The Engaging Brand

Why Your Content Needs To Become Social

In a content marketing age, storytelling is important...why?

Because storytelling is the way humans explain the reasons, indeed it is the way historically we have explained history and reasons.

Because storytelling is evokes emotion and it is the emotion that makes us buy. There are few things that we NEED to buy, especially in a consumer society which is influenced by internet marketing. We need to create a reason to buy, or a reason to buy our products or services.

In a sense with social media marketing we are selling content not our brand. Therefore we want people to 'buy in/ to our reasons when we are thinking of marketing in business.

People don't buy features, they buy what the features will do for them. Therefore a story explains that...

People don't buy brands per se, they buy what the brand stands for.....Therefore a story explains that...

People don't buy from the 'company', they buy from people...How many times is it the person that has persuaded you to buy not the technical specifications sheet...Therefore a story explains that...

Content development, indeed content strategy is a package of showing the why, the what, the how of your product and service.

Storytelling is the mechanism by which your writing becomes human.

Related articles

5 Must Have's of Social Business

Podcast 395 - Storytelling in a Digital Age

Top 10 Reasons Why You Need a Content Marketing Strategy | Social Media Today

What is Social Media Storytelling?

How to Become a Social Business

Humans outside work are social beings. We join social communities, we love meeting up with friends, we love a good chat about what we think is wrong with the world.....

So why when we are faced with being social at work do we transform from being human to being business-like?

I think it comes down to the word professsionalism....we believe that to be professional you need to sound like a business, when in fact to be professional is to be authentic, to be true and to see the value you can create for others that will flow into your business. To create a social business you need to be ...social!

When you look at the fundamentals of being professional, they are also the fundamentals of being human.

So when we are social networking, when we are social marketing, when we are wanting to create a great customer experience we need to be human. We need to think like a human and act like a human. Now there are many human's on the planet...so which human?

The human that you should be is ....you. After all that is the person you know most, that you can be most like! If you the person is contrary to the brand, then you work for the wrong business....

Actions are a result of how we think so always remember.....in social media to act socially, think socially to transform from a business to a social business that customers want to connect to each day.

Related articles

Creating Customer Experience Through Social Media Innovation

3 Ways Social Business Will Develop

Marketing to Man - The Solitary and The Social Being

Are you a guide in social media marketing?

Social Business Trend for Next Decade

Are you a guide in social media marketing?

Self belief is such an important attribute to have and this was reaffirmed whilst reading the amazing book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, such a riveting depiction of life in the concentration camps...not from a political angle but a psychological angle. What is hope? To Frankl it is the basic human need for existence.

Whilst reading I read his quote about life and  about how he sees his role in helping people with their psychological problems

"A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is."

It struck me how similar this is to social media marketing and our function in leadership and management, after all social media is about understanding customer behaviour. If we change it to read

"Don't be the social media artist, be the social optician enabling the reader to see"

When we are shop online we are looking for something, something to entertain us, inform us, educate us..... Therefore when it comes to social marketing it is about giving, enabling the reader, guiding the reader not instructing the reader how to think...

Too often brands want to be the social media artist, but in reality that is not what the reader wants....think about a gallery, it is not just the painting...it is about the setting, the customer experience, the back story, the way the paintings tell a story. 

By ceding control to allow the reader to see the solution rather than forcing them to take your solution for them, you are trusting them and they will replay that trust with customer loyalty.

Google is your gallery....how you use that space to entertain, inform or educate the customer is up to you....but don't overstep into selling..let selling be the outcome of a worthwile search rather than the goal.

Is Your Goal Right for Social Media?

The business process and especially the sales process, is about network connections but never make the mistake that the connections are the same for both you and the customer.

Business want.. need to create connections to build customer loyalty.

The consumer chooses (or connects with) a brand that will take them closer to their dream. That dream may be living within their means, it may be to improve their life, to learn, to increase their social or cultural capital.

The problem - especially with social media marketing - is that brands see connection as their goal. They measure their social media (return on investment) efforts through followers or likes etc....but to build brand loyalty through social media it is not the number of connections per se, it is how many people believe that your brand can connect them to their 'dream'....

...because it is through this belief that they will move from a consumer of your social media content...to a buyer of your product or service. 

So how can you connect a customer to their dream...

• By creating social media that reflects their needs not your solutions.
• By creating social media that reflects their worries not your desires.
• By creating social media that reflects empathy to their life not empathy towards your goals

The fact is to connect someone to your brand cannot be a goal in itself...it is the outcome of putting your customer first. 

Related articles

Are you making your customer's sing?

3 Mindsets For Creating a Social Business

Why social media doesn't show your personality

Does ROI increase with Social?

Small business 'ignoring social media'

Creating Customer Experience Through Social Media Innovation

Innovation in business tends to be seen as relating to the product or service.

Now of course new products are vital but when it comes to social media, the business opportunity is even greater...

In social media marketing it is not just about innovations in technology, it is also about innovation in the website content.

We are human and we can be blown away with all the innovations from a technology perspective....and ignore a vital element of the customer experience.

"Content is what will engage the customer"

Too often in social media we fail to have a content strategy that looks at the social media prism of innovation.

A prism in optics is defined as a "transparent object..triangular withrefracting surfaces at an acute angle with each other and that separates white light into a spectrum of colors."

Social media marketing is about creating that spectrum of colours to your customers and that spectrum is created through creative thinking across the following areas

• Content, content, content - this is the lifeblood...the air that your customers read. So if it isn't valueable to their lives...it won't matter about the delivery mechanism.
• Social Delivery mechanism - how does your market consume content? How can you design a delivery that meets your consumers needs?
• Social Technology - how can technology help you achieve the top two items...this is the enabler of a great customer experience NOT the customer experience in itself.

