How To Use Social Media Correctly

Social Media is an ever evolving creature that allows users to communicate with each other and gives marketers and website owners the unique opportunity to communicate with their target audience on a far more personal level than previously allowed. The question I always get is "how do you use social media correctly?" and "will social media replace search engines?"

Information Search
The answer to the second question is a pretty simple NO. If you've ever taken a basic marketing class in college then you know that consumers perform several functions when seeking out information or a new product; together these are known as "Information Search". First the consumer performs what is known as an "Internal Information Search" here the consumer reflects on past experiences to help guide their decision making. For example a thirsty consumer in front of a vending machine, they know they're thirsty but what should they drink? The answer comes back "Dr. Pepper" because they drink it frequently.

In these situations a consumer stops the Information Search and purchases the well known, frequently used product. The same can be said for many consumers on the internet looking for a product or information. Once they have found something suitable to their needs they continue to use it and ignore the advertising advances of other competitors.

However, for larger purchases or to find something the consumer has little experience with consumers begin to perform what is known as "External Information Search". This process begins with asking family and friends who might know how the consumer can obtain what they are looking for. Nearly 80% of consumers will trust the recommendations of family and friends, people they believe they can trust and that are knowledgeable on the subject. Consumers might also approach an expert source such as a doctor for health advice or a mechanic for engine problems.

If a consumer wants more information or simply couldn't find a trusted source to ask to fulfill their want or need then they begin to perform a public external search. This is the roll that internet search engines have played for over a decade. When a consumer wants to know about airfare it is much easier to perform a search instead of calling a travel agency. When a consumer wants to know the latest news on NASCAR it is much easier to perform a search than to sit idly and watch a tv show until that news comes on. A consumer new to a geographic area might also use a public external search to find a trusted expert resource in the area; i.e. a new mechanic.

Rise of Social Media
So this is where the internet has been for over a decade. Consumers asking each other for opinions through email and trusted sources sitting high on their websites with public search resources such as Google being the conduit for which to find anything. Then blogs came along and suddenly the number of experts on subjects in the world skyrocketed. Now anyone with good information could share it easily. Then MySpace showed the power of peer to peer recommendations for the music industry allowing users to create connections with their favorite artist and help propel that artist to their network of friends through messages and comments. MySpace began the game changer by enhancing how people could recommend something they enjoyed and soon the service added tv shows, movies, comedians and other entertainment outlets to the service. Anyone trying to make it in a related industry had a MySpace profile to try and promote themselves.

That was four years ago. Today the landscape for social media has under gone a bigger change. Now the two heavyweights allow consumers and brands for more ways of communicating about one another, this is where the power of today's social media comes in.

A Parable of Social Satisfaction
Let's start with a parable. There was a young man who met an incredible girl on Cinco de Mayo. After a few days of talking on the phone and texting the young man knew he needed to do something great for this girl and so he began to think of something to do. The young man used Google, but found nothing. He turned to craigslist but found nothing. He called a few friends and still there was nothing. Finally he posted to his Facebook wall "I need something to do tomorrow night". Within minutes the young man received a phone call from a friend reminding him about a baseball game in town. But where would he get tickets? The friend on the phone referred him to StubHub.com where the young man got amazing seats behind the visiting dugout for a great price. Satisfied, the young man called his date and off they went. Unfortunately the incredible girl dumped him at the top of the eight inning and left. However, there he was in a stadium with 20,000 people watching the home team go on to victory for a three game sweep. And he got here through... social media.

The above parable (yes there is a moral) repeats itself everyday with nearly 400 million people interacting around the world. The question is how do you become the StubHub in the parable? How do you position yourself as a brand or service to take that lucrative top spot in the collective consciousness of the internet?

StubHub does have a presence on both Twitter and Facebook. They mostly use the presence to handle customer feedback and help customers use their service. Could they do more? Probably, and most likely they will in the future. The service was so great it really runs the word of mouth campaign on it's own. Heck, I only used the service once and I've mentioned them twice already in this article.

Correctly Using Social Media
To correctly use social media you need to understand how consumers see each service offered and how you can leverage those. But it all starts with the basics; Build an incredible service. Once you have made sure that your service is easy to use for consumers, that your website is fully optimized for the user experience then you can begin to find ways that social media fits your business model.

Start your social media campaign with an end goal. It could be improving conversions, increasing website traffic, increasing customer awareness of your product lineup, using it as a customer service / CRM tool, or reputation management. You can use social media for all of these at once so choose what goals you think you can execute and accomplish. Most of you reading this probably just want to gain more website traffic so we'll start there.

An Example
So let's create a website about tragedy news from around the world. The site only focuses on timely, large events such as the recent plane crash of Polish top officials, the Iceland Volcano, or the flooding in Nashville. Now we created a service we know people will want and added neat features to the website to improve customer satisfaction on the site. We know we have a great product, but being so new makes it hard to improve the search engine rankings and since the events are timely we want to get information out as soon as possible to reach the maximum number of new users.

