Social Media is not magic, nor does it surprising tricks, you will need more than magic to succeed. I am talking about a process that truly makes sense when it’s aligned with the business strategy and also gets inter-departamental touching every aspect of the business model.
I am afraid but Social Media is not the damn thing that will save your business from crashing.
What does social media really do for you?
It multiplies you reach, harnesses the power of global communications, mingles you with the party, connects emotionally with your audience, makes use of the social web to empower human interactions and also gives you real and measurable results.
What the heck! This is meaningful, I suppose you want to be on the top of the wave, I have got a question, why?
Perhaps you want do it for some of these reasons: reach more potential customers, align our marketing strategy with the online channels, find a niche inside the networks, less spent on marketing and advertisement, connect with our real customer, generate more traffic towards our website/blog, increase business leads or skyrocket the conversions rate.
This is me or the reasons shown below are so cool? I think that at least they make sense. Are you with me? Let me be clear and direct, there’s no magic formula, neither golden egg, sorry… Is there any other way? Sure, it starts from simplicity, launching and shipping right on their noses, experiment with campaigns and platforms uses, accepting failures as usual, but not mistakes – meaning failing more than one time at the same thing. Trying different is what matters in Social media, it means walking new paths, trying differently until you make something happen. Social Media is not what God sent you to save the world – actually are people – but an opportunity to a new media and marketing dimension. You only need to approach it as it was a strategic planning and goals definition. Do you get it?
The Key – Staying Human
Social Media can be understood in different ways, there will be people that it will talk about platforms or tools and there will be some – the crazy ones – that will say that it’s about people. I believe that Social Media is a means of expression that makes possible for customers, communities and brands “staying human.” That is to say, they will connect and establish relationships and thus, interactions among people through transparency, commitment, empathy, humility, consistency, coherence and closeness.
Staying human means going beyond the Social thing. It’s about how the information technologies we have available, together with the media innovations can help us building professional-personal relationships in situations and contexts where we were not be able to do it years ago.
Photo credit: mojo social media marketing.