The Essential Ingredients to Social Success

29th March 2012 by Matt0

This week witnessed the arrival of the Social Media World Forum at London’s Olympia, the annual event that gives professionals the opportunity to explore ideas and try to alleviate any concerns they may have about integrating social media into their business activities. As Lava specialises in social media, we thought it would be good to head on down to check it out.

With numerous high profile speakers, an exhibition arena, and not forgetting the complimentary massage zone, the guys managing the event certainly had the key areas covered for 2012 (the chocolate muffins may have been a little pricey though, at £2.30 a pop).

Sat watching the various speakers come and go, showcasing their thoughts through beautifully presented PowerPoint presentations, some not so (*cough, Microsoft), reoccurring terms and ideas seemed to thread between them all, those being: engagement, behavioural analytics, and integration.

Now these may not be groundbreaking ideas, but as social media matures they are becoming more evident as key activities to ensure success.

Here are Lava’s top five tips from the forum that are a must for any business looking into, or currently using, social media:.

1. Community interests

At the heart of the engagement argument is community. The term is thrown around by organisations as an ideal that needs to be achieved and then nurtured for the purpose of business goals. This is all well and good, but the the key to utilising a virtual community is to work around their interests for the long term – rather than simply the duration of a specific campaign.

2. A human voice

Let’s face it, humans tweet – not brands. This should be something that should never leave your thoughts as you ‘schedule’ tweets and set up robotic impersonal RSS feeds to Facebook. At the forum IBM championed the use of guidelines to structure ‘one voice’ online, and even offered their own to any business wanting to apply a little structure to their online activity.

3. Valueless data

How useful is data coerced from customers? Making them carry out an activity, whether to like or share may be useful – but is the contact really worth anything to your business if they then do not interact with your brand again?

4. Infantile activity

Online marketing is still in its infancy, and as such there are no hardened rules of what will guarantee returns. This leaves us with the fantastic opportunity to continually experiment to enhance the customer experience – so have fun!

5. Recruit and retain

For businesses ROI seems to be the key factor in determining the success of investing money in social media – but can it really be measured? Try to use your initial KPIs to measure your activity, and also shape what metrics you decide to use.

From the forum it seemed that the fundamentals to any social media activity are to listen, analyse and engage.

So, overcomplicate your activity and metrics at your peril, and remember: try to give your blossoming community what it wants, rather than trying to extract exactly what you want. Oh, and try not to pay £2.30 for a chocolate muffin if you can.

If you would like to discuss social media and what investment in it could mean for your business, then please email [email protected]

 


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