Turn your audience into advocates, and promote as naturally as breathing

Social media can either be the biggest waste of your energy and time, or one of the most rewarding experiences. And all of this depends on how you approach it. Here are some of our learnings from years of social engagement which we hope will help you set off on the right footing.

1. Be brand-centric, with serious business objectives

Whenever you are communicating online, you must be doing this through the lens of your company or the brand that you’re attempting to promote. By that I don’t mean you need to be robotic or engage solely in corporate speak, but simply that when you are developing your social media strategy, you need to be thinking about the messages you want to convey and, naturally enough, you want to think about what you are trying to achieve here.

Is it to drive traffic and leads to your website? Or is it to increase your profile and influence and to promote your brand to a wider audience? Or is it to counter some negative PR and address a reputational threat to your business?

All of these scenarios will result in very different approaches so this part of the planning stage needs to be thought through very carefully.

2. What does your audience want? Why not try listening?

“A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.”
Wilson Mizner

Another important factor (which should be one of your first considerations) is your target audience. What do you know of them? What are their broad demographic characteristics, their likes and dislikes, their motivations, their influencers, peers and adversaries.

So before you start to engage them, you better know more about them. And what better way than to spend some time listening to them? Online: within the channels you are planning on engaging with them in!

Consider organising a social management dashboard to gather all of your social media threads in the one place, like Hootsuite or Sprout Social. That way you can set up search filters on each channel (particularly useful for the fast moving channels like twitter which is akin to a stream of consciousness – or unconsciousness sometimes!).

Once you know what your target audience is looking for, and you understand a little of how you communicate with this audience appropriately, this will give you confidence when you start to engage with them.

3. The rule of thirds: revolutionise your social thinking

Most business owners treat social media like a loud hailer – one way and repetitive. This is the perfect strategy to alienate your customers and advocates. How you communicate is almost as important as what you communicate.

You need to be guided by the rule of thirds:

• A third of your communication should be about sharing –  offering advice and help and tips, industry news etc from experts and influencers

• A third of your communication should be conversing and interacting with others. So it’s about listening first and responding. It should also be possible to promote your brand/service if an opportunity presents itself but this should not be overt in any way. It needs to be subtle.
• And a third of your communication can be active promotion of your brand or service. This doesn’t mean a free for all. The more fitting the promotion is (tonally, subject matter, useful and informative) the more likely your audience is likely to be persuaded by what you are saying.  

Which leads me to the next point:

4. Talk like… well, conversationally, as if you’re a real bona-fide person

Dialogue and conversations work best when they’re natural and free flowing yet many people engaging in social media forget to be sociable and sound like a robot.

So, be natural and treat your audience for what they are individuals and a human! Not a radical thought but an important one.

Be real…

In the next blog we’ll take a look at the the remaining 5 factors from this series. Thanks for reading.

In the first part of this article, we covered the first four rules of social media engagement: be brand-centric, listen, the rule of thirds and talk naturally. So, here are the remaining five rules.

5. Be Easy to Find (and to Follow)

To broaden your reach and impact, you need to cultivate a larger following. Make it effortless for potential followers to discover you and demonstrate your worth through informative, engaging, and occasionally entertaining content.

Prioritize relevance over quantity. Seek a deep, relevant following rather than a broad one. Follow and interact with individuals pertinent to your business objectives.

Consistency is crucial. Slow and steady wins the race. Regularly publish valuable content to maintain audience engagement.

Once you’ve identified your target audience, how do you keep them engaged?

6. Ask questions, Start Conversations, Engage

Well, the easiest way of engaging anyone, be it on the street, bus etc, is to ask questions. Everyone likes to talk about themselves, so give them an audience – use good open questions to get the conversation started and continue the dialogue with more questions and answers just like in the real world.

But what if the conversation doesn’t go according to plan or, possibly worse still, there is some very direct criticism aimed at you?

7. Criticism can be an Opportunity

In today’s digital age, online criticism is inevitable. However, instead of fearing it, smart businesses turn it into a valuable learning tool. By listening to customer feedback, they can not only avoid reputational damage but even enhance it.

The challenge lies in not taking criticism personally. Instead, approach it objectively and assess its validity. If the complaint is justified, it’s a chance to improve.

First, acknowledge the customer’s emotions. Show empathy and consider apologizing, even if you disagree. This diffuses tension and opens communication.

Next, take action. If the complaint is valid, make amends. Take ownership, explain the solution, and offer compensation.

Learn from the best. Companies like Domino’s have mastered addressing complaints, turning them into customer satisfaction showcases.

Act quickly. Don’t let criticism fester. Address it promptly and professionally, showing a genuine desire to improve.

