How to Optimize your Organization’s Social+Mobile Touch Points
Hint: If The Social/Mobile Context Seems Limiting, You’re Looking at it Wrong
I once heard Lauren Freedman, owner of the eTail group say:
“Deploy your brand across all touch points yet take advantage of channel specific elements that shoppers demand.”
She’s pretty smart.
Although I heard her say this a few years ago, the message still rings true. It’s simple, makes total sense and yet so many brands have yet to embrace it. Let’s take a look at social + mobile, a few strategies for making the most of their specific elements and the “rules” of participation within them.
People spend the bulk of their time in the news feed. It’s a great context to reach, engage and convert but be mindful of how you participate in this channel.
Respect
When a fan ‘likes’ a brand page, they have granted you permission to participate with them – right along with their friends and family. Respect this and don’t shout marketing messages or repeatedly drown out the communication of others that share the space. Social, especially on mobile, is personal and once invited in, you must earn the right to stay.
Promote dialog
Social is a platform for conversation, not presentation; publish content that promotes dialog. You can do this through post copy that includes a call-to-action and by making the most of varying post types like polls, offers or social rich media. Remember – in addition to copy and post type, the content that promotes dialog will be that which is timely and relevant to your audience.
Engage and convert
By now, many of us are accustomed to engaging fans on Facebook. We post pictures, polls and contests and get excited when we generate a lot of likes, comments and shares. Once you engage your audience, make it easy for them to take the next step. Make it easy to explore deeper, see more videos, sign-up, etc. Your consumers and your boss will thank you.
Toyota creates dialog across social-mobile
Twitter creates a unique opportunity for brands to add authenticity to marketing communications. In the end, it’s all about people interacting with people. Here are a few things to keep in mind while communicating with your customers on Twitter.
Validate
If someone takes the time to mention you, acknowledge it with a reply. If you’re a mega-brand with a fire hose of incoming tweets, 1:1 communication may be hard to manage at scale but a ‘thank you to our followers’ tweet can work to accomplish the same validation as can a tweet with a link to exclusive content, promo or first-look.
Develop a customer service strategy
You may not want to tackle this type of communication on Twitter, but if your customers are reaching out to you on this channel, you need to have a strategy for handling it. A popular way brands meet this demand is by creating a separate customer service Twitter account. This separates the workflow and management of customer service and marketing. A few examples of brands doing this well are ASOS ‘Here to Help’ and Comcast ‘Comcast Cares’. Regardless of how you manage it, monitoring and responding is essential to managing your brand and keeping your customers happy.
Comcast Cares: Twitter customer service
Drive deeper engagement
Tweets, similar to search ads, are one of the most minimal ad units available and they are made to be read and clicked, that’s all. Think more about the post-click experience. Is it mobile optimized? Over 70% of users on Twitter are on a mobile device. Does it compel your followers to explore deeper, to read more or watch another video or opt-in? It should.
Pinterest creates an opportunity to showcase contextual views of a product–not just the product itself but who’s using it, wearing it, etc. and how. This fuels inspiration and promotes exploration and if all goes well, can lead to conversion.
Be ready for conversion
Pinterest is a great platform for discovery but the end game is all about conversion. The #1 Pinterest marketing mistake: pins that lead to non-existent websites. One sure way to irritate potential customers is to lead them to a 404 page when they expect to find a landing page with ample information, more photos, and the ability to purchase. So, mind your urls!
Don’t give up the lead
Now, sometimes a link to a non-existent url is unavoidable – a product may be out of stock, the promotion completed, etc. but that doesn’t mean you give up the lead (the average order value from Pinterest referrals is $80.54!). Instead, brainstorm other tactics to keep visitors’ attention. Check out this nice post from GetElastic for a few idea starters.
YouTube
Video is an easy to consume medium, making it a perfect channel for showcasing “dense” content like a how-to video or clips of your product in use by real customers.
Be informative
When viewed by a potential customer, “dense” content can be very helpful in the decision making process. You have to see it to believe it, right? YouTube creates the perfect opportunity for brands to create proof points around their products/services.
Make your videos easy to find
Video production takes time and money and if you’re putting this degree of effort in, make the most of it by optimizing your video content. Follow this checklist for video optimization for best results.
Use YouTube tools and tricks
YouTube is massive and while most video discovery actually happens in Google search results, there are tools and tricks within YouTube itself to help you drive views. Solicit or even buy “response videos”, post your own videos as responses to other, more popular channels, or buy more prominent/relevant placement. Here’s a handy video (of course) on how to use video ads on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bss4RTJtbTA
Instagram’s easy photo and video sharing creates opportunities for your customers to share in the content creation workload. Not only that, it serves as third-party verification by showcasing people using your products – building credibility for your brand.
Be valuable
As with the other social networks, customers demand that you provide valuable, interesting content. Instead of blatant product pushing, showcase contextual photos of your products and brand in the “wild.” For a few ideas, check out 5 ways to promote products on Instagram.
Harness the power of your customers
Free People is a great example of a brand doing this well. They urge customers to post lifestyle photos of themselves wearing Free People clothes. Then, they take a selection of those photos and highlight them on their website. This strategy is smart in that it copies the contextual photo born in Instagram and pushes it to another channel, thereby spreading the verified content around the web.
Free People harnesses the power of its customers
Video can be great
The new Instagram video functionality is exciting but, like Vine, there’s no set recipe for creating compelling short video. Experiment, let your most creative people have fun and watch to see what other people do. Here’s a very early set of reasonably OK Instagram videos — http://dashburst.com/best-instagram-videos/
Mobile
According to Nielsen’s The Mobile Consumer Report, 55% of US mobile users are now using a smartphone. Mobile technologies are rapidly evolving and with each new hardware innovation, using mobile for activities that were in the past reserved solely for desktop, gets easier.
Make the entire experience mobile-friendly
If a customer encounters your message on mobile, then the full path they follow from the initial touch like a mobile ad, to the site and through the shopping cart should all be optimized for mobile.
Use mobile features
Consumers demand that the brands they love keep up by making consumption and conversion on their mobile devices just as easy as desktop. Mobile friendly features like scrolling as opposed to tabbed pages and big form fields for clumsy fingers are just a few ways to make life easier for your valued customers.
There’s a lot you can do on mobile
It seems like the smartphone context is extremely limiting but don’t be fooled, there are many things your customers will gladly do on their phone. Watch videos, read interesting articles, flip through a lookbook, submit an address or a few form fields to access something valuable, play a game, download an app, etc. Think bigger.
So there you have it. Just a few ways that you can exceed your social and mobile customer expectations, creating brand loyalists while you’re at it. Seen any great examples of these tactics in action? Share them here.
Category: Mobile Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing
