This is going to come as a suprise to some, but Social Media is nothing new. Social Media is actually any system for the transport of 2-way communications between individuals. The key word in my definition is 2-way. Standard media, or industrial media as some people call it is a 1 way communication. Newspaper, Television, and Radio are examples of industrial media. After a news report, you can’t knock on the television and interact with the news anchor. How great would it be that after you read an editorial in a newspaper, you could respond back to the writer your disagreement?
Welcome to the world of Social Media!
It’s also allowed the average user to converse back with individuals, and thus made the world a whole lot smaller. With a few clicks, individuals from around the world can easily share pictures, music, video, and more.
But Social Media has changed marketing. While it hasn’t done so yet, it’s in the process of putting the main stay marketing companies back on their feet. They don’t get it, they don’t understand how to use it.
Please are sick of seeing over 800 ads a day for products they don’t care about. As a woman, why would you want to see an add for a men’s clothing? As a man, why would you want to see ads for maskara? When ads are targeted toward them, they are much more likely to respond. More importantly the wall that people have built up to broadcast advertising diminishes quickly.
While social media does provide children, families, and friends the opportunity to share personal information about their lives. But for marketers it offers the ability to target individuals for your product. If you want to find someone on the big island of Hawaii you can do that, men 18-23 easy, single women 18-24 no problem.
However, there is a right way to market and a wrong way to market. The key to social media marketing is relationship building and permission marketing. It’s a matter of carefully monitoring individuals that might be most interested in your product and building a conversation with them until they are ready to make a purchase. But the conversation isn’t about the product, it’s about life and how you can help that individual.
I recommend the 80/20 rule. Meaning 80% of all your communication using social media should be providing knowledge, assistance, and friendship building. 20% can be sales. When you start to cross that 20% threshold, you’ll have backlash.
There are some alternate benefits to this which we’ll discuss in a future post. But probably the most overlooked… the fact that price elasticity melts away with social media marketing. This means it’s possible to charge more than your competitors if you’re engaged in this form of marketing.
Tags: 80/20, marketing, social media