By embracing online criticism as a learning opportunity, you can transform it into a reputational asset. Listen, show empathy, take action, and watch your brand reputation soar.

8. Sharing is Caring (and Creates Communities)

Sharing is caring and will position you as a person of authority and influence. So put yourself in the shoes of your customers and think ‘What would they find really useful for me to share’.

Then do it – don’t be a hoarder of information – start to use the share button, the like button, retweet and repost and start to build a community of followers which are within your target audience (assuming you are playing to your strengths and sharing stuff which is within your brand or service ecosystem).

Over time, this ecosystem will come to sustain you and help to grow your business.  And the wider you share, the wider your spheres of influence.

And Finally… 9.!

If I do have a summary it’s this – be true to your brand and make sure the personality you create is as you meant it to be. Be as natural as possible, engage person to person. And don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

So what are you waiting for? Jump in – the water’s lovely!

Ever had one of those days where your time and attention was taken up by meaningless things?

We know what it’s like, for every email that matters, you get ten that don’t. And finally, to cap it all off we receive contacts like this.

This LinkedIn connection request prompted this post – to help us sharpen the mind and give you three tips to improve your social media communications. After all, I’d prefer to be at the  receiving end of good quality communications and connections.

Learning 1: Get Real in Your Social Media Connections

So, this is why this LinkedIn approach is initially amusing. First question: who is ‘Better Link Advertising’ and is Link his/her middle name, or is it a double-barrelled surname? That photo doesn’t look like a real person either and, worst of all, they have given me absolutely no reason to connect with them.

However, it’s not just for amusement. It needs to be treated more seriously than that, you need to do two further things:

1. Consider why they are trying to connect with you: this approach, in my opinion, has much more value to them than to me. I am not connecting to anyone in particular but they are getting ‘endorsement’ from me and access to my contacts.
2. Place a value your identity above just gaining contacts: you need to connect with people you know personally, ideally business contacts, but more than that people who you have an ‘even’ relationship with. Be very careful about connecting with those who’s interest is merely in your contacts (for example recruitment consultants and competitors)

If you’re not sure, then ask. Challenge them on why they want to connect with you.

Learning 2: Don’t Be Boring With What You Share in Your Feed

Just because you can post, if you don’t have anything interesting to say, then it’s best to be quiet.

This post highlights just how bad it can get. I don’t mind your narcissism, but your post is painfully dull.

Why should I follow you when all I might get is rubbish like this? And hashtags don’t work in LinkedIn anyway so clearly this is just a tweet.

We like the quote:

“Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet,
give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.”

We prefer to have connections where quality is valued above quantity. Our feed would be less busy and more interesting and, ultimately, make our Social Media experience stronger.

Learning 3: Don’t Go On About ‘You’

Of course it’s easy to do so, but don’t just go on about your business, your skills, your awards and your successes.

Mix up what you share, how you share it. Make it engaging, opinionated, informing and friendly.

Remember that incredibly dull person you met at a dinner party who kept on talking about themselves?

That could be you. Don’t fall into the same trap.

Ultimately there is no perfect formula for Social Media Marketing. It’s frustrating, it’s funny, it’s time-consuming and it has to be ‘you’.

We are more connected than ever, yet actually reaching people has never been harder!

Certainly that’s what we see from both ours and our clients’ perspective and it was brought into sharp focus preparing for leading a session on how technology can help growth with the Worldwide Association of Girl Guides and Scouts (WAGGGS) last week.

In the session one of the main subject areas was the diversification of digital communications channels – phone, email, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, Pinterest, Viber, Twitter, Instagram and QR codes were a handful of the 20+ methods mentioned by the audience.

I suspect if we had more time we could have looked at regional differences and also teased out the differences between what is used, and what is of use – which are, of course, completely different things.

Yet, there is little doubt in our mind that when we look at the current digital landscape, this developing complexity is a continuing trend resulting in more fragmented and complex communications.

So, given this, any business or organisation need to consider an appropriate response; we have identified three possible reactions to these developments:

1. Ignore: keep on keeping on

The first response is to keep doing what you are doing. Let’s say your preference is email – you can simply say: ‘no email means no email’. It’s the recipients’ fault for not having an email address, so be it. Clearly it is they who need to change.

Yet, this approach ignores two really important considerations. Firstly, these are not just anonymous users, they are your stakeholders – the life-blood of your organisation. Even if the win is short term, and the blame is passed on, you are distancing yourself from them. And, the medium-term result is that many will drift away and become less engaged or participatory. Hardly ‘inclusive’?

