The 7 Social Media Marketing Essentials for Brands

Niall Harbison

Social media is changing in front of our eyes.  It’s still a very new discipline but companies and brands are embracing it across the board in a number of ways. It can be easy to become distracted by all the new technologies and some people don’t know where to start or how to make a difference with their social media marketing.

With that in mind we wanted to create a list of seven key areas that we think all businesses and brands should be spending their time on. Yes the headings are broad and there are a hundred things you could be trying within each section but if you improved your company’s performance across these 7 areas you would start to see real tangible results. It can be easy to get caught up in all the hype and move from one platform to another trying to follow the trends but have a little focus, hone in on these clear goals and you will be in a far better place…

Internal Communications

The tools are available to help improve how you talk to each other within your company. Companies that communicate well internally will more often than not have far better results. I’m always amazed at the lack of communication internally but with a new range of tools available to us all there really isn’t any excuse any longer. Try out Yammer, Convofy, SocialCast, Campfire, Facebook groups or instant messaging tools like Skype or Google chat to get the best out of your company. The smart companies are adding a social layer to their entire business and putting as big a focus on internal communications as external comms. Make sure that your company has excellent social media guidelines to allow staff to talk about where they work and the benefits of working there. The days of control where upper management decided what was projected in to public domain about your company are long gone and every single one of your staff now have a voice thanks to social media.

Branded Content

It’s not enough trying to create engaging updates or throw up the odd picture on social media channels. If you are really serious about engaging with a community you’ll need to start thinking about branded content and how to seed it within the communities that you have access to. This could be anything from videos and websites to blogs or podcasts and the most important thing about branded content is creating something that the consumer has genuine interest in. We all know how to filter ads out these days and the savvy consumer is looking for new ways to engage with brands. Content should be at the very center of everything you do and spending time and money developing branded content is a route most brands and businesses should be going down. If you want to see the masters of branded content have a look at this video or others from Red Bull. Now you won’t have their budgets for creating content but it’s an important part of social media now and one your company should be trying to engage with.

 

Read the whole article at: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/05/14/the-7-social-media-marketing-essentials-for-brands/#comments