Social Media Marketing made Easy

How does one use Social Media to build brands? Well one begins by being present in social networks and understanding how they work. On-line communities and portals already exist, what one needs to do is to understand how to facilitate conversations about ones brands over there and to add value by providing the community with tools and content to help them do what they want to do. The next step is to listen. To encourage and be a part of their discussions and act on their feedback, if any. Basically to interact, share, listen and observe ; because every conversation will be an either an opportunity to build a relationship with a consumer or an insight that can be used to either better brands or to build new brands.

Since the Internet is now a mass of conversations, what needs to be done as Marketers is to get one’s brands to be talked about. Every community will have a few very active and authoritative people- the objective should be to know who they are, and engage with them and get them on our side; create a buzz.

Brands are not people and therefore cannot build relationships with other people. It is therefore imperative to get the people behind the brands to share their passion and stories about the brand with the consumers. If one can get ones consumers to see then as their peers, they’ve done their job pretty well, because in today’s world, that is what is going to translate into sales and consumer goodwill.

One needs to initiate conversations about their products on non-marketing communities and get people to talk, connect with them and keep them informed about their brands. It is imperative to take their feedback seriously and in the event of negative feedback, respond immediately. Many a times a company’s employees are their biggest source of Word-of-Mouth, there is a need to harness this and allow employees to engage with consumers on-line, albeit after revealing their identities in order to maintain transparency.

Beginnings…

Marketing, as we knew it, is on its way to extinction. A very strong statement, perhaps, but such is the case. Gone are the days when consumers were happy being fed content generated by companies; they want to be the ones in control now. With the proliferation of the Internet, the media today is all about co creation of value- the consumers are the media owners and the media is a whole lot of conversations. This is kind of a scary proposition for Marketers all over the globe. How does one make sure that their brands get the right publicity and the right kind of media exposure when the media itself is something which is now beyond their control? How does one ‘fire-fight’ when one’s brands are at the receiving end of all kinds of flak? How does one keep the not-so-nice facts about their companies and brands under wraps when millions of consumers are researching, writing and talking about their brands? How does one stay in control?

The answer: One does not. The thing about social media that we forget is that it’s all made of and by human beings and the trick here is to work with, and not against, them.

More later, but I hope this sets the pace.