The Rules of Engagement

For the uninitiated, navigating the un-chartered waters of social media marketing can be anything but smooth sailing.  Of course, there are those who intentionally cruise into the territorial waters of others to secure a sale.

Just last year, a new LinkedIn contact did not take more than a week before inviting me to sign up for a seminar being organised by the company for which she works...like I was interested? That’s an example of a company that used my LinkedIn page as an avenue to send an unsolicited sales message. Do I hear “SPAM” anyone?

Then around mid-March, I learned of a product that I wanted to purchase but did not recognise it at any retail outlets I usually frequent.  When I sent a direct message on Facebook, a curt, vague response was given as to where I could find the product.  So, I had to let them know they could not want my business with that reply.  It so happened the person who saw the query, had created the Facebook page, but was now living overseas and could not supply the information needed – hence the original response.  However, my terse comment prompted a more congenial reply with an explanation and a contact number for my follow-up. 

Much better customer service that! Is not the purpose of social media engagement for a commercial entity, the generation of positive word-of-mouth among customers? Lest we forget, the United Breaks Guitars case study that became an instructional video (Barker et al. 2013) is an enlightening example of how easy it is to damage a company’s reputation when a post highlighting a negative reaction goes viral. In the case of Dave Carroll, within 24 hours his essentially homemade video went viral with more than 50,000 views. What was it? A song on how United Airlines damaged his guitar and never compensated him for it ).

So, from a business perspective, what is required to engage in social media marketing. 

(i) Listening to the conversations in the particular social media channel is critical. There is need to know what customers are saying about your organisation, your business sector. 
(ii) Then, to enter the conversation, recommended actions include showing appreciation for mentioning the product and inviting further contact with the entity (Barker et al. 2013).
(iii) Finally is content creation and beginning the conversation across channels where customers are found (Barker et al. 2013).

On monitoring sites in Barbados, companies seem to go straight to posting content without analysing the audience. This seems a recipe for disaster. 

To be successful with social media campaigns think PARC, which means being: 

•  P – participatory, interaction is key. Reply to questions, thank customers for posts. 
•  A – authentic by responding honestly and sincerely with a dash of personality. Humour and anecdotes can be very engaging.
• R – resourceful, which means giving advice such as how-to-videos and articles on related matters. This Barbadian-born chef, living in London, got it right in an effort to redefine Caribbean cuisine on Instagram with more than 90,000 followers and 52.4K likes and more than 10,000 comments. Quite a delicious page for fans of fine food, creatively presented.
• C – credible, as seen in terms of either knowledge or expertise, or trustworthiness of the brand (Barker et al. 2013).

Ultimately, the goal of any social media strategy is to build trust in the brand. Create interest in the brand and generate positive word-of-mouth that lead to sales or support depending on the nature of the entity engaged in social media marketing. 


REFERENCES
Barker, M., Barker, D., Borman, N. and Neher, K. (2013) Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach. International Edition. Boston: South-Western Cengage Learning.