GUIDANCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA BEST PRACTICES

I was presenting today to the Transformers® and G.I.Joe® marketing teams at Hasbro®, to provide guidance on social media best practices. Here’s what I told them:

 

• Listen: One of the easiest ways to get started is to conduct a Social Media Audit.Find out what people are talking about—you’ll be amazed at what you learn from this purest of all forms of consumer research! Get competitive intelligence, identify new market opportunities, and understand brand and category perceptions.
• Strategy Still Matters: Social Media Tools are just that…tools…one of the biggest mistakesI see is that companies get enamored with the “new-fangled” tools and start to use them…without a thought to the overriding rationale for choosing that tool over any other (traditional) marketing tool.
• Provide Value: You cannot simply shove your marketing message down someone else’s throat. Delight your consumers with added value and they will stick to you like Velco®
• Think Collaboratively: There is no such thing as “us” versus “them” anymore. You build something great with others—your consumers, your customers, your suppliers, EVERYBODY!
• Authenticity & Transparency Are Critical: If you try to be sneaky, you will be outed eventually. That has always been the case, of course, but now, with the internet, the public outrage spreads faster than wildfire, is global and permanently on record.
• Leverage Multimedia: Video is phenomenal.Opportunities abound for you to use sight, sound and motion as never before.
• Seek To Engage—Permanently: Social Media is not a “hit it and quit it” kind of a thing. Even if you look at it from a financial standpoint, you will be convinced that you want to nurture a life-long love affair with your consumer, not a one-night stand.
• Go Beyond Basic Measurement: The digital world can measure everything—how many seconds someone watches a video, how many people comment about a topic, who’s following whom. While marketing has always struggled with presenting senior management with the exact ROI on a TV commercial or newspaper story, social media offers more measurement opportunities than ever before.

 

Did I miss any? Feel free to add your comments as well!