Scaling Your Social Media campaigns

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Digg, Reddit; the list goes on and on. Doing Social Media Well requires the right research first. Choosing your social media mix wisely will enable you to budget your social time wisely.

Most small business owners have limited time. It’s a problem that persists in any business of any size. Limited resources and grandiose plans can be fuel for what we call social media burn. Burning all of your energies and receiving modest to no return for your effort. Our advice is to look at scale when choosing social media campaigns to become involved in.

All the social media platforms take time to learn. Some are much more time consuming than others, however. When starting on your social media journey, start small. Sign up for a platform that interests you and try it on. Give yourself a time budget for research, a time budget for development, and a time budget for interaction. At first you may want to forgo interaction and be a lurker. This allows for more development time but you will eventually want to get involved, right?

Take into account the scale of the platform and the time budget. What happens if this becomes very rewarding? Can you scale your social media effort? Given your resources, can you add other platforms to your marketing mix? Just remember that doing social media well requires time, interaction, and a ramp up period. We wish you well.

Have other ideas for scaling social media campaigns? Leave us a comment.

Blackball Online Marketing provides Pittsburgh Internet Consulting services.

For related reading, check out the first post in this series – Identifying Your Social Media Audience

Doing Social Media Well - Audiences

As an Internet Marketing Business in Pittsburgh we hear discussions throughout Social Media circles like, “Is Social Media for my company?” or “How do I monetize Social Media” or “How do I measure the Return On Investment for Social Media” It seems folks want to make money on Social Media platforms by advertising and without doing the homework.

In our previous post Social Networks: No Pushing Please, we mentioned the need for activity and interaction without hard sales tactics. This is true throughout all of the stages of Social Media Interaction listed below. Support and Customer Service will promote you better and faster than any tagline. Remember the mantra of The Godfather “Helping People Is Good Business”.

Becoming familiar with the Social Media Landscape:

When we were children and were introduced into new social situations we all reacted differently. As adults we carry some of those same traits with us into the digital world.  Add to this uncertainty the fact that the technology can be a barrier to some. This has the effect of causing a boisterous demeanor in some whilst others sit silently and observe. In our opinion there is no right or wrong here; only differing methods of and levels of participation.

Identifying the audience is always the most important thing when conversing in any situation in real life or digitally. Such is the case with Social Media. Communication must start with a mutual understanding on some level. Let’s analyze the landscape so we can interpret our audience with more effectiveness.

Social Media has different forms of participants:

The Lurker – one who watches and reads but says nothing (observationalist)

The Toe-dipper – a former lurker who is just testing the waters

The Rookie – just starting to explore and participate

The Inter-actor – A Social Media pro in training who is beginning to interact in the community

The PRO – Someone well versed in the ins and outs of their platforms and conversation etiquette

The MASTER – One who knows they don’t or can’t possibly know it ALL

Everyone goes through some form of each stage on this list. There is a learning curve. We believe in persistence and perseverance. Our point is that Social Media takes involvement; lots of it. To cultivate a client relationship requires a level of trust. This cannot be overlooked. Social Media is not, in our opinion, advertising. Doing Social Media Well requires that personal touch that should come from within your organization, your audience can tell.

SOCIAL NETWORKS: No Pushing Please

Won’t You Be My Friend – And Please Buy Something

For those taking their goods or services to market it’s a wrap that the traditional ad campaign approach, (pre-Internet) isn’t enough. It just doesn't enjoy the "king of the hill" status it once did. It is simply part of a much bigger pie since the Internet and its extended family - à la Social Networks and Apps have come to play. Traditional advertising maintains its prominence in the delivery of a brand, and probably always will. It’s impractical to believe we’ll ever see the demise of ”well, I saw that ad…” or “I heard this ad…” but more and more the traditional ad venues are not the primary source that consumers use when the actual decision to purchase will be made. Digital is becoming the gateway, or the 800 lb. gorilla, when it comes down to sealing the deal - one way or another. In most cases anymore people see an ad, if it peaks enough interest you go check out their Website.  Traditional advertising delivers the brand, with digital the instrument for giving the brand meaning and a reason to maybe buy from that brand. So, I guess you could say advertising hands out the invites, and the Web and Social is where the party is.

With the current state of the Internet what does all this mean in terms of taking your best shot at marketing success? First, buying your audience only through print, TV, billboards, etc. like in the "old days" is just "so 90s," it’s a trick that just doesn't work like it used to. People demand the brands they associate with to be "social" now. And second, those who have products or services to take to market and sell need to be involved at the deepest of levels now – a relevant community voice needs to be found based on the brand message, with ad/communication agencies helping that voice to be found and nurtured, and everybody has to work harder, dig deeper, and give up on that cozy illusion of control.

It goes without saying if you are not interactively present with a relevant voice, and consistently so (and we can't over emphasis "consistently so") you will not be part of a consumer’s decision making when it happens, you simply become "persona non grata" – you’re just another ad pushed out with no voice – lacking any real or perceived substance, rendering any “shaking of the hand” to start a rapport which could lead to a sale nonexistent.  And if you think this kind of thing is to far removed from your direct sales to bother spending time on, it would behoove you to think again - because things aren’t what they used to be.

There's been a duesy of an axis shift; it seems to be going something like this:

- Brand Message gives way to Voice...whatever that "Voice" may be.

- Promotional gives way to being Social and Community oriented.

- Promotion gives way to Attraction...promotion kinda' happens along the way.

- Effective gives way to Relevant, Credible and Meaningful.

- Behind the Curtain gives way to Transparency.

It’s an unprecedented time. Digitally consumers are opening their doors to brands 24/7. If this isn’t a brand’s dream I don’t know what is. (But we do have another thing in mind.)
Translation: Your customers live Online - give them a reason to invite you in.

Of course all this doesn’t mean diddly if your product or service isn’t on par with what you say it is.

Blackball Online Marketing provides Web Design, Pittsburgh SEO, and Social Media Optimization; we actually think about your clients.

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