Engage or Give Up !

It’s all the rage ! A social media strategy for your company, brand or event.

A Facebook group for your event, a Fan page for your product, a Twitter account for your brand. But all of these tools are of no use unless you engage with them.

So here, offered with caution – I just know I’m going to cop some flack for this post – are a few ideas for your social media strategy.

Strategy – Have one !

It’s all very well to create an account and stick a page up on any of the social media spaces. However unless there is a strategy driving why you are using social media, you’ll struggle from the start.  Facebook and MySpace are littered with pages that have been created and forgotten. 

Schedule the time to service these pages ; appoint a community manager who’s job it is spacificially to update entries and work out how and why social media slots in with your other communication and marketing spend.

Continually Engage

The social media experience is a personal one. People become you friend or join your group because they want a relationship with you.  Continual engagement is your opportunity to build relationship with your client, customer or fan.

Make them feel special.

Plan special offers just for people in a particular social media space and focus it on the kind of user they are.  Someone who engages on Facebook wants a more personal experience than someone following you on Twitter.

The average social media space user has 76 friends so create micro events for you media space friends.  Tell them they can come and bring just one friend who hasn’t joined the group as yet. Exclusivity is the key.

Work with the social media suppliers.

Companies like Facebook and MySpace have editorial and marketing departments that can work with you to help you develop and grow your strategy.  Your growth, is their growth too. So contact them as see what they can do for you.

Don’t place all your eggs in one basket.

Finally remember – each friend or contact is only connected to you whilst you maintain your profile.  You don’t own the user data, they do.  So if your strategy is to use social media to build your data base, you need to use tools like Sign-up.to or Mail Chimp to drive your data base, where you own the contact details.

Also remember, if in the UK, any mail sign up scheme must send a verification e mail to a person signing up, to ensure it’s not only a genuine e mail address but also owned by the person adding the address to the list.