Social Media

Good marketing is never one-and-done

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Griffimages dba Colorado Marketing Chick offers creative marketing and branding strategies to definte and improve audience engagement to boost your bottom line.Today’s rich internet marketing landscape, with its never-ending list of potential touch point platforms, means marketing must be even more dynamic than ever. It means that things like SEO, calls to action, and engagement must be ongoing—it means the job is never “done”! It means that you will have to post, like, tweet, favorite, comment, email, blog, pin, poke, scope, or do something, or some things continuously, if you want to stay in business.

Just as importantly, it means figuring out who your potential audience is, and where and how it’s best to reach them, in a way that will provide the most cost-effective ROI.

At this point you’re probably wondering how you are ever going to keep up with all of this, much less stay on top of it. Unless you enjoy, and are good at, all of this social media and online marketing stuff, and you understand what putting together a solid engagement strategy entails, it might be advisable to outsource at least some of it. This is especially important where the overall brand voice is concerned, and making sure that it is formulated properly for the selected platform so your brand and business are putting it’s best foot forward.

Notable Paradigm Shifts for Socially Engaged Companies

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I just read a great blog article from Soren Gordhamer, the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, about the paradigm shifts of socially engaged companies. He talks about companies throwing out the old top-down models where employees are simply cogs in a system to implement new business models that emphasize connection, collaboration, and innovation. In these new models, employees feel engaged, and that engagement is driving significant benefits for all involved, including notable growth in operating income and earnings per share. He also talks about the significantly converse affects for businesses with low levels of engagement. Read the full article 5 New Paradigms for a Socially Engaged Company.

Tips for Using Social Media to Build Your Brand

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In today’s online world using social media in your communications strategy is not only smart business, it is necessary business (in most industries) in order to engage with your audience on their terms. Implementing a social media campaign is not, however, simply creating a Facebook page or setting up a Twitter account. Creating a social media campaign should be a well thought out and conscious decision.

As with any form of marketing or communications efforts for your business, you need to keep your brand in sharp focus, while at the same time providing valuable and interesting content that your audience will want to engage with. In other words, social media, when used properly, is a vehicle for speaking ‘with’ your audience instead of ‘at’ your audience.

A few key things to remember when implementing your social media strategy:

  1. Consistency is a must in how your represent your brand, so know your brand and what differentiates you from others offering similar services.
  2. Know your audience and why they want to engage with you, otherwise you’ll lose them.
  3. Content is key: it must be relevant and interesting enough to engage your audience. Don’t just bombard your audience with “buy now” messages. Provide valuable info, interesting tidbits about what you or some of your customers are doing, or ask questions and give your audience the opportunity to respond. Social media can be a great way to learn about your audience’s opinion.
  4. Offer value by helping to solve an issue: assisting your audience with knowledge or tools they need to solve a problem helps to build trust and respect. It also positions you as a thought leader and a resource. They may not need what you have to provide right now, but when they or a friend or colleague does, they will think of you first.
  5. Timing is important: your content needs to be relevant and timely, and as regular as possible.
  6. Don’t pretend to be something or someone you’re not. Your audience will know the difference. If you are honest, relevant, and fun to engage with, then you will develop their trust. People do business with, and recommend to others, people and businesses they trust.

Use these tips to improve your communications and customer engagement and you’ll be that much further ahead in building better business relationships and trust in your brand.