Three Effective Social Media Strategies

Out:  Using Facebook pages and organization Twitter accounts to solely broadcast newsletters, press releases, announcements and sales.

In: Using social media intentionally, integrated with all marketing channels and crossing organizational silos, to engage people.

Who do we want to engage?

1. People we already know.
2. People we don’t know.

From Loyalty To Acquisition

Most social media strategies engage people who have an awareness that the organization already exists. The purpose is to serve as loyalty tool, creating deeper connections and relationships.

Many organizations don’t realize social media’s potential as a lead generator.

Today, organizations can connect to new people who don’t know them yet. Applying social media tools, SEO (search engine optimization) and content creation, organizations can reach new audiences.

The goal? To turn them into new customers.

Three Social Media Strategies To Consider

Author Jay Baer and Compendium’s Chris Baggott identify five 2011 social media trends to watch. Here are three of those trends that your organization can apply immediately.

1. Think Like A Digital Publisher

Historically, organizations have relied on the media and conventional printing to convey their messages.  Now an organization can publish their own stories to reach their audience using social media channels like blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Organizations should think like digital publishers. Create an organization radio station (blogtalkradio), television station (live streaming, YouTube Live) and digital magazine (Issu.com, Flipbook).

2. Create Good Content

I’ll admit I’ve had strong negative feelings towards organizations that created content that was stuffed with keywords for SEO. It frustrated me. The writer’s purpose was to be found in search engines, not help the reader.

“People friendly” content was hard to find because it often had little-to-no keywords in the content.

Today, search engines know that content that is good for people is also good for search.

Good content does not have to have a lot of comments or retweets. Nor does good content need to only come from the organization or the organization’s staff. And good content does not have to be big picture or though leading all of the time.

Good content solves your readers’ problems!

Tell stories that are authentic to your organization and solves problems. People search for how to solve their problems. (They don’t know the answer yet.) Then they look for people they can trust with credibility to solve their problems.

3. Combine Traditional And Social Media Marketing

Traditional marketing strategies create a demand. Social media marketing fulfills the demand. Organizations need to learn how to do both.

Social media does not usually lead to a fast close. It is a slow marketing strategy. It may not even pay immediate dividends. However, it can build relationships that will lead to lifetime customer value.

Most traditional marketing peaks a customer’s interest. It leads to the customer searching online about the product, service or organization.

If organizations are willing to spend large budgets on creating a demand with traditional marketing, shouldn’t they be willing to spend large budgets to catch that demand online?

What barriers keep organizations from adopting inbound marketing and customer acquisition strategies with social media? What are some tips to educate executives on adopting integrated channel marketing?