Social media should form part of a company's traditional marketing strategy and must be run with as much care and consideration, said marketing experts speaking at the Social Media World Forum Africa last week.
A panel discussion featuring SAfm's head of marketing, Sihelele Sixaso, and Standard Bank's senior manager of digital and direct marketing, Bellinder Carreira, talked about how companies can integrate social media into their current strategies.
Carreira cautioned: “Don't step into social media just for marketing. Have a long-term strategy.”
Social media is no longer a Holy Grail of marketing, the panel added; it must seamlessly form part of what a business is already doing. Engagement in and of itself does not put money on the bottom line.
In practice
Mike Anderson from Meltwater Buzz gave some steps businesses can use to effectively implement a social media strategy:
* Listen. Start listening to what people are saying about the brand on social networks. Track both the company's own brand and competitors.
* Define why. What does the company want to achieve? Don't answer “fans and followers”; list genuine business goals.
* Strategise. Define channels that suit the business and why they do.
* Engage. Take time to think about why the company wants to and who it wants to engage with. Include customer care.
* Measure and evaluate the success of social media campaign. Measure against the goals listed in step two.
A case study from Cell C, presented by Kevin Jonck, the company's Web manager and strategist, showed how one company went about implementing these steps. Cell C's social media marketing strategy formed part of its re-branding last year.
Jonck said the ultimate goal is for social media to be a genie that can help customers solve their problems as soon as they start having them.
When it comes to listening, aside from using social networks to provide customer care, Jonck said Cell C keeps a close eye on how people compare their brand to competitors and uses these insights to strategise.
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