The Next Evolution of Social Media Integration

A few years ago, when brands first began wading in to test the waters of the social media pool, the concept of social media integration was very straightforward and simplistic: add icons linked to your company’s social media profile pages on your website, and consider the job done. The message to visitors was, “Like what you see here? Please come join the conversation happening on our company’s social outposts!” And as brands continued to jump on each new social bandwagon that came along – YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. – the once-standard three buttons became four, then four became five and so on. Shortly thereafter, brands discovered the benefit of serving content across multiple sites in the name of message continuity. The advent of social media management tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck set this activity on fire, as marketers began exploiting newly available scheduling tools to republish content to all their profiles with the click of a single button, with no regard for tailoring their message to the culture and syntax of each platform and audience. And this run-of-the-mill, low-quality content made its way back to these companies’ websites as embedded Twitter and Facebook feeds – all in the name of integration. And customers noticed. Actually, everyone noticed. Because this robotic, efficiency-driven method of social media integration began to strip these platforms of their primal social element — the very reason why sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are so popular in the first place. So with a little push from Google, Bill Gates’ postulation, “Content is King,” became every marketer’s buzz phrase. Companies began pouring big dollars into developing relevant, original content in every arena, from sharable blog posts and traffic-driving SEO landing pages to viral videos — each fighting for a just few fleeting seconds of consumers’ precious attention. As companies started to find their footing, they realized success in social media demands integration through and through – not at the superficial level of icons and links but at the very core of a company’s business growth efforts. Rather than treating each marketing medium (e.g., television, radio, email, pay-per-click, social, etc.) as existing within its own self-contained silo, social should be seamlessly interwoven throughout the brand’s marketing initiatives in ways that are a natural fit with how real customers think, behave and make decisions. When done well, social media integration steps inside and outside the four walls of the Internet fluidly, supports customer engagement while maintaining the social integrity of the platform and, inevitably, drives sales. Here are a few excellent examples of companies who are doing it right by today’s standards:

Well that’s Pin-teresting

Recently, Banana Republic sent out an email blast that combined the best of social media, direct marketing and e-commerce into one cleverly crafted campaign. Subscribers to the company’s mailing list received an email message featuring images of customers’ most-pinned styles. Within this email was a link that took recipients to a dedicated landing page on the brand’s own website where they could shop these looks, creating a direct, distraction-free path between email, website browsing and checkout, greasing the gears for a quick and easy purchase decision. Smartly, Banana Republic executed these promotional efforts in the other direction, too. Their Pinterest profile includes a board of most-pinned styles, each of which of course links directly to the item featured in the pinned image for interested buyers to purchase from the website. This creative campaign not only integrates the company’s social media, email and e-commerce efforts, it also capitalizes on a key psychological motivation for the fashion-minded by giving them insight into what’s on their fellow shoppers’ wish lists so that they, too, can be seen sporting the season’s most-wanted looks.

Tweet to eat

If you’ve got a fanbase that’s actively engaged in talking about your brand on social media, it begs the question: how can you take advantage of their promotional activities to reach a broader audience? The answer: integrate your social media campaigns into your traditional marketing efforts. Case in point: Panera’s highly successful #PaneraFaves campaign. Over the past several months, Panera Bread has been encouraging customers to share photos of their favorite menu items on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – providing added incentive by giving those who participate a chance to win Panera gift cards. While this initiative provides great value on its own by prompting fans to promote the brand to their own friends and followers, Panera has taken this campaign to the next level, running national TV spots that feature these #PaneraFaves tweets and pics. The strengths of this TV campaign are multifold, as they position Panera not only as a brand that pays attention to its customers and their opinions but one that is well loved by those customers, too.

Add it now, buy it later

In May 2014, Amazon launched a feature that lets Twitter users add items directly to their Amazon cart simply by typing a hashtag. First, the user must connect their Twitter account to Amazon. Then, anytime they see an Amazon product link on Twitter, replying to that tweet with the hashtag #AmazonCart — or #AmazonBasket in the UK — adds the product to that user’s shopping cart, where it will be ready and waiting for them to purchase at their convenience. This stroke of marketing genius essentially turns Twitter into a retail pipeline for Amazon, extending the reach of the e-commerce giant beyond its own website to the social hubs where its customers live and talk about products day in and day out. In doing so, Amazon is also wisely fending off the rising threat of social networks transforming into social commerce outlets in their own right. While there is still a learning curve for customers and a few technical kinks to work through, Amazon’s “add it now, buy it later” concept clearly has tremendous potential to shape the future of social commerce.

As seen on TV

Also in May 2014, TaylorMade partnered with Chirpify, a marketing conversion platform, to host a live sweepstakes for their SLDR S golf club during the CBS broadcast of the PGA Byron Nelson Championship. Using their #actiontag (#DistanceforAll), anyone could enter for a chance to win the SLDR S or a trip to the US Open. According to Chirpify, “55 percent of people who saw the message on TV and responded to the sweepstakes on social completed the registration.” This 55 percent conversion rate is nothing to scoff at. It means social is no longer limited to merely reflecting engagement. Instead, it can be used as a clear and defined component of the sales funnel — exactly the kind of approach to and innovative use of second screen and social that defines the next stage of evolution in social media integration.

