Social Media

I love social media. I’ve just returned from a national five city speaking road-show for Vodafone’s Horizon Series. What a tour! I was co-presenting a three hour gig each time with the very talented Mike Watkins. I’m pleased to say we scored consistent 9’s and 10’s in every city and I challenged myself and learnt a lot along the way. Lets face it. Its an ever moving, ever changing and highly exciting feast.

Check out this clip on YouTube demonstrating just how quickly it is moving !! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SuNx0UrnEo

The main topics we covered on this particular tour where Hypertargeting, Community and Content, Personalisation & Amplification and The Future. So – a quick snapshot of our 3 hour preso…

Hypertargeting – targeting individual consumers based on their specific likes, interests, locality, age and sex. We primarily talked about facebook as an advertising platform but also touched on linkedin and twitter. A great case study is – Supre – an iconic Australian brand that has effectively used hypertargeting. They were an early adopter of facebook ads and built quickly when ads cost around 2 cents a pop. They currently have 364,559 fans and growing at a minimum of 600 a week this figure will no doubt have changed by the time I post this. Such is the nature of social media. Its an interesting and pertinent lesson in staying ahead of the curve.

What we love about hypertargeting is the ability to really hone in very specifically on people that we genuinely know will have an interest in the brands that we are working with. It’s a highly targeted way of communicating with awareness where people choose to opt in rather than just being shouted at randomly through traditional mediums (TVC’s and the like) which are often expensive and very hit and miss. Check out this clip on what not to do – Advertising v’s The Consumer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heSudg-tfIk

The great thing about social media is that you can truly engage with and have ongoing conversations with your customers. This brings us to content and community building. Three things to remember – keep your conversation relaxed, real and relevant. Remove ego and give value. Become an information resource. Make your updates small, digestible chunks of value. You can self monitor this – you’ll know when people are responding or when they are being turned off. Try to emulate your offline (real life) experience with what you are doing online.

Once you have your qualified leads (ie your “likes” are building) you need to decide if you drive them to your website or your social site. The primary difference is that your website may provide instant gratification in terms of an instant sale if that is what your capability and key objectives are. Driving them to your social site (eg your facebook page) will build an ongoing relationship giving you longevity and an opportunity to keep engaging with that customer.

Personalisation is all about greeting your customer by their first name. Check out www.athletesfoot.com.au. You can sign in using facebook for a much more personalised experience. Once you join you will be given options that are just right for you. For example you can join groups on their homepage say for netball, running, travel and so on. That way, when you go back onto their webpage, you will only see information and products specifically related to you. This gives you a very tailored experience cutting out the noise that you simply are not interested in. It takes your page away from being just a static brochure. You can then comment and interact and this information will be posted to your wall. For a brand such as Athletes Foot this is invaluable as it is user generated content thus giving a weighty third party endorsement. If you are interested in something, chances are your friends will be too. Mike was the very clever creator of this page.

This brings us to amplification which is basically all about spreading your brand and message to other parts of the web using social plug ins. Social plugins let you see what your friends have liked, commented on or shared on sites across the web. On facebook have a look at the following:- like button, send button, comments, activity feed, recommendations, like box, login button, registration, facepile, live stream.

This is just such a quick snapshot and overview and I will endeavor to go into more detail on very specific facets over the next few months. Social media is moving at all alarming and exciting pace. Its really important to keep abreast of it. Two of my favs for keeping me across it are www.mashable.com and www.techcrunch.com or for further information contact me lisa@themessengergroup.com.au and we can take a brief for you xx Follow me on twitter: lisamessenger