Social media in the marketing, communication and multi-channel strategy

This article gives you an overview of the different social media and the relevance of using them in your multi-channel marketing actions. Despite the hype surrounding social media, now is the time to get down to using it at different levels, but with good intelligence. It would be disastrous for the company to use them without putting in place a real marketing strategy.

“Social Media” is an umbrella term that covers a very rich and diverse landscape of platforms, websites and online tools through which people connect, express themselves, interact, comment and share.

It is used as much for information, communication, entertainment and sharing of information and experiences at the private level as for interacting with companies. Or better: to interact with the people who work in these companies. And, of course, it's also used to talk about companies, brands, products, services and customer experiences.

From a marketing perspective, social media serves a wide variety of marketing purposes: customer service, market conquest and know your customer, word-of-mouth and inbound marketing, and even direct marketing.

There are a number of ways that businesses can blog. They can create a separate blog, more or less separate from the company itself or its website, they can leave the initiative to company employees who have something to say and who will create their own blog.

It is preferable to have a blog within the institutional website or connected to it, in which different stakeholders of the company can express themselves.

The benefits of this approach are huge: a more open and transparent image, search engine optimization, and fast, real-time interaction with internet users - and, in this context, content relevance is an important factor.

Social networks

Social networks offer their users many services to communicate with others, tell what they are doing, upload images, share, exchange e-mails, etc. There are also social networks intended more specifically for professionals, the best known of which is undoubtedly Linkedin.

The objective of Social Media Marketing in Rhode Island remains non-aggressive promotion over the medium to long term, by transforming contacts into business relationships.

Micro blogging

The basic function of micro-blogging is to give the possibility of exchanging short messages with status updates, information and links, to connect with others and to communicate both in private and in public. Twitter is the best known in this area, but it is not the only one.

It can be used as part of customer service and is a great source for tracking trends and brand reputation. In addition, it allows direct contact with pioneers in different fields. Twitter users are often people with some form of influence: bloggers, journalists, opinion leaders or brand supporters, among others.

Social Bookmarking

One of the most well-known bookmark sharing services is Delicious. Social bookmarking is the online equivalent of bookmarks on your computer, which you save to bring out when you need them. Social bookmarking has a dimension of sharing, but also serves many other purposes.

Social media sharing platforms

Whether it's online videos on sites like YouTube, images on Flickr or PowerPoint presentations and PDFs on Slide share, there are dozens of online services where you can download, tag and share multimedia content. Most of these sites have embedding options that provide other users with the option to include content, if they feel it is relevant, on their web pages, social networks or blogs. The most used sites for marketing are mainly online video sites, Slide share and - to a lesser extent - image sharing sites.

Peer review and recommendation platforms

Smart businesses and online retailers or publishers offer their customers the ability to comment on their products or content, "vote" on and / or recommend them.

However, other online services are also used for these purposes, not to mention online and offline chats. In addition, there are hundreds of sites whose sole purpose is to allow users to share their opinions on products, add (and view) reviews made for and by their peers, and share their experiences online. trademark terms. These sites sometimes have a very large radius of action, most often specific to a particular sector. Of course, you will probably want to focus on those whose industry is related to your business.

Mobile and geolocated social tools

Most of the social media platforms mentioned above can be used on mobile devices. But recently have emerged new forms of social media applications based on the combination of people, content and location. Foursquare and Gowalla are examples. To these platforms will be added new ones, as well as various mobile social platforms. This is a rapidly growing segment, the main driver of which is the increase in sales of smartphones with built-in GPS navigators.

Read also: SEO: 8 tips to improve your SEO

As you can see, there are multitudes of possibilities to communicate via social media on the web, but they still have to be used wisely.

Tips for following social media

• One of the main activities of brands on social media is to follow what is being said about them, as well as trends and the market. See social feedback as an opportunity to optimize your cross-channel marketing in real time.

• Don't be defensive: your customer's opinion matters

• Track and analyze in a structured and efficient manner

• Use the information gathered to improve your communication strategy

• Provide the customer with an optimal experience

• Establish a reputation management plan

• Define the resources and structural needs to put it in place

• Listen to feedback and respond appropriately

• Define some guidelines

• Provide channels for people to give you feedback

• Keep your lines of communication open

• Measure and improve