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Walk the Line: Balancing the Resources and Rewards of Social Media

For those charged with growing a business in today’s marketplace, social media can present a bit of a quagmire. With all of the hype around social media and the proliferation of social networks, it’s easy to get sucked in to the vortex, spending countless hours obsessing over follower counts, scouring the Web for interesting content to share and seeking out opportunities to cultivate relationships with key influencers. However, no business – no matter how large or small – has unlimited resources to dedicate to social media. You must find a healthy balance between the time and energy you invest and the rewards you stand to gain from your participation. As with any marketing endeavor, success starts with a plan. When determining how to direct your social media efforts, you take into account three key elements:

• Your target market
• Social media sites and the capabilities of each
• Your short- and long-term business growth goals

By carefully weighing each of these factors, you can create a robust social media plan that is specifically tailored to your business and your target audience.

Know your customers.

At the heart of the question of how much time to spend on social media marketing lies a fundamental understanding of your customer. Without an intimate understanding of who you're marketing to, you cannot determine the best methods of reaching them. This will also help you determine in which social media sites to invest the most time and energy. More than likely, many of your customers are spending time on at least one social media platform. Statistics favor of this theory: 30 percent of people across the globe are online, and these users spend 22 percent of the time they’re online on social media. But be careful not to make assumptions based solely on the age of your customers. After all, it's users over the age of 55 who are currently driving growth in social networking via the mobile Web. One of the best ways to learn exactly how and where to engage with your customers is to do some good old-fashioned research. Ask them to fill out a survey and provide them with a reward that’s desirable enough to motivate them to respond.

Where are your customers connecting?

This is another important piece of the puzzle that will help you fine-tune your social media investment. If your customers spend a lot of time on Twitter and LinkedIn but not as much on Facebook, then you can divide your time and efforts proportionately. The trick is knowing how to find out where your customers spend their time. Fortunately, each social media site provides some basic research tools that will help you make this determination:

• Twitter: Use the "Advanced Search" tool to search by keywords and by zip codes to find potential customers, and see how much activity you can identify from these users.
• Facebook: Facebook’s research tools are somewhat limited, but you can check your competitors’ Pages to see what types of posts are the most popular based on the number of “likes” and comments they receive.
• LinkedIn: Use the "People Search" feature to identify key individuals as well as relevant groups that may have a lot of traction with your market.
• Google+: Use Google Analytics to determine the amount of traffic or leads you are getting from your posts.
• Klout: Use this service to see how your followers are responding to your social media activity. Klout can track most major social sites, including YouTube, Flickr and Instagram.

Absolute minimum effort

At an absolute minimum, you should establish a page on each of the big four social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. This accomplishes a number of things. First, by listing your address and basic information on social media sites, you’ll help search engines like Google find your website and list your company’s information properly. Also, keep in mind that customers use all sorts of tools to find you, not just Google. If they happen to search for you on their favorite social site, you want to make sure they’ll find you there. The basic information you should have on your each of your profiles includes:

• Company name
• Company logo
• Website URL
• Customer service phone number
• Brief description of your company

This puts you on the social media map, as it were. You can certainly begin engaging potential and current customers after this stage, but even if you do nothing else, this will at least make you accessible. Then, based on the level of engagement of your target market on each site, you can determine how much more you want to do with each account.

Developing campaigns

Finally, once you've determined that you should do some level of effort of social media marketing, you know which sites are best for your market, and you've developed some basic profiles on each site, it's time to formulate a campaign. Just as with any marketing campaign, you must start by identifying specific, measurable goals you want to accomplish. By doing so, you can then determine how many resources can and should be invested in the process to achieve your desired outcome. For example, you may want to reach a goal of 1,000 “likes” on Facebook in the next three months. This is doable for a company on just about any budget, and you'll know pretty quickly if you need to put more effort into getting these “likes.” If you only have 50 after the first week, then you need to step it up. Some companies frame their desired return from their social media activity in terms of dollars and cents. This is not a bad strategy for the long term, but if you’re just starting out, it can actually be deceiving. Why? Because the work of establishing your brand on any social media network is a time-intensive process. It will take a concerted long-term effort to grow your following to the point where you can achieve significant levels of engagement and have a reasonable understanding of the relationship between your participation and the company’s sales performance. For that reason, in the beginning, it’s often more productive to focus on activity-based goals – such as achieving a specified number of followers on Twitter – rather than on more traditional ROI metrics. So take a step back, determine what sites your customers use to connect, focus your efforts on these sites and set some reasonable, time-based goals for yourself. Then, as you begin to gain traction on a particular social media site and establish a foundational understanding of how well it works for engaging customers and driving profitable traffic, then establish some ROI goals for your top engagement-level accounts.

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