Secondly, your reach through your stakeholders to others is increasingly reliant on digital. Email tends to be the most user-friendly method, but not being a ‘social’ tool, has little ripple-effect opportunity for others to like, share or post.

2. Adjust: start pedalling…

So, the next response is to adapt to suit the range of channels – don’t just email, but also text, call, post and tweet. Make sure everyone is reached, ideally through at least one channel. Setup accounts in different social media, manage all the responses.

The problems start mounting, though. Firstly, this is reliant on the individual having the capacity to manage all these channels and, if they have other work to do, it isn’t reasonable to expect them to be spending all their waking hours managing this diversification of dialogue.

Secondly, the increasing range of channels makes this approach self-defeating. Just as they master the ten channels in front of them, another three get added. Then one changes. Then five of their recipients move from one to another.

In the context of the meeting with WAGGGS, most of the frontline staff are volunteers, and many have ‘day jobs’ and  need to focus most of their attention on preparing and managing the actual events (not just the communication of what is happening). They deal with small groups, with sometimes as few as ten recipients. Catering for all options equally and doing it all manually is not going to happen.

3. Optimise: use the modern method

So, if we know that we cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach, but we also realise that managing all these channels is going to be too onerous on those using the systems, what can we do about it? We need help, the right kind of help. Selecting the right solution is crucial to delivering the right stakeholder experience.

The answer is ‘software’ as it can not only help manage the sends, lists and channels, but should be able to make it faster to send in the first place. It could even make this ‘multi-sending’ more efficient than sending one email. However giving the answer ‘software’ is not very helpful for the purposes of meeting this specific need.

So, let’s look at the constituent parts to help identify the right solution:

• Cloud based: the software needs to be in the Internet so that it doesn’t limit the user to a single machine or location to be managed
• Global: the software needs to be available wherever it is needed. The company office doesn’t need to be global, but the software needs to function across boundaries without license issues
• Versatile: the software needs to be a multi-channel communication solution. Most just do email. Some offer chat and SMS. But you need more options than that.
• Intuitive: the interface needs to be easy to use and easy to understand. With simple e-learning the user can get to know the system and be able to start sending without the need for great technical knowledge
• Programmable: the system should involve some kind of decision-making system where users can either programme in specific logic for sending, for escalations (i.e. if no response to email, send text) and even receiving responses. This is more than just automation – it is smart, flexible logic

Summary: the future, realised

The truth with most customer software is that it was built at a time when most businesses wanted solely to move from spreadsheets or paper notes to something that stored information digitally. When we were running our WAGGGS session, the name of a very well-known CRM software platform was mentioned. Although this particular business is very successful and ideal for operating business follow up, it doesn’t have the capabilities needed to truly deliver.

What is needed is something where the emotive is not replaced by the mechanical, but is facilitated by it. So that the recipients don’t think that they’re being managed by a robot, but they are being reached by their point of contact.

That’s what we did when we created Omny.Link – we wanted to develop a modern software, built with stakeholders in mind, that didn’t claim to do everything in a ever-expanding box of tricks.

It helps organisations build from the ground upwards. Connect up what you want to connect, deliver what you want to deliver and uses a decision engine to run everything as seamlessly as possible. So why not use your preferred email solutions, your preferred website CMS, your preferred reporting tools – but using APIs and our open-source solution, it all gets connected up: your way!

Which means there’s a much greater likelihood of reaching your stakeholders in the ways they want to be reached. So you see, you don’t have to sacrifice connectivity in your bid to reach people, you just need the right technology.

Omny.Link – do more with your stakeholder communications.

Look, we’ll be the first to jump on any truck passing which could serve our clients better, particularly when it comes to the Internet.

In the Internet’s case, if you don’t get on the truck straight away you find it’s fuller than a bendy bus in rush hour… however, we have served ourselves a cease and desist order when it comes to ‘Social Media Marketing’ – quotes intentional.

Put this into real-world context: if you’ve ever been at a drinks party and wanted to engage with a conversation, do you:
a)    Barge into the conversion, talk over people, relentlessly pursue your message, hand out some business cards and fliers and then exit without hearing what anyone else has to say, or do you
b)    Listen carefully, wait until you have something relevant to say, and then engage with the group in order to participate
If you can retain this picture, then you can understand better why so many marketing businesses are perplexed with social media – because social media marketing contradicts itself.
(more…)

“Connecting with Consumers where Local meets Social”

Looking forward to going to the ‘Local Social Summit’ in November. Speakers from all round the globe coming to London to get busy and share some of the latest stuff.

Ergo will be there… keeping an appropriately firm finger on the pulse and making sure that we know exactly what we’re talking about when advising clients.

Maybe see you there? Local Social Summit Website