Social Media Marketing by TuneMyWebsite

Social Media Marketing - Introduction to Social Media

We understand Social Media as the whole framework of social media, referring to these as those based on conversation and collaborative interaction of people online. Therefore, in this definition would enter both blogs and social networks, "wikis" or link aggregator websites (eg Menéame.net), among others.

Social Media responds to an evolution of the communications system and personal relationships that comes from the technological revolution that appeared with Web 2.0. With them, a new way of relating among users appears, based on more open, collaborative and bidirectional communications.
Within this new media landscape, new professionals called to communicate the ideas of the company or institution for which they work in Social Media.

The objective: to have a direct contact with the potential client in order to carry out a conversation beneficial for both parties: for the client because it is attended and taken into account, while they study and resolve their requests; and for the company, because it has an open and direct contact with its audience, very useful to create products and services ad-hoc of their needs.
Among the new professional roles we highlight:
-Social Media Manager: is responsible for carrying out a communication and marketing strategy in social networks, as well as being aware of its operation and performance.
-Community Manager: is the person in charge of executing this communication strategy, carrying out the domain of different accounts in social media, empathizing with the public and distributing the message.

The "three C's" of Social Media Marketing

These social media have adhered to a new way of understanding communication, which could be summarized in these three premises:

-Share. Knowledge can be made much greater if everyone shares what they know with the people around them. In this way, the community, while increasing its intellect, can investigate new topics to share with their peers. In this way, knowledge is now understood in social networks. It is not worth what you know if you are not able to share it with the rest, so Social Media is based, in part, on the sharing of links on various topics. Selfishness is not fashionable in this new era of conversation. In the same way, there is a growing trend towards the generation of free and open content.

-To collaborate. The phenomenon of "wikis" (open sites of generated content, corrected and extended by Internet users themselves) showed how much greater and wider knowledge could be generated through collaboration between users. Good proof of this is Wikipedia.org. Likewise, with social media, new knowledge-generating trends such as crowdsourcing (multitude as a source) emerge. Users use these close and direct conversations to ask for the support or opinion of their legion of virtual followers on a certain topic. This practice is also being used by the media, which in certain situations ask their audience to tell them what they know or what they have witnessed about an event; or of the companies themselves, which use this tactic of contact with the client to know how to guide the creation or improvement of their products and services.

-To converse. It is the real basis on which Social Media Marketing rests: the conversation. The users meet in social media in order to talk, and the different institutions that are entering Social Media will have to carry the same mentality if they do not want to be rejected by the community. Conventional advertising and promotional actions have no place in a new era marked by the need to talk to the potential client, generating a trust and an approach that later leads to us being their consumer choice.

Five tips to work in Social Media

Social Media are based on the following premises: bidirectionality, interaction, feedback and, above all, extreme care for freedom of expression.
If we respect these rules, our actions in social media will be well accepted.
For this, we have to take into account the following:
1. Different targets: each network has a different target audience. Discover who is behind each social network, who follows you, and adapts your message.
2. Be active: social media creates user communities that seek to communicate with each other. Therefore, ask, talk, collaborate, promote yourself. Remember: bidirectionality and interaction.
3. Take into account the opinion of your audiences: your followers do not want their opinions to fall on deaf ears. Ask what they want to read on your page and try to bring those demands to your front page. Get them to feel part of your project. Feedback, feedback or, what is the same: Crowdsourcing (take your audience as a source to create content).
4. Be cordial: in the 2.0 world, kindness is taken as a flag. Remember to give thanks when someone gives you interesting content, always mention the authorship of your information (who has done it) and do not make bad comments or that may unnecessarily annoy your followers.
5. Do not be outdated: the world of Social Media is constantly renewed. Although the bases always remain, changes occur quite frequently and it is good not to be outdated.

How to work professionally in Social Media Marketing

After all these details, it is clear that we are facing a new medium that requires both new ways of exercising communication, and professionals specifically dedicated to its implementation and operation.
As responsible for the "social" communication of a company, we will have to ask, in the first place, that the company understand that we are facing a new form of communication and before a new medium but that, like the others, needs planned actions and coordinated if we want to achieve optimal performance.
Therefore, it is important to keep these points in mind: We do not want thousands of followers, but customers interested in our products. Let's see who we want our messages to reach.
It is fundamental to have a well defined who is our target (target audience, people to whom we direct our goods or services in order to consume them).
The goal is not to get thousands of followers in the different profiles and channels that the company has in social networks, but to get access to a number of people who are truly interested in our products and services so that our actions are more effective.
We prefer 100 followers on Twitter who are interested in our products, than 1000 who ignore our messages.

Quality is not the same as quantity.

Social Media Marketing - Coordinated strategies, personalized actions

If the first incursions of companies in social media are being characterized by something, it is certainly a lack of coordination.
Messages sent by Facebook, Twitter, Youtube ... that do not follow a certain rhythm or planning. As for any other medium, it is essential that we create a true Communication Strategy. This communication strategy must have a 360-degree nature (different supports working together and whose actions are fully coordinated with each other giving each other mutual support) both in their relationship with the different communication and marketing strategies of the company and in their relationship with the different social media that we will use to support it:
• The communication and marketing strategy of social media of the company must be in correspondence with the different communication and marketing strategies that the company is developing in other media.
In this way, social media becomes another support placed at the service of the company to communicate with its customers, which must also be within this global strategy, having an intimate and coordinated relationship with the rest of the actions that are performing in other media.
• Within our own social media, all the actions we carry out must also be coordinated.
Each action has to be oriented to reinforce the global message that we want to spread in social media, and take us to the end that we have established.
Therefore it is important to define perfectly what we want to communicate and what we want to achieve.
In addition, within the configuration of each medium of our social media (blog, twitter, facebook, youtube ...) we have to pretend that there are elements that link to the rest of social media in which we are also developing communication actions.
Each support has to be able to communicate our idea for itself, and at the same time it has to be connected in a visible way with everyone.

