3 steps to Social Media success

February 26, 2009
by Luke Regan

The cornerstones of an effective Social Media strategy are targeting, regular consumer interaction and an understanding of the rules of the game. Perhaps the most famous recent example of a successful Social Media strategy was that of Barack Obama with 1.5m volunteers registering to the site, $600m in donations and a 3m strong mobile database.

That strategy was to reach out to every potential supporter of the campaign wherever they could be found online, to communicate with them frequently on a personal level and critically, enable the advocates to get the vote out for Obama. So how does that apply to your business?

Here are 3 simple steps to replicate Obama’s strategy for your business’ personal gain.

Find your advocates

To begin with, try and think about who your advocates are. Then contemplate where they congregate online, think specialist interest forums and the like. If you can find them and they are currently silent, give them something to shout about. If they’re already vocal, amplify it.

Engage with them

The rules of the game dictate that if you are to interact in a particular social network for commercial benefit, ensure you’re adding value to the community. Otherwise, prepare to be ‘flamed’ or branded as a ‘troll’. It is easy to avoid such pitfalls. If it’s a forum you are planning to post on, speak to the Moderator explaining your intent. Position it like this: “I work for X and I think that I can provide your users with genuine value by doing Y. If this is okay with you then please let me know together with any other guidelines I should follow.”

Having found advocates make them feel special by giving discounts, letting them know about new product launches first and always speaking to them on a personal level. Just after his election victory was announced, Barack Obama sent this email to supporters: “I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.”

On major networks it’s important to remember that Facebook is still king. It was the third most visited website in the UK over the Christmas period (Hitwise). Again, the key to successful interaction on Facebook is adding value and more specifically, taking advantage of the egotistical nature of human beings.

Twitter is the current flavour of the month in UK media. Its use has rocketed nearly 1000% in the UK over the past year. Within sites like Twitter there will be key influencers relevant to your business. Use Twitter Search to identify those who are regular posters around your products. You can ‘follow’ these users and begin to interact with them on a personal level by replying to their posts and making your own value adding posts.

If you want to really embrace Social Media then make your website a platform for the conversation. Allow customers to talk about your product or service on the site itself, either through a blog or a customer services platform. When you respond to comments and solve issues it shows that you are listening to your customers and are proactive.

Measure success

Success for a given Social Media strategy can be measured in several ways. Sales growth and customer retention are usually the primary objectives but there are also other key indicators. Are more people visiting your website? Are those people staying for longer and viewing more pages? Are they contributing to the conversation in a meaningful way?

There are several tools you can use to monitor and measure Social Media alongside your existing analytics package. Google alerts are very useful and can be set up to automatically email you with new posts on a given keyword or phrase. The aforementioned Twitter Search is a great application for finding relevant posts within Twitter and in terms of paid tools, Radian6 is a useful buzz and reputation monitoring tool which crawls blogs, forums, Twitter and the wider web for buzz about your company or competitors.

In conclusion, Social Media represents a major opportunity at the tactical level to harness a new, incredibly efficient sales channel. From a strategic point of view it allows you to converse with, and get a deep understanding of, the very people who make your business thrive, customers.

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