Social Marketing Channels: You've Built It, But Are You Ready?

We have all enjoyed the classic line, “If you build it, they will come” from the late 80’s classic “Field of Dreams”. The part of the movie we take for granted is that once the audience was able to come to the epic baseball game, tickets were being sold and there were bleachers to sit on.

How does this affect you and your budding social media efforts? Let’s say that you have made the decision to put time and resources into attracting an audience to your social pages. There are a variety of ways to utilize your email channel to move traffic over to your social pages:

• Social sharing contests
• Like us and win promotions
• An invitation to 'Join the Conversation'
• A contest that promote user content on social sites

The list can go on and on, however once you have put the effort into building some kind of social outreach, then make sure you can back it up by engaging with that traffic. Believe it or not every reaction a contact gives you socially is a chance to enhance your company, so take advantage of it.

When a company invites me to like them/follow them via email, print or television, and I go to their wall only to find it filled with complaints, I cringe at the thought of the time/resources it cost to drive me to take that action only to find a negative channel.  The worst is when a social follower will ask a company where/how they can buy the product, and then NEVER gets a response. Talk about leaving money on the table! (There are too many examples to include here, but some very disturbing comments can be found on BP, Nestle and AT&T with essentially no reaction from the owners of the page) 

ShoeDazzle sent me an invite to join a social contest a while back. They used a smart email, with a great incentive which I like. If you take a look at their Facebook page they are very engaged with their audience and have done a great job at responding to comments.

If you have driven traffic to your social pages, through email, print, TV or any other number of ways, then make sure you have the appropriate amount of effort that can be spent on the reaction to that traffic.

• Your followers/likers will have questions - answer them in a timely fashion
• Your followers/likers will have complaints - take them seriously and respond to them quickly
• Your followers/likers will want to rave about you - capitalize on this and make sure they know you are listening

Bronto has a new Twitter and Facebook Integration that allows you to save time by posting and scheduling posts from with in the app. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look. However on your side you will need to assign someone on your marketing (or customer service) team with the responsibility of monitoring this new traffic and ensuring that your company isn’t leaving any money on the table.

If you build it they will come, and when they come you will be ready. You’ve got your fictional dead baseball players ready to play, make sure you not only have bleachers for people to sit on, but that you have someone ready to sell tickets, a concessions stand open and stocked, and a hotdog guy working the aisles!

Kestrel Lemen
Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@Kestrelbird