I recently read an excellent post of the four steps to social media marketing success and have adapted the original image and added my own interpretation – the ultimate social media marketing cycle to success.
Unlike the original post, I have illustrated the process as more cyclical and not used the steps analogy. Steps to me gave a too staccato or “juddery” approach with many jolts on the way.
I believe that social media marketing should be smoother, albeit with an uphill start but with the added downhill momentum to keep the process flowing – more self-propelling than traditional marketing.
I’ve interpreted the social media marketing cycle as illustrated below:-
The social media marketing cycle has two sides to it with two different participants. On one side is the company and on the other is the customer. Between them they propel social media marketing in a cyclical, treadmill fashion.
Where to start?
The hardest part of any process, particularly for social media marketing, is to make the first move. We’ve already discussed the
common reasons to avoid social media, but the general consensus is that avoiding social media is not an option. We’ve also discussed that social media presents an excellent tool for
managing your online reputation so what better place to start than at Listen.
Listen – your first move in social media marketing
The first action is to listen.
Social media networks are huge, omnipresent and growing – if you haven’t been inundated by its reach and news coverage look at some basic
social media stats.
Companies and their brands are already been spoken about but what may surprise people is that
social media conversations don’t always carry sentiment. Listening in to these conversations gives companies the first stride that propels them to the next stage, that of interacting.
There are many tools that you can use to monitor conversations using real-time searches for keywords. The listening stage of social media marketing also allows companies to research which social media networks they are best suited for. Not all social media networks will work for all companies – unfortunately there is no “one size fits all” solution – use the listening stage to really understand your audience and their preferred network.
It is also important at this stage to ensure that you don’t become too own company or product centric – remember to listen to conversations around competitors and their brands. Part of listening is opening your eyes and ears to all conversations.
Interact – be heard in social media
You’ve listened and now you are ready to interact. As a company you can now join the conversations. Most conversations tend to be neutral in sentiment and are fact finding or information providing.
Interaction here is ideal – you can answer questions and provide information. Where sentiment is added the company can easily interact with those using social media networks.
Take for example Twitter. If I was to use
BingTweets I could then monitor conversations around my brand. Using an example of Specsavers (other opticians of equal standing exist, this article is purely neutral and uses the first brand that sprang to mind).
At the time of publishing this article, Tweets covering Specsavers did carry sentiment. Some could give the company insight into how they can better entertain/engage customers who find waiting for an eye test boring. Others where the product and service has been negatively spoken about give the company the opportunity to address issues and interact. Positive comments can also be rewarded.
React – take on board the comments in social media
Okay, you’ve listened and interacted, you’ve immediately addressed conversations by joining social media networks.
As a company you now have the opportunity – through your social media engagement – to react to the information you have gathered. Improve the products and services, align prices and beating competitors and the such.
It is important to keep the uphill momentum going, as we highlighted in the opening paragraphs the cycle is initially uphill. Remember that if you have not taken the first action of listening you would not have the huge amount of insight you’ve gathered. You could not have interacted nor reacted and without social media marketing you would still be sticking to traditional marketing with little focused customer based feedback.
Sell – softly, softly marketing through social media
The final stage of the company interaction on the social media marketing cycle is to start pitching and selling your products.
In contrast to traditional sales and marketing, social media marketing is a much softer and more engaged process. Listening and reacting has given great insight into the tone of conversations and now comes the opportunity to promote your products.
Listening, interacting and reacting means that you have placed your company and products in the best position to find targeted audiences already familiar and engaged with your products.
You’ve reached the top of the treadmill and now you are well positioned as your customers propel the social media marketing cycle further.
Social media marketing cycle – fully optimised and self-propelling
Going downhill through the diagram the customer will go through the same stages.
While listening the customer will experience the product purchased leading them to interact and react with peers on social media networks.
Their comments and reaction will propel the marketing cycle right down to the bottom where the company again pricks up their ears to listen to the comments the customer places.
My thanks to the original post which can be found
here.
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