Posts Tagged ‘Paul Chaney’
Get to Know Your Customers—It’s as Simple as a Digital Handshake
It’s 2011, do you know where your social media strategy is?
As a marketer who has been in the social media game for a while now, I understand why companies struggle with social media. There is much misunderstanding between the concept and the tools—and the benefits of either. There is confusion as to why social media tools can’t be used just like e-mail, direct mail and advertising. There are also power struggles internally for who should own social media and who has control over what is for public consumption.
What’s a Marketer To Do?
That’s the question author and social media expert Paul Chaney discusses in his latest book, “The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media.” (Paul’s first book is “Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand and Out-Smart Your Competition.”)
The answer? Start a conversation. However, the smart thing to do before diving into any conversation is to understand the new rules of communication, why they matter, and the five trends turning the business world upside down.
- Consumer Skepticism
- Fragmented Media
- Loss of Control
- Niche Marketing
- Customers are in Control
Trust me. Your customers will thank you for taking the time to understand these tectonic shifts.
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A Best Practice in Social Media Marketing
Recently, Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer tagged Kipp Bodnar of Digital Capitalism and me to add on to Mitch Joel’s (Twist Image) meme on Best Practices in Social Media Marketing.
This is a great project to collect what is just the start of some best practices. And I say a start because some of us are still new to learning about social media and implementing social media marketing. That said there have been a lot of successes and that’s the best part of being involved in social media—we all learn from one another.
Here are just a few best practices that have been shared so far:
- Consistency (Mitch Joel)
- Embrace your Audience (Jason Falls)
- Listen and Add Value (Kipp Bodnar)
- Listen (Chris Brogan)
- Be Human (Kristie Wells)
- Reach out to others (Morriss Partee)
- Lift up others! (Drew McLellan)
- Honesty & Respect (Paisano)
The best practice that I would like to add is: Provide a Platform
Marketers are so accustomed to ‘talking at’ their customers instead of ‘talking with’ their customers. And typically when two-way conversation occurs, it happens infrequently at events, tradeshows, off-line forums, customer council meetings or during that once a year customer satisfaction survey.
Why wait for those limited occasions? Why not provide an on-line platform for your community that gives them a place to express themselves, interact and engage? (Remember the rule: two ears, one mouth).
Providing a platform could mean starting a blog or a new on-line community, but not necessarily. There are a lot of other great ways to provide a platform and you can always join one that exists.
Here are just a few:
- Plurk
- Ning (Social Networks)
- Forums
- MySpace
- FriendFeed
- Second Life
- Interactive Webinars
- Blog
I am sure there are more ways to provide a platform. What would you suggest?
Once you have selected the platform that works best for your community, be sure to follow the above best practices! In the meantime, Chris Brogan offers some great advice for getting involved in social networking.
If they haven’t already been tagged, I’d like to invite Amber Naslund of The Brand Box and Paul Chaney of Conversational Media Marketing to add one of their best practices.
[Photo: iStock]
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The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]
