What if going viral was the beginning of the end for your company instead of a dream come true? Or, spending hours on end tweeting, posting, and conversing was an epic waste of time? What if you could get past the hype and discover the real secret to social media success? Would it change how you use the channel for your business?
Participation in social media is relatively new to most traditional marketers. When you come to the channel from a direct marketing background as I did, it's natural to look for landmarks and guidance through unfamiliar territory. Landmarks are hard to find because social media is vastly different from every other channel. Guidance is questionable because most of it is based on the experiences of people creating personal brands instead of established businesses.
Being a direct marketer, I've spent the last few years doing what direct marketers do. I tested. And, I tested some more. I followed the guidance of the people who preceded me and documented the results. When my results were less than stellar (translation: dismal), I compared what we were told to do with what the guides were actually doing. I found that many of the leaders were buying followers, using bots, and generally speaking, misleading people who wanted to learn about the channel.
There were many times during the process of learning about social media that I was tempted to walk away from it. The ugliness of communities warring over perceived slights was almost too much to handle. Please feel free to call me stubborn for continuing to persist. Some of my best friends do. But, before you do, you should know that there was more to it than an unwillingness to accept defeat. I saw something in all of the chaos and misdirected guidance that can make the difference between a company's success and failure.
There is a secret to social media success that has nothing to do with viral marketing, very little to do with fan/follower acquisition, and everything to do with customer relations.
Viral campaigns are extremely rare, attract hit-&-run shoppers, require extensive resources to manage, and are impossible to replicate. Social media is much more than a rainbow chasing channel. It is an opportunity to convert transactional relationships into interactive ones.
Social media isn't an acquisition channel, it is a retention tool. Think about that for a minute. Social networking is better at keeping customers than it is at getting them. If this is true, then most social marketing strategies start at the wrong place. They begin with the platform and creating content designed to attract conversation. A better approach is to begin with your customers and let them guide you.
Coca-Cola figured this out pretty quickly. Well, in fairness, they lucked into it because their fans built their community. The corporate decision to adopt the community instead of dismantling it was a stroke of genius, but the heavy lifting was done by the fans.
Odds are that your company isn't like Coca-Cola with avid fans that invest their time in creating a community to honor your products or services. You have to do the heavy lifting yourself. It's possible that you'll get lucky if you start with the platform and try to attract customers. But why take that chance?
Wouldn't it be better to start with your customers and let them guide you? After all, improving relationships with your customers should always be your primary objective. Here are some tips to get things started:
- Capture your customers' social media user information at every touchpoint. Have your IT team add some fields to your database to store the data. If they can't do it, get a better IT team. Use other tools to store the information until the new team gets everything set up.
- Use the captured information to budget your resources. The platform that has the most customer participation gets the most resources. This is no different from managing your catalog campaigns. Put your money where you get the most return.
- Establish benchmarks so you can see cause and effect even when measurable metrics are hard to capture. It's possible to measure the unknown if you create a good foundation.
- Measure the value of customers by acquisition and participation source. You may find that the new customers coming in aren't as valuable as the ones who are cycling out. The sooner you know this, the less money you'll lose.
- Reach out to your customers via the social channels. They are easier to recognize now that you've captured their handles. Talk to them and start something special.
Social media provides a way for direct marketing and catalog companies to get to know their customers. It's a shame to waste that opportunity on pipe dreams of rainbows, unicorns, and viral campaigns. And, who knows? You might just become the next big thing.