Activating Social Media
Just building a Facebook fan page or Twitter profile is not a guarantee that you’re going to have thousands of fans or followers. There is a need to think through how you plan to activate your social media properties.
While there is a wide variety of methods, they almost all fall into the below spectrum.
Organic:
This is where most people start. This includes those users who find you without prompting and those users that you drive through integrated touch points, such as having a “Follow us on Twitter” call to action on your website.
The upside: These are likely to be your most loyal fans and to cost you the least to accomplish.
The downside: As a standalone approach this is more effective for brands that have an innate ability to drive consumer association; however, for most mass consumer brands this may not be enough.
Community:
Through connecting users (or distinct sub user groups) to each other, brands have the ability to leverage the community to drive the social media activity.
The upside: Once started, users may be able to lead the online activity within the branded community space.
The downside: This requires a true investment from the brand to help establish the community activity. It will likely only work when the users have a high level of interest in the topic, not just for casual consumers of your products and/or services.
Influencer:
Often times a brand already has a network of key opinion leaders and partners that have a strong presence online. By reaching out to these influencers and/or through identifying new influencers a brand can gain a halo effect of connecting to consumers through a relevant voice.
The upside: Allows the brand to gain access to consumers through a valuable third-party endorsement.
The downside: There is the risk of the endorsement coming across as disingenuous or that the opinion is not as favorable as one would hope. Either may turn consumers off.
Media:
This can include using more traditional media to drive to social media activity as well as paid media within social channels, such as Facebook Ads, to drive users already in the channel to your branded content.
The upside: Provides for a higher amount of guarantee as to the performance of the program and often allows for fairly specific user targeting.
The downside: Commonly represents a significant investment to get valuable reach and the ability to truly measure the effect.
Promotional:
Many brands create promotional activity as a means to engage users with their social media property. This can include sweepstakes, coupons, samples and/or an event.
The upside: Can be an entertaining and compelling means to drive awareness and engagement with users.
The downside: You may get users who are only involved for the promotional offer, but not the true brand fans you are looking for.
Summary:
The brands that are most successful are those that leverage and integrate each of these methods to activate their social media programs.
