Why your company has no friends

In today's article we will talk about the concept of promoting your brands and shares in social networks. This material was prepared by E-pepper.Ru on the basis of materials from a seminar conducted by the London-based Syzygy agency , and contains the key concepts and rules for conducting these events.

In the life of any company, a certain moment comes when the available communication channels no longer give the result that was a year ago. There is no influx of fresh customers, sales do not save even ongoing sales and discounts. But then there is a spamming group registered on a common wave a year ago, or a half empty community on Facebook, or an account with an egg on Twitter and a Vkontakte group.

How to build a successful company in a social network? Probably, this question asked more than one marketer and owner of an online store. Let's take a look at the order of what you need to know when preparing and conducting certain marketing campaigns in networks.
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“We live in an economy of attention, where attention is the most inadequate and valuable commodity on the market” - Herbert Simon, a famous American economist and sociologist.

Concept.

Lack of attention to your company, or products and services, is one of the main reasons for carrying out a particular social campaign on the network. It makes no difference whether you are promoting your brand, or promoting any kind of action, regardless of the object, your task is to attract the attention of users.

There are three types of basic strategies for promoting a brand in social networks. They are fundamental and determine your future audience.

1. "Entertain me." A strategy aimed at covering various social PR companies (photos, videos, content, etc.). The key development in the strategy - the presence of certain qualities (often characterized by personal qualities, emotions and feelings).

2. "Help me." A strategy of leadership and “help” when you are followed, listened and asked for advice. The key to success in the strategy - the presence of certain knowledge and skills in a particular area or area.

3. "Love me." Fan strategy, when the network is used as an additional “mouthpiece” for notification of certain events of the object of “love”.

Choosing one of them, you must stick to its foundations, because departing from them will bring you a loss of either interest in your profile, or even an outflow of members of your community. Perhaps a combination of the last two strategies, with a stronger superiority of one of them.

Here is also a small list of rules that you should rely on when developing a concept and preparing for holding various actions in social networks:

• Remember that your company is what it publishes.
• Your readers / participants want authentic information - “human and living” stories are of more interest.
• Listen to what your readers are saying.
• Respond quickly to all the actions of your readers.
• People want participation, not ordinary propaganda.
• People love to communicate with them, do not start communicating with them with the direct formulation of your desires and goals.
• Publish content in a way that your target audience is used to and wants to see.
• Do not wait for the publication of the "big news", write what you think you need to convey to your readers. It is much more interesting to watch the life of a “live” community, rather than a news feed.
• Marketing through social networks can be successful only if the tasks set in them coincide with the objectives of the business.
• One one-time one-time action will cost more than 10 small ones, so engage in planned development and promotion.

Content.

The first thing to remember is that the main task of social networks is to transfer information from member to member. No matter what way, whether it is “I like”, “Share” or “Retweet”.

“The advantage of sharing information in social networks is that people listen more to other people than to original sources” - Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO of Google.

Based on these words, we conclude that our main goal for which we must spend our strength is to make your news shared. How it's done? By creating distinctive posts capable of instantly generating interest and preserving it, after which, pushing to send this news to your friends. This is the promotion of your information. It seems that everything is so simple and you know it already a long time ago, but despite this, there are many participants and few discussions in your groups and communities.

In order for these distinctive posts / messages to scatter like pies on a holiday, they must have four important qualities:

Novelty - your message should "be at the right time and in the right place."
Exclusivity - you offer a limited edition, lot, service. Something “exclusive” is something that distinguishes them from similar items or services and gives priority access to something.
Surprise - the message should be interesting, controversial, and not standard rules should be violated, but standard ones.
Simplicity - simple design, understandable for perception.

If you have at least two of these qualities, your publications and posts should cause a more positive user response. Once again we remind you of a timely and prompt reaction to the actions of users - they socialize, share opinions and discussions in social networks. Give it to your participants.

Participation.

Remember the standard rule of any social network - 90% consume content, 9% comment on it and 1% create it. There are only two types of active participation of users in social networks:

Rapid participation - (commenting, rating, sharing) - gives high numbers and large-scale effect. The user spends little time on carrying out such actions, so it is possible to quickly switch from your information to some other.
Creative participation - (generating) - differs by a much smaller number of participants, but provides the campaign with more depth and content. More time is spent, respectively, memorization of the task set by you is much better.

MIT Sloan conducted research and identified three main reasons for which users of social networks take part in various promotions.

1. Love (pleasure)
2. Fame (fame).
3. Money (enrichment).

In order to give your users any of the above, do not forget that you need to have it. Guess what is necessary in this or that situation will help you the audience. In the case of online stores, just look at the top sales. Difficult to choose - arrange a vote, let the users choose what they need!

Always count your audience when conducting various actions or announcements. Soberly and soberly (yes, it may be that you have 65% of the audience - bots) evaluate the feasibility of holding certain events - it always makes sense to first form the core of your audience, develop to a certain level and only then carry out serious campaigns. There is nothing worse than a failed action due to the small number of participants.

Partnership.

Did you think the partnership is only on paper? Identify potential influential partners (known in the circles of your users and respected by them) and collaborate with them in social networks. Retweets, links to affiliate stocks, relationships between partner companies - all this will only bring benefits! The result of this collaboration will be:

1. increasing your campaign trust
2. distribution of your information throughout the entire chain of users related to your niche.
3. "Revitalization" of your community / campaign.

Spread.

Engage all possible ways of informing about your company in social networks. Make cross-platform messages. Do not hesitate to ask users in the same message to inform their friends about your events: "RT pls:", "Please share this with friends." You convey to them a message with good information, do not be afraid to ask them in return for such trifles.

Do not forget about the constant monitoring of campaigns launched by you. A social media campaign thrown on an autonomous existence is a blow to your reputation. Not counting the forces thrown to the wind for her promotion. Comments and discussions left unanswered will not only not bring the desired actions on the part of users, but will provoke you to be removed from the lists of friends and readers, since The campaign will be treated as an unsolicited email.

Here is a sample list of those things that should be taken into account when commercially promoting in social networks. Do not wait for instant reaction and a sharp increase in participants / comments / discussions. With proper and thoughtful administration of your communities and profiles, all this will come with time.

We will be happy to hear additions and comments to this article, we are sure that each company had a successful experience and attempts to promote. Successful trading!