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How CMOs Can Avoid The Common Social Media Mistakes

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In discussions with social media pioneers, it’s apparent that there are some common pitfalls that marketers make as they begin leveraging social media.  As a follow-up to an earlier post regarding social media, I’ll address three common mistakes many CMOs are making: 1) failure to understand how social media links to the broader business strategies, 2) failure to develop a really strong content plan, and 3) failure to seed a discussion and instead focusing solely on self promotion.

3 Common Social Media Mistakes:

1.  Failing to Link Social Media Tactics to Broader Business Objectives

The first mistake is self explanatory.  Social media is a tactic that needs to link to the broader strategic plan. Rick Thompson, co-founder of Snapshot Social Media, a social media management application, shared an example of a successful social media campaign that effectively achieved broader business objectives. A local ice cream store owner had seen a long-term drop in mid-week traffic.  His objective was to drive overall business performance via mid-week traffic building efforts.  He then decided to use Twitter as a tactical tool to motivate immediate response.  First, he focused on his primary target, college students, and incented them to follow him on Twitter. The owner then sent out specific promotions via Twitter on certain days of the week.  The results – it worked as the owner is achieving record traffic and revenue levels after having been in business for 18 years. The program started first with the business objective and then identified if social media should be a key tool in achieving the objective.  After that, the owner figured out how social media could be an important tactic in achieving the broader business goal. Rick indicated, “This wasn’t a brand campaign or a product-based campaign, but a traffic building business objective that was accomplished through social media by sending the right message on the right channel to the right consumer at the right time.”

2.  Failing to Implement a Content Plan

The second mistake CMOs make is failing to develop and implement a content plan. Many companies, even large companies, use Twitter to listen to consumers and then respond to complaints.  They don’t engage in a discussion or seed a dialogue.  However, developing content takes people, time, and money.

There are new tools cropping up that help make using already developed content easy and affordable.  For example, Snapshot Social Media is a new social media management tool along the lines of Hootsuite.  However, it provides a faster, easier way to create, curate and schedule posts and measure results. According to Rick Thompson, what makes Snapshot Social Media unique is its focus on the most important and most time consuming element of a great social media campaign --- Great Content. “If you do one thing right in social media it should be to generate a steady stream of high quality content.  Great content attracts followers, engages them, and leads to website traffic and conversion.  While it is very important to track and measure the impact of social media, if you don’t create great content first, you will be tracking failed results.  Snapshot Social Media allows you to create and curate content from your favorite sources and “Snap It” to your posts with a single click, significantly reducing the time and effort required to create content.”

Original content can be even more challenging to create and publish.  But innovative communicators are finding ways to excel in this realm.  “We’re big proponents of monthly fact finding calls with our clients’ subject matter experts,” begins Greg Matusky, President, Gregory FCA, a leading integrated public relations and investor relations firm.  “We interview them in a journalistic style and pull from them three or four timely, important market trends, issues or concerns.  The calls are recorded and transcribed and then our team of writers polishes them before the client edits and approves.  It’s authentic in that the posts are based on the actual thoughts and words of the subject matter experts.  We simply facilitate and speed up the process, which can be daunting for many professionals.”

3.  Trying to Control the Message Instead of Seeding a Discussion

The third mistake is failing to focus on seeding a discussion versus pushing a message.  If Tide focuses solely on their product, their program in the long-run will fail.  However, if they initiate discussions that go beyond just laundering clothing to include topics related to clothing such as style, fashion, and living in clothing, the brand may learn more, generate deeper relationships,  and in turn generate a more successful program. However, just thinking about managing such a program sounds intimidating. Marco Fregenal, co-founder of Social Media Guardian, indicates that it doesn’t have to be expensive and in fact, can level the playing field for small businesses.  “You can actually compete with some of the larger, more national players in real-time marketing for a very minor investment.  We have an entry level product that enables small to mid-sized companies to fully outsource their social media efforts for roughly $299 / month.  That means that we create the strategy, the social pages, assign a content manager to develop and curate content, and then monitor and measure performance.  Small to mid size businesses want to embrace social media but often don’t have the time or employees.  We solve that problem in a very affordable way.” What’s the point? Social media pioneers seem to agree that the best firms right now have figured out how to manage content development and link social media plans with business strategies.  And relative to other vehicles, the need for a lot of content over time is critical.  It’s not like creating a 30 second ad that will run for 6 months.  Social media requires new content daily.  Marco Fregenal suggests that “developing a social media program that delivers on business objectives and can be manageable requires a smart plan from the very beginning”.

Tell me what you think: Twitter @KimWhitler