Digital communication is everywhere – 24 hours, 365 days. 450 million Facebook users generate and share per month 25 billion pieces of information. Each user holds in average 130 friends and engages with 60 groups / fanpages – one can easily imagine the tremendous viral effects you’ll get when you use social networks like Facebook as a marketing channel. On countless social media networks, forums and communities there are communications going on where people share opinions about your brand if you want it or not.
The generation and consumption of information and advertising is changing – the average user on Facebook contributes monthly 70 times to potentially brand related communications. For companies and brands this means brand building is now increasingly done through the generation and exchange of information within the social media platforms.
Social Media Communications (Radian 6 Monitoring) Nike and Adidas, April 2010 (click to enlarge):
For brands therefore it is enormously important to be where their customers are and to know who is talking about the brand and what is the content of the communications. That way companies can engage with consumers or target the main influencers to established or optimise the brand.
Listening and engaging with consumers can build trust between businesses and consumers, but only if both sides benefit from it. The company benefits from the attention of the consumers and the possibly resulting word of mouth marketing. However the consumer only benefits if there’s enough useful content provided by the brand. For ‘social companies’ this means: it is more blessed to give than to receive!
In Social Media Marketing this is called ‘inbound marketing’: the dissemination of useful content to places where the targeted audience hangs out to get their attention. Content can be of various kinds, such as web or smart-phone applications, multimedia story telling, etc. As soon as fans of the brand generate brand related content themselves (see the example of the Coca-Cola fan page where fans show their brand love 24/7 ) and so become brand ambassadors the brand has propelled its social media marketing to new heights.
We believe companies are only beginning to scratch the surface of social’s eventual potential. Our Social Media consultants guide you through the different areas in Social Media Marketing:
Culture
- Social media policy – internal alignment and social media training
Technology
- Best platforms and integrations of systems for the strategies
Conversations
- Monitor and analyse conversations and content throughout social media relevant to your brand, products, services, competitors and sector
Design
- Engagement and content strategies
Strategy and Planning Consultancy
- Overall social media strategies, bespoke training packages, listening and responding programmes
Measurement
- Segemtations, buyer personas, monitoring and social intelligence
