.) you can track global conversations surrounding topics that are important to your niche so that you can join the conversation at large. This will not only help to build a more distinguished voice for your digital-self, but it will allow you to start building conversations with others who feel just as passionate and empowered by your niche.

This is a critical opportunity to build unique relationships with others in your niche who have established themselves as thought-leaders and gate keepers.

2. Establish Thought-Leadership Through Content Curation

Speaking of thought-leaders, Twitter creates an amazing opportunity that no other platform can compare with. By curating content relevant to your niche through various forms of media (audio, video, photos, articles, etc.) that can be tweeted about on a weekly, daily and even hourly basis, you are showcasing the fact that you not only have your finger on the pulse of your niche, but that you have a unique approach and perspective as well.

By curating content that sparks opportunities to create new conversations with existing thought-leaders, you are putting yourself on their level in their eyes, and in the eyes of their followers.

Of course, don’t forget to use the proper hashtag when tweeting the curated content surrounding your niche so that others who are following along and joining conversations are sure to see it.

3. Target Potential Super Fans

We all know how difficult Facebook can be to actually find new people. Facebook’s Open Graph search that is slowly but surely being rolled out to their entire user-base will be a helpful push in the right direction, but frankly it, nor any other platform, can compare to the possibilities that Twitter gives you to target potential super fans.

This process starts with understanding two things:

1. Who is your ideal fan? Where do they live? What passions do they have? What musicians do they like? What do they find inspiring?

2. Where do YOU live? What passions do YOU have? What musicians do YOU like? What inspires YOU?

If you can answer the questions above, you should be able to very easily find not only others involved in your niche, but their most dedicated followers as well (the latter are your potential super fans).

By utilizing http://search.Twitter.com, you can search for relevant and dedicated supports to connect with by way of location, hashtag, keywords, and more. Use this to seek out those who you feel can empower you and your tribe, then follow and engage with them.

4. Support Yourself by Supporting Others

Twitter has become known as a platform for shining a spotlight on others through the widespread use of #FF (#followfriday) and #MM (#musicmonday). Both hashtags are used to shine the spotlight on OTHER people, instead of promoting yourself.

But why limit your promotion of others to just these two hashtags?

By making the promotion of other people, be it thought-leaders, gate keepers, fans or even other peers within your niche or genre, a regular and part of your overall Twitter strategy, you are consistently creating opportunities where people will share your own content out with their followers just to reciprocate the support. This can open MAJOR doors for you to be routinely connected with new followers.

And of course, nothing helps to build your brand better than having other talking about you (instead of you talking about yourself). Twitter’s potential for this opportunity is unmatched, let alone unsurpassed, by any other platform.

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I personally absolutely love this article. Rather than just offering general tips that might be applicable to any social networking platform, it focuses on the core strengths of Twitter. It's a reminder that musicians and marketers ought to dedicate time to developing a Twitter marketing strategy independent of other social media websites. 

Additionally, I share the opinion that the failure of Twitter Music is hardly a reflection on its marketing relevance. What's great is that a user doesn't have to use the feature in order to achieve the same results. With enough attention given to properly crafting tweets aimed at the target market, content can easily become viral. I suspect Twitter will readdress the feature and its potential and consider a new approach, and as a marketer for both a promoter and an artist, I would like to see this happen.

10 Things You Should Know About Social Media

Being an avid reader of Inc.com, I was excited to stumble across this link. Titled "10 Things You Should Know About Social Media," the article outlines some practices and tools to keep in mind as a marketing team approaches social brand development. They coincide well with concepts being taught in class and are practical and easy to implement. Without further ado, here is the list.

1. All social media are not the same. LinkedIn should be treated differently than Facebook, which is different from Twitter, which is different from Google+.
I've noticed that some brands and types of products lend themselves more towards certain platforms. Image-centric products (clothing lines, interior decorating services) tend to fare better when their focuses are placed on Facebook and Instagram. News sources, blogs, and brands tied to a public figure tend to be more successful on Twitter, where sharing links or quotes takes one click. 

2. It takes time and frequency to build trust in any social media, just as in any relationship. Social media is a tool, not a destination.
This is great to keep in mind. Social media users do not create accounts so that companies can market to them. Many companies forget this and see social media as a way to sell, sell, sell, and be more in-your-face -- rather than establish themselves as a solid brand with a strong reputation through consistent, nonobtrusive content.

3. Use all of your communities as a Business Development tool to source highly targeted potential clients/customers.
One of the great aspects of social media is that certain markets use platforms differently, but consistently/predictably. Blogging is a great way to reach customers in a market who will be more likely to purchase a product when educated about its benefits (health foods, electronics). Instagram is a good platform for users who enjoy the aesthetics of certain products (coffee, fashion). 

4. Use LinkedIn to establish Thought Leadership through the growth of a community of highly passionate and engaged people. You can even write a blog that is linked into Facebook, Twitter & Google+
I am personally not familiar with the individual features of LinkedIn; I currently only use it as a reference and resume. However, it seems to be a great tool that can be used to bring professionals that share certain lifestyle elements (busy moms, graduate students) together. 

5. You should join groups in all of your social networks. There are also some terrific resources out there for free. You can freely subscribe to any of mine.www.socialmediamags.com
As part of my marketing internship, I co-run a group that is specific to our Atlanta market. It gives us the ability to spend that small extra amount of time to target our local market without losing sight of the bigger picture. Groups are a great way to hone in on one subset of your target audience, as well as remind them that you are a dedicated member of the community (and not just a walking advertisement).

6. Your posts will and should reflect the personality of your company. If you are not genuine, you won't last very long. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to sell you something.
People respond to sincerity. Many brands hesitate to sound this way, worrying it may tarnish their image. However, I have personally noticed the strength of a brand that chooses a more personalized approach. It reminds your audience that you are a person and that they can be real with you. 

7. It is okay for your customers to disagree with you on Twitter. That's why they call it "social" media and not "one kind" media. Best practice: Have a policy for how you deal with negative comments and reach out to those who support you. They are your brand ambassadors! This is true for all of your communities,not just Twitter.
Bad publicity can be tough to combat, and in my opinion, deleting, hiding, or ignoring negative comments is the worst approach. It is extremely frustrating to take my time to voice a complaint to a company only to have them take absolutely no action. I am a reasonable person who is almost always willing to work with a company -- if they take the time to correct their wrongdoings. If they pretend that my comments simply don't exist, I am likely to develop a strong negative mental association with the brand. I think it's safe to assume that most people are the same way.

8. If you choose to schedule your Tweets, timing is everything. The life of a Tweet is about one hour; schedule several times throughout the day. Make your presence consistent and meaningful. Hootsuite might make that easier. Follow suit in your other communities.
I cannot stress the importance of Twitter timing. There is also typically an unspoken limit of how many times a company can tweet in one day without coming across as annoying. It's best to be cautious; however, if a brand is known for sharing quality content multiple times throughout the day, it is probably safe to continue to do so. 

9. Make sure you are listening to communities on Twitter and any community you participate in! Make no mistake; consumers are in charge now more than ever. Pay attention to what they say. Some of the best product ideas, feedback and problems will come to you from your Twitter communities.
Listen, listen, listen! The great thing about social media and wide usership is that there is potential for a lot of feedback - positive or negative. Never before has it been so easy for a customer to voice their thoughts or for a company to hear what customers are saying. Take advantage of this. 

10. Use all your communities to cultivate business leads.
The goal, at the end of the day, is to sell a product. It's easy to get off track, and it's also easy to want to talk nothing but purchase, purchase, purchase. The idea behind social media marketing is to leverage it in a way that provides quality content related to your product or brand, but in a way that drives consumers to pay attention and have the desire to purchase your product.