Social media strategy

Social media, the channel that engulfs us with opinion, thought, varying degrees of nonsense, best practice, worst practice, average practice, sales talk, click bait or meaningless give-away competitions to siphon our personal data. It's a river that flows fast. 

People strive to become a social captain or an 'influencer'

Building a strategy to get a defined 'return' is a is a major headache for most. My experience and the context to this post is primarily based within the b2b commercial sector and more specifically the KBB sector in which I've worked in for 10+ years. It's been slow to adopt digital. No objections there.

KBBDaily reports that the market sees customers update kitchens every 13 years. This figure rings true also in the bathroom sector and echoes the slow integration of digitally inspired innovation into the product itself compared to the FMCG tech inspired products we update monthly.

Large KBB manufacturers/retailers online digital objectives/goals are, and have always been, typically measured by more high level behaviour and analytical funnels:

  • Brochure downloads
  • White paper views
  • Product samples
  • Technical help
  • Customer advice
  • Re-seller forwarding
  • Measurement/specification tools 
  • Instruction guides/data sheets
  • Event marketing 

Whilst I'd never suggest that you avoid developing a base strategy without some core KPI's to measure, Its clear that many and larger outfits tend to miss out on 'being social'. The 'being human' aspect gets lost. 

Numbers without relationship.

Too often I see a reliance in social media marketing on the basic numbers. ie. how many followers do we have this month? A question you hear/ask regularly? Follower count can only ever be a general stat unless the absolute campaign objective is to gain followers. 

What I've seen through 10 years of marketing and social media campaign management is the unwritten rule that, as a brand manager immersed in every marketing outreach channel, the relationship - the 'being social' element is absolutely crucial. 

  • Like your customers activity - if you genuinely like it. 
  • Comment regularly if your comment is genuine and constructive. 
  • If you have a network of followers using/building with your product then let them know your thoughts on their work. You'll be amazed who else reads your comments and remembers your brand. 
  • Ask for their feedback on your products. Empower their status and gain valuable product insight - ever so valuable for any future NPD projects

Be the brand that communicates as a person because your competition likely won't. Certainly in the b2b kbb sector there exists a massive gap in skills as traditional marketeers still rule and, to quote Seth Godin's tremendous book, Linchpin, don't invest in 'emotional labour'. There is a 'safeness' to rely on the cogs of analytics. The new digital generation customer wants to trust people who live and breathe the brand for all its good and not so good points.

Personas work both ways

Constructing a 'tree' of persona and comms channels is traditional and very common practice in most marketing teams. The construction and kbb market is a fine example

  • The consumer (split across varying age groups)
  • The Sales Director
  • The QS
  • The Architect
  • The Retailer
  • The Specifier
  • etc...

Social media is no exception and with the increasing depth of link tagging and schema markup its incredibly powerful and helps define both comms delivery type. 

Note: All your customers and suppliers have labelled your brand in exactly the same way!


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