NEW YORK, May 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Here is a brief talk on how to use social media to do integrated marketing from B2C SooBest, an online retailer with a wide range of products such as fashionable women's clothing, men's clothing, digital watches, charm jewelry, etc.
Many companies believe that creating an official account to publish content on social media and interact with fans through creative activities helps attract attention and is a good use of social media. In fact, these are only the most fundamental things, and are not a real use of social media's advantages. True social media operation requires investments of time, money, energy and other resources, not necessarily less than the investment in traditional media. The most important thing is that enterprises must recognize that social media is a systematic strategy that calls for brand positioning, direction, core concepts, etc. in order to achieve real social marketing effectiveness.
As with any marketing promotions, social media marketing requires companies to review their performance first: How are other people talking about you? What do your customers care about? What are your customers saying? What are your competitors doing and what will they not do? How do you make your brand stand out in social media? Frankly put, enterprises need to learn to listen instead of talking first. Learn what consumers want, rather than imposing your own ideas on consumers.
Once ready to listen, do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, or even a series of consumer insights to plant their own brands in social media. For example, Starbucks's main battlefield is their MyStarbucksIdea website, followed by Facebook, Twitter etc. IKEA wouldn't directly compete with expensive furniture companies, but chooses instead to sell middle-priced products and provide a good user experience.
Another key point is consistency in marketing strategy. This requires strategic integration work with personnel. Enterprises cannot do one thing on one platform, and something else on another. Businesses must use different platform features to make contact with different people while speaking with a unified voice to express the uniqueness of the brand, and then they can reap the best results.
One more key point is to clearly express the core brand via one's social media strategy. No matter what you want your brand to replace, you should clearly express and show it in social media communications activities. You can express and show not only content, but also your interactive attitude and the relevance of creative activities.
To achieve communication value from social media is not an easy thing. The importance of social media marketing goes even beyond traditional media marketing, because it requires an enterprise to establish an honest, transparent, humble personality, so that it can be truly appreciated and its good reputation can be spread by word of mouth. Are you ready for social media marketing?
