Much like trying to literally capture lightning in a bottle, haphazardly inserting social media tactics into a marketing plan in an attempt to force customer connection can be inefficient at best and dangerous at worst. In the article below, originally published in Target Marketing, TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden offers three tactics that ensure better connection with customers on the social web:
The buzz surrounding companies investing in social media marketing to reach consumers has created a lot of attention for sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the recently popular Foursquare. Millions of consumers are spending their time online with social networking and media sharing sites instead of other media.
Some companies are wasting significant resources by chasing after too many different services without taking the time to figure out which social networks and Web sites their customers prefer. Why not fish where the fish are? Here are three tactics you can use to better connect with customers on the social Web:
- Ask Them! One of the most effective and accurate methods of finding out which social media sites your customers prefer is to survey them. That same survey can do double duty and invite customers to friend, fan or follow based on their preferences.
- Social Media Monitoring. Free services like trackur.com or socialmention.com can help uncover which sites customers are using that also discuss your brand. Paid services like Scout Labs or Radian6 are very useful for more advanced monitoring and social CRM.
- Web Analytics. Review your Web analytics to see which social media sites are already sending you traffic, and leverage that insight to decide where to participate.
Doing your homework on customer preferences for how they discover, interact and share on the social Web will shorten the time to reach the right people and help create a more relevant opportunity to interact.
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Learn more about the social media marketing programs offered by TopRank by downloading our Social SEO Guides.
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