Zoom creates content for its clients.
Content creation, normally the primary activity for much of marketing, takes on new meaning in a SIM environment. For example, a website, once read by a person, is usually not useful to or reread by that same person again. It’s like a conversation held and now past.
With Social Influence Marketing, content must be continually refreshed since now your company has lent its ears to the conversation and thus must participate back and forth to maintain the relationship. SIM sets expectations for the community that each visit to the various company platforms will elicit new, interesting, and updated information.
Content in a SIM-enabled environment can, of course, be static. A website landing page with technical specs, order processing information, success stories, references, calendars, and portals, to name a few, can be designed and laid out on an infrequent basis. Ideally, it is the job of the SIM-related portion of the environment (e.g., a blog page, links to Twitter, and Facebook) to direct traffic to the appropriate landing page in your website depending on the needs of the potential customer. All the traditional rules for static site pages also apply to SIM pages – ease of use, timeliness, freshness and correctness of the information. For the SIM portion, new standards and rules come to the fore.
Rule #1: Be present. If you set up and pay for a booth at a tradeshow, you wouldn’t leave it unattended. Setting up a presence on a Social Media platform is no different – you will need to make sure it is provisioned, monitored, and responsive to the members of your communities.
Rule #2: Be collaborative: Unlike a tradeshow booth, Social Media ‘visitors’ do not expect vendors to be loudly touting their products and services; in fact, that’s a good way to drive traffic away. Instead they expect a conversation that meets their needs. Vendor presence in Social Media should be low key, offering help where needed, suggestions where possible, and information when appropriate.
Rule #3: Be responsive, but not defensive: The customer is not always right, but a customer’s opinion always deserves a hearing. Social Media is a great way to surface incipient customer issues, and the way in which you handle these issues will help decide whether your customer base becomes an asset or liability to your selling process.
Rule #4: Spread the load: Many of your employees are users of Social Media. Making sure they understand your strategy, your presence, your messaging, and your commitment to your customers, can make them a part of your strategy, and a part of every customer’s solution.