I don't need to tell you that social media is an integral part of our culture, but with new social platforms popping up every day, I don't know how anyone keeps up with it all! We all know the big players in the game - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, but what about WeChat, Viber, Ravelry, Foursquare, Badoo, StumbleUpon, Funny or Die, or DeviantArt?
As many niche interests as there are, there are social media platforms for them all. So if social media encompasses many different things - text, pictures, video, music, stories, dating - how do we define what is and what isn't "social media?"
Our friend Miriam-Webster defines social media as forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content. So a FIFA forum, watching a beauty guru put on makeup, and a dating website for vegetarians are all social media? Yep. But does a business need to be in all of those places? Not necessarily.
The first step to leading a social business is being on the platforms that your target audience is on. Targeting young moms? Try Pinterest and some mommy-blogs. Teens? They're on Snapchat and TikToc. Knowing the right platforms for your business requires research. Once you've identified which platforms you need to be on, it can be tempting to start putting content out there and talking to your consumers.
Hold it right there! Before you start throwing out your sales pitch, consider that more than 500 tweets are tweeted every day. Facebook has 80 million small and medium-sized business pages, and almost five billion videos are watched on YouTube daily. To avoid feeling like you're shouting into a social media void, identify conversations, threads and tags where your voice can carry some weight.
The way to do so is through listening. Dave Kerpen in his book Likeable Social Media says listening is 50% of conversation. No one likes to feel like they're talking to a brick wall, or worse, being talked over and ignored. They like to know that their joys are celebrated, their pain points are heard, and someone is attentive to their needs. Mass communication doesn't mean sending general messages to the entire public like it used to. Mass communication means having key individual interactions with consumers on social media that generate positive conversation surrounding your brand. Kerpen argues that word-of-mouth is still the most effective form of marketing. You're much more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend than a gimmicky commercial or photo-shopped magazine ad.
Kerpen makes an important distinction between listening and monitoring. "Monitoring" has an evaluative connotation to it, like there may be consequences if you don't pass. You shouldn't be checking up on your consumers to put them down if they say something negative about your business. Listening is different. Social media listening means acknowledging and responding to both compliments and concerns. You're trying to get a better understanding of how your customers engage with your product/service/idea. You're trying to identify gaps in consumer needs and what you (and the competition) are delivering. At the end of the day you are building relationships with your consumers, and we all love a partner who is a good listener.
Some helpful links:
Likeable Social Media on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Likeable-Social-Media-Third-Irresistible/dp/1260453286
Facebook Stats that Matter to Marketers: https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/
Tweets per Second Record: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/a/2013/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-how.html
YouTube Facts and Statistics: http://videonitch.com/2017/12/13/36-mind-blowing-youtube-facts-figures-statistics-2017-re-post/
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