4 steps: A Social Marketing Campaign

I’ve been frequenting social media and social networking spaces for a few years now. I spent a lot of time and money learning how to use these places, to be helpful and pay my business expenses too.

There’s a tonne of information out there, some good, some not so good. Here’s an outline that you can start using today, to implement a social marketing campaign, for your business and “stand out” from all the noise out there.

1. Collect- there are paid services out there to accommodate the collection of data, but when you’re new to these spaces, a good place to start is Google Reader, or Netvibes. What you will be doing is pulling all the information on the Internet, about you, your products and services, the spaces you hang out in and your competitors.

Through either of these places,this will be the spot that you go to every day,to gather information that will help you provide better products and services,to the customers you serve. You will add RSS feeds from, Google alerts, your name, your business name, your product name, your competitors, and other points of interest.

2. Concentrate- you will visit your collection spot daily, this is where you will be looking and listening for information, about your customers, your products, your competitors, and you and your business. This will be the space where you will learn, how to serve your customers, what their needs and wants are, and answer their questions, based on the knowledge you can provide them with the services you offer.

This is where you will learn, how to best serve the people in your marketplace.

3. Communicate- from your collection of information and concentrating on your target market, you will then begin to communicate with your customers, and build relationships with them. At this point, I would encourage you to take a strong stance, on giving value.

Engaging with your customers at this level, they will begin to know you, like you, and trust you. It goes without saying, and I’m sure you’ve heard this a lot… social marketing spaces are places that we build relationships.

4. Collaborate- Once the door is open and we’ve established relationships with our customers and the businesses in these spaces, we can move forward slowly. To elaborate on this we can offer our customers more than just our free stuff. We can connect with other business owners in the same spaces; possibly see if we can team up, to provide, even greater value, to the customers that we share.

This is not the place to choke or feel guilty about asking for the sale. We are in business to provide a service to our customers. So do it. We are also in business to collaborate, and work together, rather than compete with other businesses. We should all provide the best possible service to our marketplace.

For obvious reasons, I didn’t include every detail in this post. It’s not an e-book (although it could be). There are a  few details that we could add here to this social marketing campaign. I’d like your input.

What would you take away?

What would you add?

Tagged as: anita fiander, google reader, Social Marketing Campaign, Social Media, Social Networking