Marketing Axioms
While taste, spontaneity, non-conformity and creativity play a role in social media, one cannot make a successful campaign on just whims. A successful social media campaign is far from haphazard and is based on several age-old marketing axioms. Therefore, one taking over the company Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, with no marketing training or experience is bound to fail in the company’s campaign. These are powerful communication channels and they should not just be handed over to anyone.
Although this article obviously cannot replace a proper education in marketing we hope it will serve to help marketers identify the problem and begin to take measures to remedy.
Reality, Reality, Reality!
The most deadly trap to avoid is assuming you know what your audience thinks/feels about something. This is absolutely fatal and almost never reflects what they actually think. This problem is compounded by the fact that people inherently believe everyone else thinks like they do, therefore breaking out of this habit requires a definite effort.
This means that you don’t know anything unless you have surveyed it, researched it, and have it fully documented.
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition!
The old adage of ‘three times a charm’ has been a part of marketing for ages, and while the number three is arbitrary it does illustrate the point that people need to be told over and over. Once is not enough as most people are either not paying attention or thinking about other things. The marketer must formulate their message (that in itself is a whole other topic), and pound that message over and over.
Testing, Testing, Testing
You will never be able to accurately judge whether your social media marketing campaign is getting results if you do not document the various metrics involved and compare them to previous campaigns/techniques. This can be particularly harmful as you may well have a successful course of actions but, may end up abandoning it out of perceived notion of failure.
Metrics that should be documented are but not limited to:
1) engagement (likes, comments, shares)
2) clicks on external links
3) demographics
Facebook makes this all very easy to track with its analytics center, where you can find graphs in real time with this (and much more) information.
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