Northwoods Software Development hosts a great outreach to the local community through its Northwoods Learning workshops. I was able to attend their workshop for the first time on Social Media - Doing It Right. The founder gave a great presentation about the general principles in current social media efforts.
Of all the topics covered in the presentation, I found it most awakening to revisit the fundamental position of generating contents above everything else. So often, social media practitioners have been driven by ROI and eager to share their products, services, updates... but neglected the creating of concrete content. We see how brands manage several social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest...) with a lack of content and a tendency to grow inward on their information. Social media is supposed to bring together a community and nurture it. If users are bombarded with promotion and duplicate message over and over again, it violates the code of social media and eventually backfires on the brand itself. That is probably part of the reason why it is hard to measure how much a "Like" on Facebook means or how much ROI it brings to a brand - if a brand is doing the right thing in its social media efforts, it is probably more focused on how to engage the community with useful and relevant information than just promotions. In this way, the social media efforts often do not generate instant conversion, but instead cultivates a community that has a preference of the brand over time and triggers conversion at the customers' timing. And a long term loyalty and preference is very beneficial for the brand in terms of sustenance and building the next generation customer, etc.
Of all the topics covered in the presentation, I found it most awakening to revisit the fundamental position of generating contents above everything else. So often, social media practitioners have been driven by ROI and eager to share their products, services, updates... but neglected the creating of concrete content. We see how brands manage several social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest...) with a lack of content and a tendency to grow inward on their information. Social media is supposed to bring together a community and nurture it. If users are bombarded with promotion and duplicate message over and over again, it violates the code of social media and eventually backfires on the brand itself. That is probably part of the reason why it is hard to measure how much a "Like" on Facebook means or how much ROI it brings to a brand - if a brand is doing the right thing in its social media efforts, it is probably more focused on how to engage the community with useful and relevant information than just promotions. In this way, the social media efforts often do not generate instant conversion, but instead cultivates a community that has a preference of the brand over time and triggers conversion at the customers' timing. And a long term loyalty and preference is very beneficial for the brand in terms of sustenance and building the next generation customer, etc.
So, content. Where does content come from? The speaker pointed back at blogs, which, according to some media savvy personnels, are fading out. But it is such a great way of generating some real meat in a market full of veggies. A less than 140 characters twit may be good - but it expires quickly and does not usually give much penetration into the matter. A blog is different - you can plug in authentic contents plus various media (video, audio, image, ppt...), and it stays on the Internet. Major search engines crawl over many blog sites to get information for the organic search results, but not many Facebook postings or Twits would be included due to their lack of content. Apart from blog, YouTube, Flickr and some other content sharing websites are great ways to keep your content as well - just remember to put relevant tags on them and use SEO as best as you can to integrate them into your overall marketing strategy.
Back to the content- what a great reminder in all the chaos of superficial digital fast-food!
Resources: Image from http://www.zazzle.com/time_for_the_meat_custom_flyer-244316343938241000
Back to the content- what a great reminder in all the chaos of superficial digital fast-food!
Resources: Image from http://www.zazzle.com/time_for_the_meat_custom_flyer-244316343938241000