Related articles

Social Business Trend for Next Decade

The Social Bill of Rights - Free Download

Five-Step Social Media Marketing Plan

5 Common Mistakes with Social Media

Why Social Media Works for Small Business

The Social Bill of Rights - Free Download

Many people ask me about how you know whether you are ready for social media marketing or even a social business.

A while ago I posted about The Social Bill of Rights and was asked to provide a social media download - so here it is...you can access a PDF HERE  Download The-social-bill-of-social-rights

Related articles

What is Social Media - Free E-Book

The Social Bill of Social Rights Test

Social Media Strategy is Like Building a Town

Niche Marketing - The Personal and Global Consumer

Niche marketing has grown in importance due to the globalisation of business. Business growth has been helped hugely by the Internet - increasing the size of the market but as the size has grown it has meant that understanding your market segmentation becomes even more important.

Niche marketing allows you to attract people by location, by need, by interests, by anything that you can determine which differentiates you from the competition.

Niche marketing has to balance two aspects

1. To understand the consumer and their needs to a much greater than extent than 10 years ago. Your global competition means that consumers have choice, so you have to show a stronger personal connection, a stronger understanding of the life of your customer. In a sense marketing to the individual not the market.
2. To understand that the consumer is a global citizen. That their life is not lived in a bubble and therefore niche marketing must understand the problems, needs of a global citizen. In a sense marketing to an individual who has to live under the pressures of the fast moving global world.

The Internet is not just a global market, it is not just giving the consumer more power than ever...it is also a combination of the two.

Social media marketing can be the bridge between mass marketing to a global world and recognising the personal needs of your consumer. 

Related articles

The Cause of Social Media Burnout

How Local Can Be Even More Powerful that Global

Reaching a Niche Audience as a Small Business

8 Ways to Ace Niche Marketing

Go Small or Go Home: Why Niche Marketing Works

Social Media Rules in 700BC

Lao Tsu (700 BC) spoke about social leadership in the following leadership quote

Go to the people
Live with them 
Learn from them
Love them

Start with what they know 
Build with what they have 
But with the best leaders
When the work is done 
The task accomplished
The people will say
“We have done this ourselves.”

Considering this was in 700BC - so before social media, before social marketing, before social networking online! - it strikes me there is so much business leaders can learn from this writing. I was thinking that if this had been written during the Internet age it might read like this

Go to the customer's

Connect with them

Learn from them

Respect them

Start with what they search for

Build with what they need

But with the best brands

When the social marketing is done

The goal achieved

The customer's will say

"We have done this ourselves"

Anna Farmery (2012!)

What strikes me is the idea of working together is NOT NEW! Social media is about respecting, collaborating, listening...next time you hear someone say it is new and a fad...refer them to this quote from 700BC!

Related articles

Social Marketing is Not Science or Art

How Social Marketing is Making the Invisible, Visible

What's Your Brand's Snowglobe?

Social Business Trend for Next Decade

Do you make a call to action or inspire people to try?

During a recent tweetchat we were discussing creating a call to action and I argued that call to action was maybe the wrong way to think about how to write a blog post or design a website.

Call to me -  encourages us to shout at the customer.

Action to me - encourages us to almost force the customer to click through.

The reason I don't like the phrase call to action is that it doesn't necessarily make business think

'how do I inspire the customer to know more'

I know it sounds pedantic but when asked "How to design a website" I prefer to speak about writing a blog or designing a website with one thing in mind 

'how do I inspire to try our products and services'

Inspire to try gives a different focus than call to action. It focuses upon the customer not your aim, it focuses upon value to the customer not value to you.

A business goal is not in your direct control - it is the customer who you need to persuade in order to deliver it. Persuasion is about inspiration. So when you are writing a blog then you need to understand the customer needs, the customer demographic and what will inspire them..

That is why how to, lists, insights, analysis are popular blog posts for heavily trafficked sites. It is not that they are ignoring their business objectives...it is that they understand the objective is to engage the customer in order to deliver those business objectives.

So the question for today is....how well do you inspire customers to try your brand?

Related articles

What to do when business is slow

3 Tips on Content Writing

Advertising or Social Media...Both!

Why simulate emotion in advertising when you can express it in social media?

Now of course advertising is an important tool for brand awareness, I don't mean to say that all advertising is bad...it isn't and it plays an important role in advertising business. 

The problem is often about the truth. Advertising in general is about translating emotion and to do that emotion has to be simulated in words, in speech or visually.

Simulated emotion can be difficult and that is where social media marketing has a role to play. Social media in business if enacted by people who are passionate about the brand, can remove the simulation and replace it with a true expression of the brand.

Social media marketing therefore should always be authentic, it's role is to express not simulate the brand. 

In this sense advertising and social media work hand in hand when done correctly. One simulates and the other backs up that simulation through expression on a day to day basis.

Marketing strategy is at it's core about two things

• Understanding your brand values and your brand personality. 
• Understanding the emotion in purchase and consumer behaviour. Connecting those two through great advertising to display it...and social media to demonstrate it on a day to day basis.

Related articles

3 Social Media Tactics for B2B Consumers

Five-Step Social Media Marketing Plan

How Building a Brand is a Process

What is the secret ingredient to being a social marketing rockstar?

Advertisers Boost Social Ad Budgets in 2013 | Alex Forss