Social Media Marketing – Social Savvy In 2013

The year 2012 is coming slowly to its end, was a nice one for social media and marketing. In terms of great campaigns, new social media tools and key learnings. I’m already curiously awaiting what will 2013 bring for social media marketing, and what about you?

Even though Marion wrote about social media in 2013 recently, it’s a deep topic that has a lot to offer and there’s never enough.

I’d say there are two major topics/tasks for brands to focus on and it might not seem that unique or revolutionary. However I perceive them as crucial.

Social media conversation and content creation

Brands have to more than ever focus on creating unique visual content. Like it or not, it’s all about being seen first. Great images, awesome videos, photos that people like to see and share naturally with their friends and followers.

“2013 is the year when we will truly feel the rise of visual marketing. Visuals and video done right are highly effective in cutting through the noise. It is snackable kind of content that resonates with people across the globe and increases engagement across social nets. Brands will need to understand what it takes to do visual marketing well, whether within their current communities or new networks like Pinterest, Instagram, and others.”

Ekaterina Walter, Social Media Strategist, Intel, and author of Think Like Zuck

Later on, a conversation about the content starts. Take it as 2 in 1 – great social media content stimulates conversation and other forms of engagement.

For brands – don’t be just content curators, posting over and over again the same pictures or memes that are months old. Be brave and come up with your own stories. And that all starts with an integrated communications strategy.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking of brands as editorial publishers. What is the right context for our brand? What should our brand publish?

That reminds me of a great video from Bodyform – a simple response by creating a great content that people really liked to see and share. Also, using a few golden rules of social media conversation:

“When writing, responding or sharing something on social media, always keep it “Light, Bright and Polite.” Let’s break this down:

Light: Keep it short. On social media, that means work hard to keep your messaging under 100 characters. Most adults are consumed in their lives, thus you have a very narrow window to grab their attention.

Bright: Make sure what you’re posting is something helpful to your readers, and perhaps, so valuable that they will forward it on to their friends (without you having to say, “Share this with your friends” or “Spread the word”). This means it will shine on its own and be shared without asking.

Polite: This means you and/or your brand would be proud of the message if it were to be posted on a billboard the next day for thousands of people to see. Your tweets should outlast the week, month and year. Keep them polite so you’re proud of them if they end up on a billboard for your parents to see or your boss finds your posts in the future.”

Josh Ochs, Founder, MediaLeaders

With all these in place it should simply lead to higher engagement and interaction with the audience. On the contrary and apart from building your Facebook fan-base – Facebook is not the only social media platform. It’s the biggest, but there are more niche channels where the right target audience might be. So don’t limit yourself only to Facebook as one and only social media channel. Also, I’m not going to mention Facebook’s new “privacy policy” and almost a must for sponsored stories…that’s for another article.

Social media data, measurement, insights and results

All the above mentioned steps seem nice and easy to implement. But than, how to ensure that all the efforts pay off? Most of us know that data are silver, but their analysis, gaining insights and later on their interpretation into actionable steps are golden. I do agree that it’s becoming more and more difficult to measure efficiency of branded content, engagement. And with so many various social media tools, plus more coming up every day, one can get simply lost. Not so good news for social networking?

There are new platforms that try to merge all the data about social media in one place, so that’s something to look forward to in 2013. One example is Adobe Marketing Cloud. Without the data in place, how can one measure the ROI of social media (Yes, you can do that!) and correlate social media marketing to revenue and sales?

“If you’ve been using fuzzy metrics to justify social media initiatives, 2013 is the year to add sales and revenue impact to your list of social media KPIs. With a slew of new tools, you can now determine which social media marketing channels drive real, meaningful revenue, and which ones fall flat.”

George Revutsky, Founder, MyNextCustomer

There are for sure more great ideas how to leverage the potential of online marketing. Also why social media will play a crucial role in the marketing mix and budget allocation in 2013. To give some more insights and reasons why social media is and will remain a new way to talk to consumers that brings opportunities for new leads, sales, and customers, Boot Camp Digital packed some great social media data of 2012 into the following infographic. Hope it will help to get your social media marketing in shape for 2013.

What are you looking forward to in social media marketing in 2013? Or what makes you nervous? The raising dominance of Facebook, lack of data or …? Would be great if you share your ideas in the comments below, thank you.

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