5 Ways to Incorporate Social Media Into Your Campaigns

Part two of yesterday's 5 Reasons Your Staff Should be Allowed to Play on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter...

A perfect blog entry came to my attention via Twitter while I was assembling this post. It was a survey of marketing professionals, which revealed that lack of experience-based knowledge of social media. It included the statement:

A danger to the effective adoption of social media as a marketing strategy is the large percentage of those who consider themselves knowledgeable – but have no social media experience. (http://tinyurl.com/marketers-know)

Truth is, hands-on experience in social media is critical to understanding it. But you can develop that knowledge by folding social media into what you are already doing. Introduce clients to it gradually while you build a solid social media presence on their behalf. Once there, you can build campaigns around social media. That leads to a happy client with realistic expectations. Here are 5 ways to begin:

Become a research jockey. Social media is a fantastic tool for getting up to speed (and demonstrating that you are) on your client industry/business. With a little searching, you can find (and quietly subscribe to) bloggers, Facebook/MySpace groups, Twitterers, even YouTube channels on pretty much any topic out there. Making a routine of finding a few great resources related to your client can put you on top of their industry staples, debates, and trends. This is material you can use to better position yourself as vital to your clients needs. You can even deliver it to them via social media tools, which will help both of you better grasp the different platform nuances. (Oh, and a secret... social media is also the best teacher of social media. In this case, incest is good.)

Find and join conversations. Closely connected with the research bit above, this will be the most-repeated social media mantra: Conversations and community. It is what makes social media vastly different from other media. These are the social media bread and butter. They are everywhere and on each platform (YouTubers even conduct entire conversations by re-editing and re-posting each others videos.) Conversations are how you can follow virtually any topic out there (back to research). But they are also a conduit to building a following for your client. But there’s a protocol to follow. You can’t go storming in or just add names to a database. You have to earn it. It’s a bit like joining a conversation at a cocktail party. If you (on their behalf) or they begin by finding and lurking in the conversations, getting a feeling for the personalities and the flow, then by gradually joining so that you’re a natural part of it, you earn credibility. Especially if you have something worthwhile to offer. This takes some time. But the result is that you become a respected part of the community... and they will come to listen to you. Once you establish that, reaching even further to having others carry your torch for you is a very short step. (And isn’t that what your client wants to achieve?)

Cannibalize. There are two ways to do this. If you’re producing press releases or newsletters for a client, the text can be easily adapted for updates on blogs, MySpace, Facebook, and even Twitter (among other platforms). Posting a press release is not necessarily the best way to go. Each platform has its own quirks, nuances, and community, which you will quickly discover and (if you pay attention) adjust to. The same thinking applies to pictures, graphics, and videos you have produced for a client. Doing so will help you (and the client) provide content via the social media platforms while you better grasp becoming part of the conversation. It will also help your team develop the systems it needs in place to feed the social media machine. Clunky at first, but you have to start somewhere. Cannibalize what ya got.

Quick FAQ Delivery. Beyond cannibalizing existing newsletters or campaigns, social media is an excellent conduit for addressing a client’s Frequently Asked Questions. This is unique in three capacities: 1) By nature, FAQs are more conversational than a typical campaign. They get to the heart of what customers are seeking from that client. 2) FAQ’s are evergreen (as long as you update them according to what customers are asking), so you can put a list up and maintain it for extended periods in various platforms. 3) Customers will add new ones and/or update your answers for you (if you pay attention), which puts your client in the position of being responsive, which furthers your social media conversational standing. If you really want to figure out what FAQs to begin with, talk to the client’s front-line personnel (not the executives). Take their best suggestions and include these in your social media conversations. (Twitter is an especially efficient and effective means of learning how this can work, as Twitter is essentially pure conversation and question/answer.)

Pick one platform. Truth: Social media is incredibly incestuous. Virtually every platform, from blogs, to YouTube, to Twitter, to MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and untold more are linked, embedded, and otherwise referred to by all the others. But you need a starting point for creating a client campaign. This can be as simple as a Flickr-based “snapshot” contest or Facebook group (my personal favorite starting point) or a focused Twitter presence. You will find that 1) this is easier to communicate your value to the client and 2) will provide the education needed both for your firm and the client how to incorporate other social media platforms in to the next campaign. (Read: Pick a manageable starting point to assemble a sellable/realistic proposal and expand your relationship with the client from there.)

Bonus: Measure. Everything in social media is measurable. You can count friends, followers, views, downloads... whatever you do, there’s a way to tally how you’re doing. This gives immediate feedback to experimentation... and, if you are honest with yourself, lets you experiment your way to successful strategies and techniques. But you have to START by measuring. (My mantra, and I’ll repeat it again: Do it. Screw up. Adjust.)

Those who read my blog regularly will realize that I'm repeating myself in a number of places here. Consistency might be a sign of personal integrity.

You can get more ideas for getting started here >