This is the 5th installation in a multi-part series on Social Media Marketing. In the past 4 articles, we have established why Social Networks and Social Media is important to businesses and organizations – as this comes down to the fact that’s where people spend their time today. We have established that if done right, a social media marketing strategy can be effective at raising awareness of your brand and business and driving prospective new customers to your web-door front. Content is a major driver to grab attention and engagement. But creating captivating, engaging, relevant, and timely content is very hard to do without advanced products like Social Flash Media’s MOBILE product offering.
We want to shift our focus in this article and discuss the importance of virality and engagement in terms of Social Media Marketing efforts.
Scaling challenges – from Broadcast TV to Social Media Marketing
When broadcast TV was at its peak of advertising attractiveness, it enabled a large company to reach tens of millions of possible new customers through a single advertisement. Of course, by its nature, it could not be targeted easily to a certain demographic or age group. Regional choice was viable, of course. Nonetheless, it offered scale that at the time was unparalleled. Broadcast advertising was generally used by large companies with large budgets that wanted that level of scale reach and had the money to pay for it.
As we fast-forward to today, Social Networks now have more than 2 billion people engaging with them in an interactive, digital way. Much information is known about each participant. Companies large and small can target audiences by focusing on a specific sub-sector which can be defined by gender, geography, income, education, political persuasion or other demographics. This targeting is extremely powerful, but of course, it comes at a very high cost. Companies can pay between $1 and $2 per click and as high as $50. [1]
For small businesses and organizations, the goal is to raise brand and venue awareness to the right segment of people at the lowest cost possible. In most cases, the current customers they have are the best indicator of what the best segment is to target.
One way to reach “customers like the customers you have already” is to leverage their personal social networks to gain access to people that are more than likely “like them”. By way of example, let’s say you observe that your customers are about 80% woman between 28 and 55, married, have a university education and have a household income level above $100,000 per year. The odds are that their network of friends have a similar age, education and income level – albeit likely woman and men.
If you can capture your customers having a great experience at your venue in a photo, and you send it to them and they share it to their social network, then likely you have been able to get your branding and awareness message out to a lot of prospective customers much like the happy customers you have today.
Just how powerful and effective this can be is not well understood. It keys from two sources of incredible leverage – the personal social network of the happy customer and the implicit endorsement by your customer about your venue by way of the shared post.
With the right technology such as Social Flash MOBILE, this allows you to create potentially hundreds of unique campaigns targeting hundreds of unique audiences all by simply capturing and sharing experiential images on social media. For companies looking to scale “unique” campaigns to large aggregate audiences, this is very powerful technology.
Virality is the New Math
Let’s say you are using Social Flash Media’s mobile application to capture the engagement and excitement of your customers with an iPad. You send the photo link to your customer’s mobile phone or email address. They receive the text message link and view the photo, instantly pressing the “Share on Facebook” button. Here is where the leverage from your customer’s social network begins to kick in.
The old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” was devised as a metaphor in 1927, more than 75 years before Facebook existed. Today it’s estimated that the average person has 338 friends within their Facebook personal network. [2] Suddenly, if a user posts a photo, it can be seen instantly in many of the news feed of their personal network.
Our observations in working with our customers shows that for each photo shared on Facebook, on average about 30 of their friends will “like” the posted and 3-4 will make some engaging comments. On average, more than 100 people have seen the branding of the business/venue from that photo post. With the “smart-posts” done through Social Flash Media’s marketing platform, another 25-30 people will click to the website link of the business/venue all from that one photo shared on Facebook.
An engagement is defined as a post, re-share, like or comment. As you can see from the above, a shared picture will, in our observations, cascade into 50+ digital engagements.
When you take advantage of leverage, you accomplish more with less. What we have described is a way in which you can achieve engagement activity and click-throughs at a tiny fraction of what it would cost to achieve by advertising. The combination of incredible content and network virality makes this all possible.
It is clear from the math above that leverage from your Customer’s social media network goes far beyond simply putting the photo strictly on the company page or having your customers take and post their own selfie. The happy customer has become a brand ambassador for your business, has provided a highly trusted endorsement and consequently has driven lots of interest to your business through their network.
That single photo, through its travails on Social Media, has become the cornerstone of a Social Media Marketing campaign. And that picture’s worth is well beyond 1,000 words in our interconnected world. With the use of the Social Flash MOBILE app and platform, it is worth real client and brand engagement!
Summary
The value engaging a person with your brand is that it raises awareness and is the first and most crucial step towards a deeper discovery and engagement. The more people engage (from seeing your brand to remembering your venue to finding out more information by clicking on your web page), the more likely they are to move from your web front-door to your venue front-door over time. That will translate to new customers and revenue. Driving that engagement can be much easier with the right technology tools at your disposal.
See more info on the Social Flash MOBILE app with pricing options.
[1] The WordStream Blog, “How Much Does Google AdWords Cost?”.
[2] Steven Mazie, “Big Think”
Coming Up Next …
In our next part to this series, we will show you a real-world case study of a success in social media marketing using Social Flash Media’s MOBILE product.
Volume 6 (up next): A Case Study – A small business succeeding wildly with Social Media Marketing
Links to Additional Resources
Volume 1: Social Media – A Jargon Primer
Volume 2: Can Social Media Marketing be used to win New Customers?
Volume 3: The 5 Most Important Things to Know about Social Media Marketing
Volume 4: The Content Challenge for Social Media Marketing
Case Study: A Movie Theater
Case Study: A Brewery and Restaurant – Oasis Brewery
Case Study: A Baseball Team – The Frisco Rough Riders