A Social Media Strategy is Like Your Love Life

I was recently having a conversation with a coworker about developing a social media strategy. He was unfamiliar with the medium, so I was more than happy to share my knowledge and experience. I can not tell you how many of these conversations I have had over the years. I have found them much more interesting when the person or people I am talking to are active and ask a lot of questions. That describes this conversation. Tim is a General Manager at a large hotel and has over 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry; however he will tell you that his knowledge of social media will fit in a thimble.



Through the first part of the conversation, he kept trying to come up with an analogy. We went through cars, old dogs, putting together puzzles, making a large dinner and many more before I had an epiphany. I said, “Let’s try this. Developing a social media strategy is like your love life.” It seemed to fit, so I went with it. As you read through this entry, think of the object or your desires and social media as two in the same.

That First Date
You are scared, but you finally work up the courage to ask the new out. You are so nervous that you nearly wet your pants. To your surprise, she says yes. The big day comes and the two of you hit the town. At first, the conversation is kind of awkward. Let’s be honest, there is not much conversation at all. Almost all of it is coming from you. You throw out your best one liners and stories, but your date is slow to respond. You go through the entire first date with very little conversation. Based the limited conversation, you would think you would give up. However, there is something very intriguing about this one and you want to try to go out again. You go out a couple more times and now the conversation is much better. Not great, but at least you are not having to do all of the talking.

Your Lesson: Don’t get discouraged when you are getting started. Continue to post and monitor. This is not a, “If you build it, they will come” scenario. You will need to get the word out about your efforts.

Playing the Field
You are really enjoying each other’s company, but you are not sold that she is the one for you. You decide to play the field a little bit and your attention wonders. You get so focused on other things that you almost loose her. She tries to communicate with you, but you don’t respond. She is upset with you and you have to make up for neglecting her. You respond to all of her questions and help her through some challenging issues. She is feeling better now, but you still have work to do.

Your Lesson: Don’t neglect your customers who find you and take the time to reach out to you. If you do not respond within a very short amount of time, you run the risk of creating a bad customer experience. Think of it as a customer calling you and you put them on hold for two days. In addition, it is advisable to keep you focus on one channel. Especially at first. Don’t spread yourself too thin and make sure you have the bandwidth.

You Find “The One”
You take that big step and decide to become serious. You quickly move past the “getting to know one another” stage of your relationship. At first, you don’t want to share you inner most secrets. In time, you learn that it is not all about you. Your two-way relationship involves listening, meeting more of your partner’s acquaintances and participating in the broader community of people. It is not easy, but you are learning.

Your Lesson: Don’t “talk at” people who are part of your network. Talk to them with the understanding and expectation that they will talk back. If all you do is sell your products, your community will become bored and leave. Find a way to give back and keep them engaged. Be open and honest. You may feel “exposed” at times and you may feel like you are giving up a little control of your brand. If you are not upfront with your community, you can bet that they will be with you. They will either expose you publicly or just leave your community for good. Address the challenges openly and honestly and you will be much better off.

Long Term Relationship
You are in for the long hall at this point. You are on cloud 9 and things are getting better every day. You have gotten to know one another very well at this point. Surprisingly, you learn a lot about yourself because of what your partner is telling you about yourself. You learn to be sincere with your communications. You know you are not perfect and now you are comfortable letting your partner know it. Let’s be honest, you always knew you were not perfect and your partner did too. Now, your partner loves and respects you even more now that you are able to be transparent and admit your flaws.

You think you are done? Not even close. This only marks the end of the honeymoon. Earlier, you neglected your partner and almost lost her. You were able to recover and get things back on track because it was early in your relationship. Now you have history and a much more involved relationship. Neglect your partner now and it will be much harder to recover. You are very comfortable together, but you don’t want to get overly comfortable. Peeing with the bathroom door open or letting one rip at dinner will set the relationship back several steps. You are yourself, but maintain control.

Your Lesson: Open up. Everyone knows you are not perfect including yourself. Don’t be afraid to expose your flaws. Keep the community engaged. You must keep looking for new content and new information that your community finds interesting and continues to put your company in a good light. Up to this point I have talked about “letting go”. As you community expands, you must also maintain a bit of control. Make sure content is relevant to your company and community. Control rants and social commentary the best you can. Keep in mind that anyone who posts or maintains your social media sites is an ambassador of your brand. It is easy to get too caught up in the “social” aspect of the medium. Maintain professionalism.

Babies!
Now it is time to grow your little family. It is not long before you hear the pitter pat of little feet. Or, maybe the tweeting of little voices. You are firm in your ideals and know who you are. This knowledge and experience is passed down to your offspring and they now share your message.

Your Lesson: As mentioned earlier, it is a good idea to focus on one of social media channels when you are getting started. This will help with quality control as well as help you develop and learn as you go as opposed to jumping in head first. Once you get that channel established, expand your social media strategy to include other vehicles. You will find that the same content can be shared across all channels.

Social media is a great way to build your customer base, but more importantly it also is a great way to retain your customers and keep them engaged. It is more work and more expensive to get that first customer than it is to keep them. Think about the dating scenario, playing the field can be expensive and exhausting. Wooing potential partners with nice dinners is tough on the pocket book! Once you have that first interaction with the customer, you have to work to keep them. Building a lasting relationship with the customer builds trust and loyalty. Social media, when engaged properly, can be a hugely successful tool when trying to keep your customers engaged. Make the commitment to social media and you will likely find a similar commitment from your customers to your company and your products.

Social Media To The Rescue! Well, kind of.

