Starting Point

Before you implement - or revise - your Social Media marketing strategy, a few facts, some words of advice and then some questions for you and your business.

On an average day, 110 Million tweets are cast into the Twitterverse. Some were sent from laptops, some were sent from mobile devices, some were sent from journalists, some were sent by witnesses to newsworthy events (Middle East demonstrations, London Riots, football matches), some were sent by twitter bots residing row upon row in server farms, some were sent by your crazy aunt, and others were sent by your employees, your customers, and thousands, maybe millions of potential customers for your business.

Of those 110 Million tweets, 94% went unreplied to, ignored, or briefly noted and then forgotten.

Of the remaining 6.6M tweets that provoked a response, a clicked link, or a retweet to followers, 70% of those responses occurred within the first half-hour after posting. Most tweets die a lonely death, and almost all are outlived by the 24-hour lifecycle of a fruit fly.

Meanwhile, hundreds of millons of FB statuses were updated, and millions of FB searches were made seeking out FB pages for hotels, restaurants, or destinations. If successful, those searches sometimes resulted in direct hotel bookings or table reservations.

Flicker, Tumblr, Yfrog, Picasa, Mon.et (made that last one up) all house vast numbers of photos taken by your customers, some of them flattering your business and some that you, and perhaps they, hope might soon be deleted. 

As you read this article, Google+ has launched by invitation only and in the coming months will unveil its Brand Pages for businesses, which will take advantage of Google search and thus may easily be integrated into Google Hotel Finder. As a respected SM veteran has noted, Google Hotel Finder is not an OTA, it's an OTA Killer.  This is good news for a lot of hotels.

Time, it appears, truly is of the essence in the Twitterverse.

So many choices, so much information and still only 24 hours in a day in a digital world that never sleeps. Where lines are blurred between personal and professional, online and offline, real world and the parallel world of digitally represented communities.

Social Media is daunting in part because of the sheer number of authors and opportunities and networks and credible sources and poseurs and bots and faux journalists mixed into a digital world featuring instantaneous speed of information flow and promising everlasting archival/retrieval of the information.  Some of this information could be damaging to your business, but if just 0.0001% of which (one/ten-thousandth) were properly harnessed it could turn into a large number of new customers or referrals.

This is market democracy and the free flow of information in action. You must manage it or it will manage you. And if you manage it well then you can use its power to your advantage.

A common assumption of many neophytes to the Social Media business ecosystem is that due to the vast size of the largest social networks it is the number of Followers or Likes or Check-ins or posting that matter. Although size DOES matter - pause - it is the quality of the your followers that provide the most influence and deepest penetration of the marketplace.

In order to engage the followers who can do the most good for your business you must first determine what your Brand Promise is and how this can be best portrayed in the parallel universe of Social Media. Brand Promise consistency with legacy marketing is not always necessary to be effective in Social Media communities, but more often than not you will want to dovetail with and supplement, not replace, your traditional legacy marketing strategy.

Your Social Media brand must be engaging and must also be sooo interesting to the hyperkinetic Android/iPhone/iPad/i'mTooBusy mobile device user that they are prompted to learn more your hotel, your destination, your restaurant, or your special event or conference from amidst the flotsam of their FB or Twitter newsfeed. Because when we talk about leveraging Social Media we are increasingly talking about the 50%-and-growing mobile device share of Internet access.
Prospective customers may take an interest in your content because of its inherent quality and your existing brand reputation. They may take a further interest because you were referred to them by an Influencer that they follow. But that's not enough...
Because what you really want Social Media customers to do is become engaged, enthusiastic real-life Customers and Social Media Influencers themselves! And what you must do to enjoy a shelf-life longer than the five seconds it takes to read a tweet is to provide them with useful content. 
All the time.
If Nature abhors a vacuum then Social Media must have a real grudge against silence, because between Yelp, TripAdvisor guest reviews, Foursquare, FB, and Twitter, someone will rush in to fill the void with good news, bad news, or potential misinformation.

And always bear in mind that in online Social business communities, like the public events hosted or attended by your business, the Character of your Content should reflect the content of your character. 
If you can answer all of the following questions knowledgeably or affirmatively then you are on the right path to a strong Social Media ROI.

¨     What is the status of your current Social Media strategy and what is your definition of ROI?

¨     Do you know how to determine effective ROI for your Social media strategy?

¨     Do your in-house resources (strategy, staff talent, technological, content, creative) effectively handle the Social Media marketing outreach to your customers? 

¨    Does your Social Media strategy surpass the SM marketing strategy of your competitors in customer acquisition, conversion, and market share?

¨     Does your Social Media marketing generate ROI growth in revenue, customer referrals or guest counts that supplement or exceed your legacy marketing, promotional sales or PR efforts?

¨     What is your most effective marketing spend: online, traditional media, Social Media, special events, advertising, direct selling efforts?

¨     Are your online marketing and business intelligence efforts focused on the customer and customer engagement and feedback, or are your resources primarily occupied with maintaining and updating your website?

¨     Are you empowered to negotiate and purchase the technology or vendor or new hires to make your Social Media efforts effective?

¨     Do you have an ongoing program of systems, training, and monitoring/metrics in place to determine if your efforts are successful?

¨     Do you know which metrics they should use to determine success?

¨     Who responds to online and searchable customer reviews such as those posted on Yelp, TripAdvisor, FB, Twitter, or in other online networks and communities? How do you respond? Do you have efficient local in-house monitoring processes in place to immediately react to negative customer reviews?

¨     Do you have a crisis rapid response protocol already in place to quickly contain any online damage to your business reputation?

¨     Do your Social Media network pages have a real-time booking functionality tied into your reservations system?

¨     Are you up-to-date with the best Social Media publishing, monitoring, and data-mining tools so that you can leverage the power of SM information to your benefit?

¨     Do you - or others you employ - continually create, manage, and update engaging content that your followers will want to refer, publish, or make a positive comment on your behalf? Are these efforts an effective use of your time and resources?

¨     If your business is a hotel, how are you preparing or participating with Google Hotel Finder? Can customers book your hotel directly via your FB page? Is there an amazing photo gallery of your business on FB or a nicely produced video? Can they easily find your site, or will they first see in their FB search results an intermediary's page that supplies information about your business?

¨     Do you know your SEO ranking? How do you leverage Social Media to improve your ranking? 

Social Media, when used skillfully, does not replace real-world human interconnections and relationships. 

Instead, the skillful use of Social Media solidifies, amplifies, and expands our real-world lives and relationships.

And SM can help you to expand your real-world business in a low-cost, effective way.