Social media has allowed for greater quantity of connections but this has reduced quality. While it is easier than ever to connect with more people through social media platforms, the connections are often more superficial and less meaningful than personal interactions. The rapid growth of social media users has changed the nature of relationships and interactions, privileging quantity over quality in many cases.
Welcome – My presentation today will focus on Social Media Tactics to help grow our business
This presentation will NOT focus on specific social media avenues that are available to us as a company. There will be no focus on Facebook, Twitter, Digg or discussion about blogs.
What I’d like to present is: a high level view of what social media is and tactics that need considered when engaging in social media as an organizaion
Media is a form of communication Social Media could be a website that doesn't just give you information, but interacts with you while giving you that information. This interaction can be as simple as asking for your comments or letting you vote on an article, or it can be as complex as Flixster recommending movies to you based on the ratings of other people with similar interests. Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on television, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter. Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate too. Let’s take a look at the important tactics of social media.
Most important to any social media campaign is content. The content has to be HOT. This has to be right. We need to know what’s hot in our targeted topic and find a unique angle to fit our content into what people want.
We have to find our Niche. We have to hit the target here. The focus of the submissions to social media sites cannot be too focused or they will go viral. Our connections through social media sites have to find value in our content. And likewise, we have to be willing to find value in what they have to say. It’s a two way street. If we don’t listen to what our connections are saying, we’re back to doing traditional media campaigns. We want to not only communicate with our connections, but also have our connections communicate our message to their connections.
We need to balance Quality and Quantity. Not only does the content have to be HOT, it must be communicated in the right quantity. Even if you have great quality to your message, it will be wasted if you under communicate and lose our audience. If we over communicate, we could run the risk of having our connections block us completely
So we have great, HOT content. We’ve balanced that to our quantity. Now we have to be sure our message is easy to share. We don’t want to only communicate to our connections, but also have our connections re-broadcast our message to their connections. This can’t be accomplished if we don’t provide our message in a format that makes it easy to share. We have to make it easy for people to do the PR work for us. We can provide the Facebook and Twitter icons to make it easy to share our message.
It’s important to create and distribute quality content consistently. This has to happen while still giving our members the best possible service and support. Planning must take place to be able to consistently deliver quality content. It’s easy to fall into repeating the same message. It’s probably necessary to involve multiple people from multiple departments in order to brainstorm, and get input from various points of view. However, it’s worth noting that just because more people are involved, we can’t fall into the habit of talking something to death. Decisions must be made quickly and content must be also be delivered quickly.
Think Engagement! Measuring results by page view alone isn’t enough. We also must look at how long people are at our site. Does our site have what it takes to engage the followers interest? Or do they become bored by the lack of information, difficulty to navigate and lack of interesting material? If looking only at page visits, this would be hard to measure. We have to measure this and be sure that we have the material that will engage our members and future members.
Communication isn’t just a 2 way street. It’s 3 way communication. How we conduct ourselves online is being watched by a third party, who may also be addressed by statements we make. An example of this realizing there 3 people involved in an act of kindness. The person giving, the person receiving, and the person observing. That person observing may hold the key to building our business. And it’s not just communication. Connection is also important. Communication is the conveyance of information. Connection is doing so in a way that bonds. Several hundred closely bonded contacts will spread our message faster and farther than several thousand distant aquantances.
Who wins? We all do. It’s a Win, Win, Win situation. By making our media social, we can interact with followers. We can help them win. They can help us win. And the power of social media can help our connected followers win.
