Social Networking For Newbies
Many businesses struggle to find the way to engage with customers through social platforms like You Tube, Twitter, and Facebook. The growth of the mobile web, and the proliferation of mobile apps, has further challenged legions of business marketers to create an engaging cross-platform communications strategy.
Often the first step a company takes to join the social web is to task a digital marketer with being a community manager and to tell that person to increase fans, followers, and friends. If that person lives in the corporate communications department, he or she is often told to begin posting status updates with links to press releases and company news.
In short order, the endless stream of outbound messages quickly become tiresome to the company's customers and prospects who reasonably should expect to be able to interact with the community manager through these conversational platforms.
Sometimes, in an effort to make even more news, a company will throw money at building a Facebook app or producing a You Tube video to "go viral." But after they build it, they wonder why no one comes.
In a networked communications world, businesses must think about the content, communities and conversations that define their brand and build a strategy to engage, inform, retain and convert their audiences. Planning to engage in conversational marketing without a strategy, is like scheduling a dinner party without arranging the menu or the caterer.
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