By Priya Ramesh (newpr)
How to Stop Asking and Start Giving to Build Your Social Footprint?
I swear the next time, I see another brand asking me to “Like” or “Follow” them without giving me a reason to engage with them, I am going to actually take the time to email their social media contact and give them my two cents. If your digital agency is just responsible for daily tweets and Facebook updates, please stop and re-visit your social strategy. Wake up, look around and see the millions of brands now on social media pretty much saying the same thing as you. How are going to differentiate yourself and more importantly when do you stop begging your target audience to come join you on social channels? Instead, have you thought of putting together a quarterly content strategy that PULLS your audience into your conversation? And YES, Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine is absolutely right about leveraging the Freemium model if your brand is just getting ready to launch and has absolutely no social capital to ride on. Besides providing your product or service for free and charging for advanced features etc. later is in my mind a fantastic way to introduce yourself and show your real value (guaranteed your product works well).
I want to mention Brendan Hughes’ reminder about offering something of value to your target audience in his blog post on Social Media Today (one of my favorite sources on everything social). The excerpt from his post is as follows: “Give something of value. Providing your fans with content that is relevant to them that they will be interested in is bread and butter. But your fans who engage regularly are your best marketing tool. Reward them with stuff they really want and will remember you for — free stuff they will like, exclusive invites to events or gigs that no one else can get and even really decent discounts on your products or the products of others.” http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/195744
Now what you GIVE to your community may vary depending on the nature of your business and the classic legal/compliance implications etc. BUT you get my point. Stop asking me to like you if you have nothing of value to attract me to your Twitter and/or Facebook profile. Here are two examples of how CRT/tanaka helped its clients ENGAGE on social media and not just do daily tweets and Facebook updates for its clients.
MyWellness Scorecard Offers FREE assessment on your health regimen while increasing web traffic and social media footprint: When the Council for Responsible Nutrition came to us asking for a 
strategy to educate Americans on the importance of diet, nutrition, exercise and responsible use of vitamins and supplements for their Life…Supplemented campaign, we recommended them to create the My Wellness Scorecard in conjunction with their subject matter experts. This is a small questionnaire anyone can take to gauge their overall health quotient. I personally took this and as a vegetarian, got the pleasant reminder to start taking more iron-rich food. Now this is a valuable scorecard helping people get on with a healthy lifestyle. Of course the CRT/tanaka team also added the PR/social media tactics to promote the My Wellness Scorecard and the results were impressive:
- A total of 37,316 scorecard completes, which is a 130% increase year over year.
- Year III had more scorecard completes than Years I and II combined (26,317 total for first two years) using social media to promote the scorecard.
- 207,048 web visitors during Year III. As a reminder, Year III saw more visitors than Years I and II combined (191,236 total for first two years) and increased traffic by 72% over Year II.
- 78 blog mentions, 1,076 Twitter followers and 1,370 Facebook “Likes” in three months.
Mobile eGuide to First Help Small Businesses and ALSO Increase Buzz around Network Solutions’ Mobile Offerings: Our client, Network Solutions has time and again generated FREE, 
valuable small business marketing content to help companies stay on top of their online marketing efforts. As their PR agency, when we were asked to put together a launch plan for their Mobile capabilities, we recommended a FREE Mobile eGuide that will serve as a reference for small businesses who are looking for smart, low cost ways to promote themselves. The eGuide was compiled by small business thought leader, Rieva Lesonsky and her very smart team at Growbiz Media. We offered the Mobile eGuide to all participants of a FREE Livestream that was moderated by Rieva Lesonsky and well known small business technology experts like Ramon Ray, Jennifer Shaheen, Tim Gorin and Navin Ganeshan. Combining the Livestream conversation with a link to the FREE Mobile eGuide for the 100+ participants generated over 2.1M impressions using the hashtag #nsmobile.
So start small, think different and invest in content strategies that PULL your target audience versus daily updates begging them to join the conversation. They will join and spread the brand message provided you have given them a solid reason to engage with you. Let’s go, let’s rock it! If you have tried and tested any new ways to increase your following by doing something different, please share your learning! Thank you!
One Trackback