Social Media Marketing - Let's look at the Twitter of JournalistsHOY

As we can see, in the lower left corner is present all the different channels in which it is present in cyberspace. The goal: to create a coordinated network of social media that sends a coordinated and compact message to the audience. Remember: each medium has to be able to communicate on its own, but it has to show clearly its relationship with the rest. The goal is to create a sphere of interconnected media. When we access any of these media we must be able to access the rest of the media that support it.
We also have to realize that, although we spread the same message in all social media, we are faced with different media.
Therefore, we can not communicate in the same way on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, for example. We have to carry out personalized actions for each support.
Each social network has certain rules that govern the participation of its users.
These can be more related to the technical aspect (for example, on Twitter the messages can not pass the 140 characters) or with the way of behaving of its members or its specifc characteristics (for example, we do not find the same profile of users on Facebook , people from 25 to 44 years old mostly, than in Tuenti, adolescents).
Therefore, we will have to know the characteristics of each social network to adapt our message to it in order to be more effective.

In this way, the meaning of the message we broadcast in social media must be one and univocal for all social networks, but its form must be adapted to the characteristics, the way of acting, the profile of the user of each social network to be more effective. To achieve these precepts, it is best to define a good communication strategy that effectively resolves all these issues and that clearly plans both the actions to be carried out and the time allotted for them.

Let's listen first and talk later

We are not only facing a new media landscape, but also facing a new economic and business landscape. Clients are no longer considered as mere recipients of messages, but demand to establish a clear and direct conversation with companies. In addition, we are in an era in which organizations have to expose their environment in a transparent manner, giving great importance to aspects such as the social responsibility of the organization. All these needs are going to try to respond from social media, as they offer the best media to have this bidirectional and direct contact with the environment of the organization.

The true work of the Community Manager of the company or responsible for social media will be to establish a direct relationship with the public of the company, which ends up by ensuring that our consumers have a transparent and friendly image of us, as they consider that we are there to talk to them, help them and respond to both their criticisms and their suggestions. In the end this will be decisive in your purchase decision. Therefore, it will be a very rewarding and productive process, but it needs time, so you can not ask for immediate results. We are talking about generating a good image in the minds of our consumers, and this process can not be achieved in the short term. This is something that the company must understand from the start.

Social media comes at a time when the consumer demands to be heard. Therefore, when entering these media, let's stop first to listen, to know what they say about us and how they say it, and then introduce us to their conversation. The clients want to talk with us, they do not want us to use these supports to develop the conventional publicity actions that are carried out in other media.

So, let's listen first, let's see how our audiences communicate, what they want from us and, once this is understood, let's talk with them. Bear in mind that organizations have spent a lot of time sending totally unidirectional messages to their audiences in order to carry out a certain action (usually that they buy their products). Now we are facing a new panorama, customers want to talk and we are going to introduce ourselves in the place where they are already doing it (social media). Today it is the company that has to adapt to them.

First steps in Social Media

In the universe of Social Media we can introduce ourselves as professionals or as institutions. Both profiles will seek the same goal: the repercussion, being known by the public we are addressing and being worthy of their consideration and respect. This starting point will be fundamental so that the actions we carry out later will be successful. To begin our steps, it is essential that we have a platform that serves as a basis to sustain all our communication actions
The goal: that we can pour into it our own personal content that we can spread on social networks. A blog or a web portal, both optimized for distribution in social networks, will be the best tool to carry out this task.

What to use social media marketing for?

-Blog: blogs are becoming one of the best tools to sustain the communication that a professional or an institution makes in Social Media. This is because they allow to make updates in a simple and fast way and, in addition, through them we can establish a bi-directional contact channel with our readers. As far as professionals are concerned, all those who are called to work in a professional manner in this sector have a blog in which they tell their reflections or offer contents of help to their audiences (nowadays the post-headings triumph with a "how do "or" x tips for "). In the face of companies, it is usually the tool used to channel both external and internal communication.
Therefore, a Community Manager must know correctly how to create and manage this tool.
-Portal web: We will need the design of a more elaborate page with more functionalities, when we want it to be established as the promoter or distributor of our products, rather than to communicate with the public. In the same way, it can not miss the "social" elements to ensure that this page has an impact on Social Media. While the Community Manager will be in charge of supervising the creation of this page with the previous objective, its creation should be in the hands of a web design professional.
The work of the Community Manager will be to control the social communication channels of the company. For this, it must pretend, in the first place, that all these tools are properly configured to be able to achieve a correct foray into social media and achieve the intended repercussion. Then, you will have to move on to a communication strategy that, by combining the operation of all of them, can clearly distribute the message we want to reach our audiences, while getting in touch with them. Afterwards, he will have to start executing these approaches and, finally, check his results.