the previous article that discusses social goals in the marketing goals, I have explained the importance of social goals in supporting
financial goals. This time, I will explain the stages of social
marketing or social activities in marketing.
Below are steps of social marketing for making your company sustainable in the long term:
1. Developing a community
Community
can be formed via online or offline. There are several steps to form
community. I'm not going to deepen this discussion, you can learn from
the experts in this field. I'll give a simple example of how you can
develop a community.
The
most important of these activities is to collect all your customers’
data, such as name, address, telephone number, email. These data can be
obtained from the guest book when they visit your company, users who
sign up on your website, customers who complain via telephone, warranty
card which they send, and so on.
After
getting the data, you can create offline media communities such as
customer gathering, or online media such as Google+ page or pages on
Facebook, mailing list groups, social media for two-way communication
like twitter.
Invite them to interact in the community media that you have built.
2. Social listening
It's
time for you to listen more empathy to the aspirations of community
members. Listen carefully to their comments. Respond them with good
manner. React patiently to their complaints. You have to perform it all,
before complaints escalate and negative image about your products is
widespread.
In
this community you can also hear what your competitor do. So you can do
the preventive actions in order to win the competition. You can open a
thread about the other products, and asked opinion to community members.
Things to remember here that do not start a thread about black campaign
against competitor products.
Last, The most important thing you should do at this stage is to listen to what people say on your product.
3. Social content
Actually
you have to execute parallel activities between form a community and
design a content. So that once community is formed, you can disseminate
the content to members of the community immediately.
What content that should be broadcasted to the community? The answer are the following:
– Valuable and trusted Content
– Content that truly makes members want to read and spread to other communities.
The
thing to remember is the content should be relevant to your product or
your business, but you can vary a content with another topic so members
do not get bored.
After you create valuable content, start spreading that content in your community. Do not forget to ask for feedback from them.
4. Engagement
Create
an respectable atmosphere so that community member feel special. For
example, involve them in the committee for each event. Engage them in
all activities together. Lastly, always help them, give them a solution
when they are needed. As the time goes by, these activities will lead to
a stronger engagement.
5. Customer loyalty program
Once
a strong engagement is formed, you will be able to easily execute
customer loyalty program. You can search my article about the customer
loyalty program for further information.
6. Result
As
I mentioned before in previous articles, the main investment for this
is an investment of time. Why? Because you have to be patient in the
track. If you act consistently, in the future you will get:
– Members will automatically spread your message to other communities.
– Member without being asked will perform on a peer to peer recommend your product.
– You can perform word of mouth marketing easily.
And when that time comes, your business will grow and sustainable in the long run.
