Earned Social Media
I came across Matt Haughey’s post This is How Social Media Really Works via a friend’s blog this afternoon and it’s finally got me focusing a whole mess of thoughts about Social Media that have been floating around in my brain for the last several months about strategic use of Social Media as a part of your larger communications or marketing plan.
To summarize Matt’s post, if you haven’t already headed over there to read it, he describes a recent purchase he made and how he came across the company he ultimately bought from. Matt was looking to upgrade the swingset in his backyard, his path to purchase went something like this: follow friend on Twitter > one day that friend happens to tweet about the Obama’s buying new swingset for Whitehouse > Matt, because he’s currently interested in swingsets, checks out friend’s blog post that contains more details about the swingset, including a link to the manufacturer of said soon to be presidential swingset > website for swingset vendor is particularly well designed and easy to use > Matt buys swingset.
Matt’s conclusion for this is that, well I’ll just quote him here:
“there are thousands of people all over twitter and blogs that think throwing thousands of dollars at people that describe themselves as a “marketing guru” is the way to increase their company sales. I’m here to say I think that may very well be a waste of money, time, and energy.”
He goes on to conclude the article with the following:
“So maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need “social media marketing” after all.”
And I agree. Wholeheartedly. But does that mean I think you shouldn’t participate in Social Media as a marketing pursuit be it for a company, a non-profit, a campaign or what have you? No. I do think however — and I’m really not alone in this — that you should see your participation in Social Media — Twitter, Facebook, etc. — as a way to extend your reach, build your community and engage in conversation with customers. And, as you do that — and do it well — you will find that you start getting good Earned Social Media and it will pay off in droves in sales, participation, supporters etc. That means not using Social Media to just let people know directly about your products, sales, fundraising campaigns etc. In fact, you should probably limit how much of that you do through Social Media channels altogether as it detracts from the community building side of things.
I’ve been advocating for clients to get earned online media for many a year now. I think it is by far one of the most effective online strategies to boost sales/supporters/donations etc. and lucky for you it is pretty easy to get. Easier to get than earned media offline anyway, as the barrier to entry is really low. A review on a blog, or an interview with a blogger is a great entry point to earned online media. Obviously, depending on the reach of the blogger or an online magazine, the impact will vary widely, but much like offline earned media it tends to be the kind of thing that builds and grows overtime. With Social Media you’re looking for the same thing. People retweeting a useful resource you post online, or perhaps even better people tweeting links directly to a blog post you’ve written on a company or organizational blog, or another page on your website will help drive pre-qualified (already interested) traffic to your website. As Matt’s scenario displays, that one pre-qualified lead — he was already particularly interested in swingsets — will be far more valuable than thousands of curious folks who just happen to click on a link from your Twitter feed.
The final piece from Matt’s blog post that I want to point to — and I’m aware I’ve got a huge bias here — is a comment he makes about the vendor having “a great website” which, combined with a local lot where he could test out the playground in person, ultimately helped to seal the deal. If when he followed that link he hadn’t been able to quickly and easily get the info that he wanted, he probably would have clicked away and this story would never have been written. When you’re investing in Social Media — be it dollars or simply the valuable time of staff used to tweet and updating Facebook — you are ulitmately investing in driving traffic to your website. If your website isn’t in top form, you may want to spend those Social Media marketing resources on fixing things up at your primary online communications point first.