I was traveling last week and picked up a Men’s Health magazine as I often do. Still don’t understand why I don’t subscribe, but that is another story. There was an article about the fattest cities in America that caught my attention. Mainly because 5 of the top 10 cities are in my home state of Texas. Am I surprised? Honestly, not really. We are one of the most pedestrian unfriendly states. With the exceptions of a few cities and towns it is difficult to get out and walk. This makes it difficult to get out, stretch the legs and get some fresh air. Plus, it is so hot in the summer that we don’t really want to go outside even if there are things to do. So, we end up sitting around eating, playing video games and watching infomercials about how to loose weigh and get a tight tummy.

All of this made me think about the industries focused around health and wellness and what a huge role marketing and social media plays. Flip channels for a few minutes and you are bound to find at least three fitness related infomercials on at any time. If you ever have one of those sleepless nights and turn on the TV in the middle of the night it will seem like there is one on every channel. My favorite right now is for the Shake Weights. Have you seen these things? Do a quick search on YouTube and you will find the commercials. Ab Cirlce, Bowflex, The Ab Rocker and the list goes on. Let’s not get into the number of diets out there.

Do they work? Do they make those extra inches melt away like they say? I find myself interested from time to time. However, more often than not I find myself asking, “Who in the hell buys this crap?” Someone does. In fact, a lot of people do. This brings me to my main point, SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE RESUCE!!! Look up any of these products and right below all the paid seach ads you will find many reviews. If a company makes a claim in their infomercial that someone feels is not accurate, the web gives them great tools to let the world know. Furthermore, there are many parodies out there based on these products. See, we laugh at these products yet we still buy them. The bottom line is that if the product works you will find many people backing the product online. If it does not work, you will find even more people bashing the product.


OK, so now there is no excuse! Because of the web and social media it is clear to the world if these products do or do not work. This brings me next point, THE BEST PRODUCT IN THE WORLD WON’T WORK IF IT IS NOT USED. Let’s remember that we are talking about a multi billion dollar industry that is based more on the failure of its consumers rather than their success. Let’s be honest, they want us to stay fat. This way we will buy the next easy to use, 5 minute a day exercise product they come up with. If these machines really worked and they were really able to help us to loose those unwanted pounds that easily, this all would have ended with Suzanne Somers and The Thigh Master. Many of these products are great, but won’t work if they are used to hang laundry on.

Go into any gym the first week in January after everyone makes their New Years Resolutions and I guarantee you that it will be packed. Go to that same gym two weeks later and it will be a totally different story. I am not throwing stones. I am guilty of this. I have had gym memberships for years that don’t get used. Look, we have been told many times that “diets” don’t work. How many times do we hear that people lost 20 pounds only to gain back 30? I am no fitness expert, but it is obvious to me that being healthy is part of a lifestyle change not a quick fix. No “only 5 minute a day exercise” or “loose 10 pound fast” diet equates to a lifestyle change. In fairness, many people buy these products as a way to kick-start a healthy lifestyle change. My argument to them would be that people have been jogging and walking for thousands of years. You don’t need to spend a bunch of money to start a healthy lifestyle change. Even in my pedestrian unfriendly, hot home state you can find things indoors to get your heart rate up. How long has the stomach crunch been around?

Let’s come full circle and get back to my original point of SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE RESUCE!!! As I mentioned earlier, I am no fitness expert. However, there are thousands online. These people and resources are there for anyone. Most of them are free. If a person is interested in exercise product, learning more about the first steps to healthy living, loosing weight or cholesterol lowering foods the web gives them a great starting point and a world wide community to learn from.

Consumer Generated Media – Another Tech Bubble

Someone recently asked me if I thought we were heading for another internet crash. At the time I said, “No.” Since then I have changes my mind. If you have not seen the Tech Bubble Video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3qPRAAnOg) you are missing a funny one. It was not the video that changes my mind, but it is entertaining none the less. What has changed my mind in part are the number of customer review focused travel sites that have popped up in the past year and a half or so.

Everyone is familiar with TripAdvisor. It has become one of my favorites. It is funny how a site like this can move from being a new blip on the radar to a mainstream site so quickly. But look for a second at how many others are out there. Similarly, CGM has moved from being a buzz word to a tool in a very short time. Amazon has done a great job with their product reviews for years. The reviews were the primary tools my wife and I used when purchasing baby products when we were expecting years back. However, for this conversation I want to keep the focus on the travel industry.

There is no doubt that travelers use these tools. I attended a session where someone from JupiterResearch spoke about the popularity of these online tools. The asked a panel, “How did you use content created by other travels while researching your most recent trip (e.g., reviews, ratings, photographs, etc. from other travelers)? 60% answered, “Verify my hotel choice pre-booking”. They also stated that 58% There are lots of numbers that I could share about how people use these site, how many people use these sites, how they are going in popularity, etc. What is astonishing to me is how many of these sites there are. I mentioned TripAdvisor earlier. There are also sites like VibeAgent, WAYN, Vertual Tourist, TravBuddy, SmallWorldReconnect, RealTravel, TravelPost, IgoUgo, Wikitravel, Kango, FlyerTalk, etc. I am sure there are more, but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

If the majority of these sites ultimately fail, consolidate or are gulped up by larger companies it will obviously not be enough to create another tech bubble like we saw in the early part of the decade. But, let me remind you of some of the dramatic stories we were hearing about back then. Some companies you will recognize, others you will not. Interesting just the same.

• Boo.com – Spent $188 million in six month. Went bankrupt in May of 2000
  
• eToys.com - $80 per share in May 1999. Less than $1 in February of 2001


• Inktomi – Stock peaked at $241 in March 2000. Sold to Yahoo! for $1.63 per share in 2002


• TheLearningCompany.com – Purchased by Mattel in 1999 for $3.5 billion. Sold for nothing in 2000

The online travel market is currently oversaturated with these types of companies that offer similar features and functionality. Only time will tell if we hear similar stories about this wave of internet based companies in the travel industry. Regardless, something has got to give.