Social Media Strategies

It’s funny how things can take such a flip turn in just a few years. I have seen how marketing concepts have transitioned along with the evolving internet. The greatest difference in the emergence of social media as a marketing medium is that 5-10 years ago marketers would be the ones with the lists. Marketing would be a one-way communication of messages from companies to consumers. They would work off a database of customers to find ways of penetrating them. TVCs, Radio Ads, Publications, Direct mail, Cold calling etc were all a core part of all marketing activities. The impact of the Ads was difficult to gauge.

Google search engines have turned the hunted into the hunters. Consumers now work off a list of merchants or providers and through a substantial supply of information to choose from. They decide who to listen to, trust and buy from. They are more empowered and in many ways less gullible. More access to information makes them wiser and better decision-makers.

This information gets to them via search engines and community based platforms. Search engines run algorithms to parse through information and show it to the consumers. On the other hand, community based platforms are enabled by elements of social interaction. Humans (not machines) filter content based on preferences and popularity. It is we who sort the information to protect our networks from poor choices.

It’s the hunted who now have the power - the merchants must win over the prey if they want the prey to endorse whatever they are offering & invite their social network to embrace it. To some naive marketers these facts represent a nightmare, which it is not. If you use social media effectively and not for spamming, a marketer’s cost of sales can drop considerably. Not only that, we now also have the power to leverage mob-effects, community shifts, emotional linkages - all using simple social networking strategies.

If you are event marketers or promoters, you can now directly interact with your audiences and get a direct feel for their thoughts and opinions. You can get early feedback; involve them in planning the different dynamics of the event. You can create groups and communities around your event to help build hype and excitement, let evangelists and fans promote your event for you. You can allow your prospective audiences to blog about your event. You can enable live twittering at the event. You can allow them to share photos of the after it’s over to build lasting memories and nostalgia. You can do absolutely everything and anything to promote your event.

I find it amusing whenever I come across big healthy organizations being stingy when it comes to investing money in social media marketing through online social interaction. I guess, they fail to see it as an investment rather than a cost for their event branding strategies.

I came across one such company recently that has outsourced a project to a team for developing, conceptualizing and writing a corporate blog for their upcoming annual expo event. Their blog was conceptualized in a manner to invite thought leaders and industry experts to participate in it as a rich community. I visited their site and was happy to see lots of activities, regular postings, participatory comments, etc. These people informally told me their concerns about the fact that they have no real way to measure the impact on event branding quantitatively for this project. I was both shocked and amused to hear them say this. Shocked because, somehow it seemed like they didn’t care about the community that was being formed around the blog - or the enthusiasts that were being born. Amused because, I knew that they don’t know any better. Social media marketing is far different from traditional media, my friends.

If you find yourself in a similar situation where you want to measure the impact of all of the tools that you are using, then here is some honest advice.

Measuring the benefit to your brand via social interactions, communities and social networking is difficult to put down on numbers. However, it can be calculated based on a combination of both qualitative and quantitative measures such as: increase in your list numbers, increase in your ticket demands, increase in audience traffic, participation levels in your blog posts, increase in sharing and bookmarking of your sites, development of evangelists, increase in page rankings, increase in exposure to industry bloggers, increase in authority of the blog rankings, decrease in your involvement to keep your blogs afloat. These are all rich online social interactions. Some of these directly affect your bottom line figures, whereas others are going to be more subtle and may go unnoticed.

Please don’t start counting the number of times your event brand name has been written or talked about as a measure for the success of such social media marketing projects. Be realistic in how you factor in different elements of event branding when deciding whether or not your money is being well spent.

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

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