Assignment: Gillen 179-206
This week's reading came from Paul Gillen's Secrets of Social Media Marketing. Chapter 10: Basics of Social Media Content focuses on the overall objectives you should establish before even picking out a social media. In other words, do research on your audience and what you're planning to accomplish. For example, businesses that have Facebook know that the majority of their (potential) customers are on Facebook as well. These businesses can use this to their advantage and post coupons or events that will draw customers in.
This chapter also focuses on common sense "secrets" that will make a social media publishing successful in the long term. These secrets include staying "relentlessly focused" and "seeking feedback," which are vital to any marketing campaign. However, Gillin uses these ideas and explains them in a way that any new social media marketer could develop a successful campaign. Long term success is a common theme in this chapter and coincides with the secrets previously discussed. In order to achieve long term success online, you have to be patient, focused, and committed. No social media ever succeeded because people just left it alone and expected it to happen.
For example, you open up a restaurant. You don't just open it, never show up, and don't put any effort into it. No, you spend every hour of every day there, promoting your great food, figuring out what works and what doesn't, how to get people in, and what your specialty is. It may take a while, but if you are determined, you will be successful. It is the exact same way with social media marketing.
Overall, if you have a good product, then reputation and word-of-mouth will create your success. It takes a lot longer for an online campaign to reach someone than it does a TV commercial that plays on every channel 15 times a day. However, once there, if the content is good, people will return every time they get online.
I like your restaurant example. I think that's a really great image to use when explaining to businesses how social media marketing works. As you said, it won't happen over night. Time and effort needs to be put into it, and it could take years to be a sensation if it even happens at all. I think that's also a good point to give businesses when they are deciding if social media is right for them. You don't just open a restaurant because everyone is doing it. It's a costly investment that could fail. Is this something businesses want to put their money into when it might work out? The pros and cons need to be seriously considered before jumping into social media. It's more complicated than one might think.
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