Chris Brogan recently asked his readers Whats Your Social Media Strategy? It was a great question. I am developing for 2 mini projects for which we employ social media to reach specific markets. One of projects involve getting the word out about a software product that has been newly developed, facilitating trials and gathering feedback, direct from the users. This discussion will zoom in on the process we take, in putting together the strategy.
First a note on the influences. Jeremiah talked about the 3 spheres of Web Strategy while Sean ODriscoll described the 5Ps of Social Media ( thanks to Connie who never fails to point out great links) . We would have thought that's a no-brainer but not until someone describes what is a rather complex world of links and sea of media platforms, using a model joined up by diagrams. Although I must add that this is still very much high level and as one drills further into specific tasks, metrics and measurements will have to be clearly defined for each. Finally on this note about influences, both theories overlap in multiple ways except that Jeremiah's 3 Spheres of Web Strategy provided more guidance on the part of business dimension ( or purpose ) than 5Ps of Social Media. While Sean implied that the purpose is supposed to be the overall "talking point" of the 5Ps of Social Media.
Defining Goals
Going back to the mini project involving a new software I talked about earlier. The first step is to identify our goals. That would be to predefine objectives for using social media tools in our specific circumstance. In driving conversations in these outlets, we are looking to :
- Receive product feedback, real time from customers about software interfaces and features
- Actual Sales
- Link building ( secondary )
Consider the Audience
The audience guides the tone, content types, places, interactive mediums and platforms choices. We could start hacking to produce the best Web 2.0 site features wise, but if the audience is not going to like or have the patience to learn how to use them, all that man effort goes *poof* into thin air. After having all that money plowed into building a new site, it is not funny to witness little or no participation.
Our target audience consists a mix of system integrators and actual product end users. They are typically in their 20s - 30s, professionals in IT or at least users. The assumption is that if they had been successful in downloading and installing the software we consider them averagely savvy with the Web and software in general. Basing on the analytics done for the site, most of these visitors had spent between 4 minutes to 6 minutes with an average of 4 - 5 page views on each visit. With about 15% - 20% requested to download the trial copy.
Given the nature of the content, it is fair to suggest that these visitors are interested to learn more about the product.
Plan the Content
We define specific content requirements below based on the audience mix and the overall goals of this programme.
- Syndication thus extending our spread across Web 2.0 sites
- Educational, drawing attention to the key features of the software
- With a Story line, Engaging and suitable to create conversations
For content, we are developing a series of software video demo that will be published on the blog. The style of the video demo will be to adopt a tutorial approach, and highlights the software USP.
The Platform
Finally we will be uploading the demo videos to video sites like YouTube, Veoh, Google Video, which will in turn be syndicated across strategic web touch points such as Squidoo. However discussions will primarily be held on the corporate blog. Web visitors can send in their questions in the comments area after watching the software video demos.
This is an overview of what we are doing for one particular product that is being marketed. As a matter of fact, the product was first picked up and reported by a topical blog under Weblog Inc. That particular outreach exercise resulted in good Google page ranking and consequently led to a page 1 listing.
For your own social media marketing program, give some thoughts about what have been said. More importantly as you dig into the specifics of your program, focus on building trust through interactions and be a resource silo. People have enough of marketing fluff.
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