Social media strategy for brands

Twitter and Facebook are becoming a big social media platforms. So, companies are using them as a medium for marketing. Whether it’s an online product or an offline product social media is turning into as a very effective marketing tool. To have a strong presence in social media companies have to have some strategies in place. Social media marketing is different from traditional marketing strategy. In integrating your social media efforts with real products and activities, it is important that you care about the complete customer experience. Success of social media strategy depends upon on your ability to recognize problems and seize opportunities to solve it.

Why brands want to use social media for marketing?

Facts: social media has a huge user base. Roughly Facebook having 500 million and Twitter having 50 million users. 2/3rd of the users fall between the age group of 18-35. Studies have shown that time spends on sites like Facebook, Twitter, You tube, Blogger etc is increasing at an astronomical rate. Brands are using digital media for interactive advertising in the following forms:
 Search engine
 Display banner
 Classified
 Rich media (audio and video)
 Lead generation
 Email marketing
 Sponsorship

Twitter:
 First of all, first brand should have its own Twitter account.
 Direct tweeting about the product is not a fruitful idea. This can bore users because there is not any exciting element to divert attention. So, first listen to users. Brand should participate in some micro sites/group/ Twitter account where people are thinking and talking about related words of your product. They should project themselves as a fun/advice provider rather than to be pushy about its products.
 Social media is all about two way communication and communication builds relationship. So follow users religiously and start retweeting. This will help in building relationship. Most important this will increase your follower’s base. Above two steps will give you insight about the market and what exactly people want.
 Now start tweeting. But not directly talk about the product. Present your product in interesting ways. Like some quotes, jokes, opinion etc. An important thing, Twitter is a discussion not just a broadcast, so engage users by delivering exciting topic. Then let users retweet you. This creates base and helps in brand building.
 Tweet about some links and integrate your product-link with this. Help diverting traffic to the product website. May be users visiting the site won’t register but at least this will increase brand recall/page views. In my opinion a micro blogging website like Twitter can be used mostly for brand building rather than lead generation.
 Company should create blogs in different blogging websites and tweet about them. Invite users to leave comments about related topics and further divert users to your website or invite them to follow you. Blog posts should be optimized for SEO.
 Companies can get instant feedback and real time information from Twitter that can help in research. And this will enhance the product presentation.
 Slowly talk about the product and its consumer insight. Keep it interesting, engage them and build relationship.

Facebook:
Same as Twitter, start marketing on Facebook. Though it has some different features so brand can follow these steps:
 Do all the steps what ever done in Twitter.
 Company can have user account and it should create pages/groups/communities, where it can get fans.
 Add interesting applications that has an engagement factor. When any users use this application then ask users to become a fan. If user is already in the fan list, then divert them directly to website.
 Now within pages keep adding interesting topics like, tips for beauty, healthy relationships and so on, depending upon the product try to give entertainment quotient to your users and integrate the product link to these topics.
 Facebook and fan list are good sources of market research. So, crunch data about the users profile and do target marketing. Divert them to the product website.
 Bundle the product with different interesting offers and involve users and build relationship eg, discount on holiday packages, beauty parlors etc.

Global phenomenon:
Global brands involved in social media marketing and use it as an imperative tool to improve interaction with customers:
 Dell announces company and product news, talks directly with customers, responds to complaints and regularly asks for feed backs.
 Dell organizes quizzes through Facebook and provides interactive experience to users.
 Dell also Tweet with links about discounts and promotions. With all these activities Dell’s estimated earnings are around $6.5 million.
 Cisco is also leveraging social media. Through blogs it is doing one to one conversation and this is helping in SEO.
 Cisco is organizing virtual events through Twitter like teleconferencing and so on.
 Cisco is doing all its global product launches through social media and getting real-time global impact, two way customer interactions etc.

Take away:Company has a great scope in social media marketing as not many players are very active in this domain. It can give them first movers’ advantage.