Chasing social media tools
By Molly FlattWhat’s our Twitter strategy? What’s the next Facebook? How do we make inroads on the latest mega-platform before anyone else? For some brands, social media marketing has become a tools and technology chasing exercise. Once the mainstream media latch onto a platform, companies feel that if they’re not instantly on-board with a host of apps, add-ons and highly visible branded activity, the fragile facade that they’re run by a switched-on bunch of kool kids will evaporate like spring mist in the sun.
Our own Colin has been having an interesting conversation on his personal blog thanks to this Mashable article co-authored by ‘an interactive copywriter and social media consultant who specializes in Facebook marketing’. As Col’s little Twitter experiment shows, this pretty nonsensical specialism is seen as a bit of joke by many in his social media community.
New social media tools arise out of new behaviour. For example, blogs are good for soapboxing, rambling and longer think pieces; microblogging for news breaking and synaptic reactions; forums for longer debates around passions, and so on. A brand needs to look at social media in a people not technology oriented way. Where is conversation most naturally occurring about you? Which behaviours are most relevant to your product or style and which do you most want to tap into? Who are the people you want to reach out to and where do they like to talk?
Yes, the most popular tools become catalysts with massive reach. But if a brand constantly chases the next big thing, they’re in danger of crafting a reactive, messy and confused strategy rather than one which pinpoints who they want to build relationships with, and then finds the most relevant and inspiring ways to do it. Chances are, those people will be on the big sites such as Facebook and Twitter, meaning that brand evangelism will organically establish a foothold in those spaces without brands having to shoehorn their presence in.
