WTF(lip) is Social Media Marketing

I had the great pleasure of presenting the idea of using social media for marketing purposes to a company’s senior management team last week.  During the preparatory process over the two weeks preceding the presentation, I learned so much not only about them and how they market that type of business but also about social marketing.  The vast implications of using Social Media hold no bounds and can greatly compliment (and in some cases completely replace) existing marketing strategies.

One of the things that I helped this dynamic group realize was that social media put simply is merely a communication tool.  More importantly, social media is a means by which we can communicate with our customers in a personal and sincere way – we can actually build relationships with people, hundreds (or even thousands) at a time.

For as long as there has been industry, sellers have wanted nothing more than to communicate and build relationships with their buyers.  Creating a connection, building a relationship with our customers has always been of the utmost importance.  Advertising has never been good enough – after all, how could it be, it is only a one way communication.

Over the years, this line of communication has become more intimate, but has never had the opportunity to be personal.  Cleverly crafted TV commercials, billboards or web site banner ads have captured our attention, caused us to respond but never allowed the consumer to feel connected with us.  Traditional advertisements have lacked one essential key element to selling products or services: the ability to build a relationship.

Social media has changed everything.

With the rapidly growing use of blogging as a tool to talk about your products, you’re given a medium by which you can talk about your products from a first-person perspective.  You can be yourself and through that self expression, people can get to know you.  They can connect with you.  They can feel the passion you have for your goods and services.  This connection is more important to your success than anything.

For years, when I was the only blogger at PCBDaily, people would chat my ear off at events.  This was great – people felt like they knew me because they read my rants and raves every day.  People could relate to me as a person, because my writing WAS me. People FELT like they knew me because they DID know me.

Facebook and Twitter give a way for your customers to actually talk to you.  When you post a message, your customers can actually engage you and you can engage them right back.  It’s like talking, only with a keyboard!

The types of conversations you can have with your customers can be anything you want.  With a little creativity, you can direct the conversations by asking questions that will lead to your customers becoming more educated about your products or services.  Creating consistent “post-themes” moves mountains when it comes to creating conversation, for example: “this week’s featured product”, “put your own caption on this photo”, “find [insert mascot name here] on our web site and win”.  You can devise simple games that inspire your customers to interact with you and other customers.  All of this creates a sense of community, a tribe (thanks Seth Godin), and people love to be a part of a tribe.

People also love doing business with people they know.  By using social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) for marketing, you can build personal relationships with your customers on a huge scale.  As these personal relationships grow, your customers will trust you and when you write about something of value to them, they’ll not hesitate to buy it from you when they are ready.

As a word of caution: With slimy snake-oil salesmen slithering around, trust has become a slippery word these past couple years.  Don’t disobey the trust you’ve worked so hard to earn by practicing less than ethical tactics and pawning off products that you wouldn’t endorse or use yourself.  It won’t take long for your new “friends” to abandon the relationship you’ve built with them and go running for the door.

The whole object of social media is to build meaningful relationships, and if you can use these meaningful relationships to grow a business, then you can see great success.  Communication and relationship building is key in business, and social media is an enabler, a very powerful tool and will only grow more useful in the future.

Tagged as: social media communication, using social media for marketing, using social media to build relationships