by Michele Price | Featured Contributor
It’s not the fun sexy part, focusing on your business goals when creating your social media campaigns. Aligning your business goals with your social media goals, often is the missing step for both big and small brands.
Social media offers businesses a path to gain trust, credibility and longevity. Even a few years ago, reaching a larger audience was not within a touchable distance for small business, no matter how well you danced in your industry or vertical.
Let’s look at how you can ask smart questions and place yourself in a better position to finish your social media dance strongly.
Too many times, people jump into solutions that are formulaic and not the best fit. It reminds me when I find myself wanting to buy a pair of beautiful of dance shoes. Except when I try them on, am I driving myself to buy them on their looks alone. Do I discounting the pain the ill fit of one pair will cause, making me not wear them often. This is the same dilemma of tactics over strategy in social media. Choosing tactics over strategy, will likely cause an ill-fit and much pain.
Short term success will not deliver sustainable results.
Are you guilty of picking tactics over strategy, hoping for a fast result?
This justification has been given many times over. It sounds like this -“We did this (tactic), in hopes our CEO would like the results and allocate more resources for our social media.”
They look like this:
- 10 steps to creating success in social media
- 8 tactics to build your social media engagement
- 7 kick ass ways to build your social media following
While these posts might stimulate your thinking into how to use more creative dance steps (the tactics) with your social media, first you need to make sure what dance you are executing. We have seen this common mistake in the social media landscape, even by big brands. Having a strong strategic guideline, keeps you focused on how it partners with your business objectives. It’s a smarter position.
As savvy business owners, CEO’s and marketers, we have to be willing to do the right thing when strategizing how to implement our social media efforts.
What do I need to know, to gain strong results in the social media arena for my business?
Simple. While knowing how to take effective action is important, more importantly is WHY are you taking action?
Micro and small businesses do not have the extra time, resources or fat to lose when implementing the process and adding the layer of social media into their business. They need concise and clear strategies to keep them on the dance floor.
Let’s address key questions:
What is important to your business? Your customers are different from another company’s customers. It is why you do not want to take their same actions, no matter how successful they are in the social space. When you copy their same actions, trying to duplicate them, you create yourself problems. Those problems increase the potential loses mentioned above; time, resources and fat that your business cannot afford to lose.
What does it look like to operate from a strategic perspective?
Oreo
What helped Oreo out maneuver in the social media space?
They knew their WHY?
Their fan’s passion for a yummy cookie, along with the continuous argument among Oreo eaters – cookie or creme.
Creating fun content, being very intentional in how it is delivered, are very smart moves.
Oreo made was savvy by keeping their product in front of your face using Instagram. The visual of cookies triggers your brain. ( I dare you to defy the triggers of cookies on the brain)
Seeing Oreo’s makes you think about how they taste, what it feels like to enjoy a handful of them, the smell of chocolate, the crunch of the cookie in your mouth, even the black of the Oreo all over your teeth.
Oreo receives a perfect score on their choice of instagram – pictures activate visual brain triggers, hooking us in wanting to eat Oreos and playing to win their contest. (Trigger #1)
The next kudos for Oreo is how they thought about using instagram in giving their fans creative ways to share their ideas of what a masterpiece could look like – cookie or creme.
The fans got to send in pictures and test the Oreo cookie artists. Who wouldn’t want to see if their picture either stumped the cookie artist or if their image was chosen to create an Oreo masterpiece?
Think about this, the sharing and tagging that ensued, the race to be the “one”. Trigger #2 appeal to fans fun & ego.
In the process Oreo grew their instagram followers from 2,200 to 56,000+ in a few days.
Heck just typing Oreo over and over is making me crave a bag (smart thinking on their part).
Now my question for Oreo is…
WHY do I have to choose between cookie & creme? I want both 😉
What does it look like to try to duplicate someone else’s success?
Cisco – Ted from Accounting
#1 If you are going to try to duplicate and copy the success from Old Spice, you better be good.
Old Spice was funny and concise ( ok, good-looking too ).
Ted from Accounting was too long-winded and intellectual. Yes, I know accountants are intellectual, both my parents are accountants.
AND if you want to get people talking, sharing and taking actions from your social media, you best be fast and funny.
Where was their call back? That statement that sticks in your head once the video is over?
#2 Seriously Cisco did not use a twitter account to optimize this campaign or continue the conversations?
Yes, hashtags are good, talking with the persona, even better.
How did they execute on that WHY?
Who were they talking to with that WHY?
The brands that are willing to do what some call – “the hard work” – getting clear on your WHY, will sky-rocket past everyone else in the social media space because:
- see the goals clearly
- know what it takes to reach the audience
- identify who will help complete the goals
- we are all by being driven by our why
Which is the secret sauce for every business on the social media dance floor.
Know that why inside and out. Then you are prepared for executing your social media from a strategic perspective. Who knows, you might be the brand we talk about “They did it right.”
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Social Media/Digital Strategist — Michele Price @ProsperityGal – Who Is Michele Price, Houston TX
Michele Price is the founder and lead strategist at Social Media For Smart People , in Houston, TX. She delivers results for entrepreneurs, startups, C-suite executives by crafting communication strategies that are designed to gain visibility, engage your audience, make a splash, and drive profits. Michele hosts a weekly business radio show, Breakthrough Business Strategies radio, where she produces results for listeners on the topics — Business Success Mindset and Web 2.0 communication strategies.
30 years as an entrepreneur, Michele has been in the “first of” category several times in multiple industries. Being a straight forward, results oriented entrepreneur and speaker is a consistent theme of appreciation from clients and audiences alike.
NO limits mindset in professional and personal life, Michele’s favorite adventures was dog sledding in Montana. Ask Michele about another adventure, where she secured the safety of 35 snowmobilers in Yellow State Park from a herd a Buffalo.
Michele Price is the founder and lead strategist at Social Media For Smart People , in Houston, TX. She delivers results for entrepreneurs, startups, C-suite executives by crafting communication strategies that are designed to gain visibility, engage your audience, make a splash, and drive profits. Michele hosts a weekly business radio show, Breakthrough Business Strategies radio, where she produces results for listeners on the topics — Business Success Mindset and Web 2.0 communication strategies.
