Social Media: a world of teenagers tweeting z-listers, visual reminders of those moments only your mates were supposed to witness, oh and as if I almost forgot the many pictures of your neighbour’s garden that quite frankly nobody cares about, yet still manages to get dozens of ‘likes’ regardless. Now, without going off on too much of a tangent, that’s what social media is all about right? Wrong.
Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, this perception of social media is exactly why many B2B marketers are put off integrating it into their existing marketing efforts. Well that among other things.
Now, while social media won’t work for every company in every industry, it will work for quite a few. If you are one of these, let’s call them, marketing traditionalists, you will probably think social media is more social and less business. Hopefully I’m about to prove you wrong, and even if social media doesn’t quite work for you, hopefully I will leave you in a position where you can make an accurate judgment, rather than palming social media off as a complete write off.
While you may not necessarily want to ‘know it all’, I’m sure you would like to ‘know enough’ to do your job better. Chances are you already know a lot about your customers, at least you should, but in reality you don’t know everything. But you can. Well, a bit more anyway.
The truth is social media gives you intelligence. Don’t worry, I’m not about to dismiss the long list of qualifications you probably have under your belt, but seeing as there is no accredited qualification in ‘knowing and fully understanding your customers’, there’s no harm in reading on.
“Social Listening” is a concept I probably should have introduced you to four paragraphs ago. Yes listening: to industry trends; to what your customers and prospects are saying; and to what your competitors are doing. One power. Three ways. Now try telling me that social media is a waste.
For those of you now on board, welcome to the world of social listening. Here are a few pointers that will help get you started on your mission to social intrusion, sorry I mean intelligence.
#1 Begin your journey with a monitoring plan
Plan being the operative word. Oh and monitor. The first mistake you can make is to create a plan and never review it. Actually that’s the second mistake; the first is to not have a plan at all. I guess the point is, if you’re social media monitoring has to be effective and efficient, you need a process in place that is under constant review, and will allow for strategic decisions in order to determine over/under investment. You need to think where, when and how frequently. Allocate your resources for this plan against the size of your business and your social media efforts.
#2 Lurk
Perhaps not the most effective word, but think less stalker, more private investigator. While I don’t suggest you set your sites on a career in the MI5, having the level of knowledge that comes with social media is a valuable commodity. Start by using passive research, whereby you simply search, listen for and monitor relevant information about your brand, industry or competitors. Once you have mastered this, start thinking about using active research, where you start asking specific questions and recording the answers. Used correctly, this will give you a competitive advantage. Practice both types of research by joining relevant LinkedIn groups and click through all relevant discussions and feeds to determine exactly what topics are being talked about, and how members are interacting. This will then leave you in a better position to contribute.
#3 Use you social competitive intelligence
I’ve already told you that social media enables you to know what you’re competitors are doing. But what I didn’t tell you is that once you have this knowledge, you are in a position to capitalise on it. Without being too obvious, consider copying the successful tactics your competitors are using, and on the flip side, learn from what didn’t appear to work. In doing so you improve your engagement, and increase your share of voice. Sites like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck allow you to aggregate vast flows of tweets into manageable streams around hashtags and industry sectors. This can not only be done to segment competitors, but also customers and prospects, and you will be well on your way in getting an A* in social media success.
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