We create a social media strategy that includes posting the events immediately to the website and simultaneously to our facebook and twitter accounts. Seems like the logical step correct? However, a new site won't have as many "likes" or "followers" on facebook and twitter so we want to increase that number as well. You can use services like Twitterfeed and Ping.fm to post to Twitter and Facebook from an RSS feed, however, there is a typical time delay of 30 minutes minimum to get post out, which doesn't work for this model.

Remember we need to start with how consumers view each service:

Facebook:
- users see this as a very personal experience.
- they like pages of frequently used brands that they feel are a part of their lives
- they like pages and join groups that are humorous
- they spend time playing games and interacting with applications

Twitter:
- users see this as a more public experience
- users freely share their thoughts on topics with the world
- users use the service to send and receive information about brands
- users use the service to post information about events in real time

Since we know people tend to "tweet" a lot during these catastrophic events we will create a hashtag on twitter for them to use and post to that hashtag every 10 minutes. Our post to the hashtag will include updates on the event, and calls to action asking users to add video or photos of the event to our website, tips to anyone in or near the area of the event, and calls to action for consumer to consumer support. This will ensure that we as a new website have positioned ourselves correctly as a resource for information provided by both official and unofficial channels about the event. This last part is important because anyone looking for a reference source for this type of information now has a greater chance of finding us which means we will gain new backlinks from around the internet which will help to boost our search engine rankings improving traffic as time passes.

Also search engines such as Google have incorporated real time updates for major events into their search results which means our tweets about the website and information will appear in Google for the duration as well.

With Facebook we would take a different approach. We would most likely not want to post to our Facebook Page every ten minutes as consumers see the website on a far more personal level. Instead we create a page or group about the event and disseminate information through it so that only consumers wanting such information on Facebook can see it. Immediately we would have all staff post it as a status update and invite friends that might be interested to join the page with a call to action to spread the page around Facebook.

In General
The above strategy is great for the service we talked about, but most likely not for your website. So let's look over how websites in general can leverage these two entities. There are two major things that social media can do; increase visibility of your link bait and build brand awareness.

For example if you run a small local gift shop you might want to use these services to remind consumers of the products you offer that are tailored for upcoming holidays. If you run a local electronics store you can use the services to promote your specials and disseminate information related to electronics that your consumers might enjoy.

Remember to always include a call to action on facebook and twitter. "Tell your friends", "Suggest us to your friends" the more connections you create the larger your reach when you do make postings that your target consumers are interested in.

You can use Social Media for almost any aspect of customer and brand interaction, but the key is to be active and to post something useful to your target. If you post too often and the information is not useful then you are likely to lose any gains you made. If you post not often enough to these services then its likely consumers will see your offers as less compelling. How often should you post? It really depends on your target. A news outlet would want to post as soon as the news comes in, a gift shop perhaps only once or twice a day, a mortuary when only making funeral announcements. Really put yourself in the shoes of your consumers and decide what would annoy you and what would be acceptable.

Now that we have our strategy in place we need to be sure and execute it well. This is where many small businesses and websites begin to falter as it can be time consuming. Try to focus only on social media outlets that are the most prominent, at the moment of writing this is Twitter and Facebook.

Measuring Success - Spreading the Word
One great thing about Twitter is that you can use the site to track when your brand is being mentioned and you can use this as a gauge for a successful social media strategy. No matter what your end goal from above is all of them should result in your brand being mentioned by satisfied customers on both services. It is a bit more difficult to tell on Facebook, try encouraging users to review your brand or service on the Reviews tab of your Facebook page. These reviews are typically posted to the wall of the users making the review which opens the visibility up to their friends just like when they originally "liked" your page.

This is where the power of today's social media truly becomes apparent. The power of people to spread anything they like across the internet by posting about it on Twitter or "liking" or reviewing it on Facebook so that their friends see it. This will help boost your brand or service into the conversations between consumers and the sources they trust - their friends and family members.

Let's recap:
- An effective social media campaign should offer something of value to consumers
- An effective social media campaign should encourage users to mention the brand or service
- An effective social media campaign will understand how users view the social service being used and leverage that understanding appropriately.
- An effective social media campaign will increase the visibility of your link bait, increasing the likelihood that other sites will link to it
- An effective social media campaign will have a net result of increased search engine rankings
- Social media can also be use for effective customer service and relations

 

Thanks for sharing this lengthy post. However, I think there's no "correct" way of using social media, but rather, recommended ways.

 

Thanks for all the input so far guys.

WorldFriends: there is a correct way to do everything. That would be like saying there is not correct way to eat a steak. You can't eat a steak without a fork and steak knife. Try using a spoon and you'll drop the steak, try using a knife alone and you risk cutting your mouth.

 

While there are wrong ways to do things, there are also multiple right ways.

With social media how you approach the medium will depend on your goals and objectives - different businesses will have different needs.

 

Thanks for the sharing. You can also look into the following URL -
http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-use-social-media-for-marketing

 

Anyways thanks for sharing , It has different modes on which one should make use of social media if i am not wrong Guy!!!

 

Thank you very much for sharing the great information.