When social media first came along and consumer brands began using it, many in the pro security industry were skeptical. More than once I heard marketers question the likelihood of anyone inquiring about a costly and complex physical security solution via Facebook or Twitter.
This mindset is changing as industry professionals continue to recognize that social media can significantly improve their marketing programs and outcomes. From Cisco to IBM to Oracle, the biggest brands in the B-to-B world have embraced the power of social media, and for good reason. Strategic digital marketing programs make it possible to capitalize on social media as an important vehicle to drive results in the form of qualified sales leads.
So should you just put up a profile on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and start posting?
The answer is no. We see brands doing this all the time, and most are probably wondering why they’re not generating leads from their efforts. The fact is, you can post on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn every day and never see any meaningful results.
If you want to get on board with the new media model and start using social media as part of your marketing program – and you definitely should – there are a few things you should know before you begin.
1. Social media is only the tip of the iceberg
Digital marketing programs are highly personalized and most of the tactics in use are not openly visible the way a print or display ad would be. When you see a tweet or LinkedIn post from a company who is running a full program, you are only seeing one step in a complex integrated campaign. But because that’s all you can see, it would be easy to think that’s all that is being done.
That’s one reason some of the newer users of social media are discovering their results are not what they expected. They think they are doing the same thing as their more successful competitors, but in reality they’re only executing one lone tactic instead of a full program. It’s only when social media is integrated with additional supporting activities that it can truly deliver on its promise.
2. Social media can be used for many different purposes
Social media is a communications medium – not the message itself. So it can be used for a lot of different types of purposes, each of which has its place in helping to amplify a marketing program.
You might use a post to demonstrate thought leadership, linking back to a blog post or article that talks about an important trend that’s of interest to the industry. A post can show brand personality, recruit talent or provide an important news update. From their perspective, your customers will see your social media presence as a channel to communicate directly with your company for service, support or answers.
One of the most important ways to use social media for business is to expand the reach of your messaging with paid campaigns. This is one of the very best tactics that exists right now to reach new prospects and create awareness for your brand, and it is extremely cost-effective as well. However, without a deep understanding of the campaign-building methodology, which changes frequently with new technologies and policies, it’s also very possible that you will run ad after ad this way with no results at all.
All of these are examples of different purposes behind individual posts, but there are many other reasons to post as well. Scheduling the diverse types of content, knowing when to be humorous and understanding what provides value and what will be seen as spam are all important elements of expertise that experienced practitioners bring to social media management.
3. Digital (or inbound, or content) marketing is a whole new discipline
Marketing has changed. It’s no longer possible to reach your entire audience in one place the way it used to be. For consumer brands, back before smartphones and social media it was easy – shoot a commercial and run it in prime time. For B-to-B brands, you could hit your whole target by advertising in trade magazines.
Now, media has fragmented. People are looking at literally millions of news sites, blogs, apps, and social media channels. Especially social media channels. More than 2/3 of all adults in the United States are on Facebook. More and more business searches are taking place on social media. Your prospects are seeing links to content that interests them in their LinkedIn feeds and clicking through to your competitors’ websites.
In order to reach your prospects and customers with your information, there’s no longer a guaranteed way to go TO them. Instead, you have to turn your brand into a magnet with great content that will get them to come to you. For that, you need a lot more than social media posts. You need to know your audience – who they are, what they’re struggling with, what their business challenges are. You need to have specific objectives for each campaign and each program you’re going to run. You need to have a marketing and a business strategy to reach those objectives and achieve measurable results. You need to have KPIs that align to those objectives. And you need to have a tactical, integrated program mapped out that makes all of this happen.
4. Brands sometimes slip up on social media
If the person who is doing the posting for your brand doesn’t have skill and expertise in social media, they may make tactical errors. For example, they might use the wrong hashtag, post from the wrong account, misuse a management utility like Hootsuite, schedule incorrectly, accidently retweet or share something irrelevant.
For this reason, it’s not a good idea to hand social media responsibilities off to an intern. While social media was initially the province of younger people, that doesn’t mean you can bring in a high school or college student with no knowledge of your company, your industry or how digital marketing campaigns work and let them loose with your social media accounts.
...which brings us to the final point:
5. There are experts out there and you need to find one
There is a whole new world of professionals out there who have true expertise in planning and executing successful digital marketing programs for B-to-B companies. If you are going to dive into the new world of social media, you need to find one of them.
Here’s where you really need to be careful. A lot of people are advertising themselves as “social media expert” (or guru, jedi, ninja, master or samurai – hey, don’t blame me, I don’t make this stuff up). You will want to check their credentials very carefully. Ask them for concrete examples of integrated programs they’ve run, along with metrics for the kinds of quantifiable results they’ve achieved. If their resume says vaguely that they were “handling social media for a store”, they are probably not the person you want to hire.
It takes time to build knowledge and experience, and it’s even more of a challenge in the digital realm where technologies and algorithms change on a near-daily basis. A truly expert professional digital marketer will continually stay up to date with new platforms, strategies, rules and trends in order to keep your content appearing when, where and how it should. Social media may look simple, but in fact it is quite complex. And it is even more complex to use it strategically as one vital element in an effective fully integrated digital marketing program.
Finally, you want your digital marketing expert to be an expert in your specific industry. Note that even someone who has been working in the security industry (but not in digital marketing) isn’t going to know how to build a strong campaign – and they may make mistakes. What you want is the total package: digital marketing, inbound marketing, industry knowledge, and social media.
Social media is amazing in its unprecedented ability to connect people with each other and with brands in an immediate and direct way. It has greatly contributed to breaking the old media and communications model, and creating the potential for a new model that looks completely different. For B-to-B brands, the potential is there to capitalize on these elements, along with the sheer numbers of people now using social media on a daily basis, to generate the kinds of trackable results that have never been possible for marketing before this.
When it comes to digital marketing, inbound marketing and content marketing – all of which are interrelated – there’s much more that can be said. I do encourage you to find out more about what social media and digital marketing can do for your company. The world of media and marketing is changing, and will continue to change – it’s up to you to make sure you don’t miss out on the benefits.
Diana Wolff is president of LRG Marketing Communications (www.lrgmarketing.com). Email her at [email protected].
