The Social Media Advantage. Holly Berkley

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СКАЧАТЬ create well-thought-out blog posts that generate emotion and response, while they also fit powerful observations into 140 characters or less on Twitter. Creating a message that generates emotion and response is what social media is all about. After all, social media is designed to spark dialogue between individuals to create a feeling of community. It is not a successful tool for simply pushing company announcements and press releases. Those types of posts and tweets will probably not succeed in the social media space.

      “We see ourselves less as individual planners, designers, marketers, etc. and more as cultivators of community,” said PlaceMaker’s Doyon. “Instead of just writing for other planners, we’re building relationships with environmentalists, developers, city boosters, bike and pedestrian advocates and all kinds of other folks who care about community improvement.”

      PlaceMakers has cast a pretty wide net to cover their target audiences. But they don’t do this by having one marketer or sales person doing all the tweeting, posting and chatting. Instead, PlaceMakers is able to reach many different types of audiences with valuable, thoughtful information, because they allow each team member to blog, tweet and post about subjects that are most important to them. This approach helps pave the way for each team member to begin establishing themselves as potential thought leaders in their specific areas of interest and expertise.

      Deborah Reale, community manager and marketing specialist at Reed Construction Data of Norcross, Georgia (http://www.reedconstructiondata.com/), has developed a similar social media strategy for Twitter. Rather than trying to push messages out and listen to all the feedback and chatter at once, she recommends segmenting Twitter followers by area of expertise, to keep better track of feedback as well as provide useful information in a more organized and powerful way.

      “I’m a doctoral candidate in business, so to me, Twitter is similar to a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) chart,” explains Reale of her Twitter strategy. “If a firm has its ’following’ organized and lists them properly, management should be able to discern the SWOT for products, the organization, competitors, customers, prospects; even the industry itself.”

      By using social media sites like Twitter as a listening tool rather than just blasting promotional messages, Reale discovered that Twitter can help her company reach goals beyond marketing and sales and aide in customer service management as well as product creation and improvement.

      “I believe that in business-to-business (B2B), people respond to people. Most companies segment by product or customer base. I thought it might be a good idea to segment by our people in their area of expertise. I wanted to put a human face on the RCD segments,” said Reale.

      Twitter allows users to easily segment followers and the people they follow through the creation of lists. Some organizations even develop completely different Twitter accounts for each content area of their company to allow for strategic development of different types of customer leads and distribution of more targeted information. By creating different Twitter accounts and dividing followers into specific lists, Reed Construction Data is able to have different individuals within Reed Construction Data share information that is most valuable to each target audience and therefore create more loyal followings.

      How a Targeted Facebook ad Helped Orabrush get on the shelves at Walmart

      We were already in contact with Walmart Corporate Offices through traditional sales channels. Their local vendor program allowed individual Walmart managers to pick up local products for local stores shelves. We’d had a manager here in Utah request Orabrush to carry for the holidays, and from that introduction, many other local Walmarts picked us up as well. Sales were robust, and the prospect for an expanded Walmart launch beyond our area seemed very good, but we wanted to speed up the process.

      We made a DVD with a personalized introduction for the sales rep we’d been in contact with at Walmart HQ. When the DVD starts, The Orabrush Guy and Morgan the Orabrush Tongue (our two spokesman of YouTube fame) address the rep by name and discussed all the sales figures we’d seen in our test market in UT. We included samples of our videos, user reviews, and the press coverage we’d gotten. It was unique and thorough, and we were confident it would have their attention.

      Part of our strategy was to come from as many angles as we could, through the traditional sales channels, and then with the DVD. But we’re a social media company as much as we’re a consumer goods company. Our world is web advertising.

      I had the idea to use Facebook ads in a very targeted way. In college, I’d used Facebook to target a single girl to ask out. It was narrowed down to only girls with this name who went to this college who are from this hometown with these interests. Now I promise this isn’t as creepy as it sounds; we already knew each other and it was a fun way to surprise her. Facebook won’t allow that narrow of targeting anymore, probably to prevent potential creepiness like I’d done, but the technique still works, even with an audience broader than one. I suppose the girls of Provo UT (home ofOrabrush HQ) can be glad I’m now happily married. No more Facebook pro stalking.

      We created a Facebook ad targeted only to Walmart employees in Bentonville Arkansas who have a college degree. The only people who meet those qualification are employees at Walmart HQ. We were reaching the executives. The ad said “Walmart Employees have bad breath! Walmart needs to carry Orabrush! It will sell better than anything in your store!”

      Two days and $28 in ad spend later, we got an email from a Walmart VP, letting us know that they’d seen our ad, and would we please take it down. They seem to have gotten the impression that we were broadcasting this to the country, not realizing it was targeted to their office.

      They’d already heard we were good at reaching our desired audience online. Now they knew it firsthand.

       —Submitted by Jeffrey Harmon, CMO of Orabrush

      www.orabrush.com

      Never Interrupt. Instead, Foster Dialogue.

      The biggest mistake marketers make with social media, regardless of industry, is interrupting rather than contributing to the conversation. By using your own employee resources to add expertise to conversations, you can provide more authentic value to target audiences.

      “My twitter feed highlights social media, marketing and business/technology news, with a spotlight on our industries,” described Reale of how each employee contributes different content to the segmented Twitter followers. “Another Reed employee, Kathy, is a technical writer for building product manufacturers. Kathy tweets a good deal about manufacturing and she follows and talks to manufacturers on her Twitter feed. She understands their pain points, the stuff that keeps them up at night.” We’ll talk more about how you can engage your employees in social media in Chapter 5.

      For companies trying to reach several different target audience groups, segmentation allows the ability to provide specific information that is useful and relevant to the needs of each audience group. The result of this relevant information is that it can, in turn, develop stronger, deeper connections with each audience. Reale believes this type of segmentation will help Reed Construction Data develop better products by listening to feedback and asking questions to the right audiences. And Twitter is not the only social network to benefit from segmentation. We are also seeing more businesses that have set up multiple blogs, each focusing on different topics to appeal to various audiences. You can also set up lists within your Facebook profile so that specific messages will only go out to those “friends” most interested in your company updates. To set up a different list in Facebook, simply click on “Friends”, then “Edit Friends.” From here, you will see a link that says “Create a List.” This will allow you to name the list and add certain Facebook friends to that list. СКАЧАТЬ