Indelibuzz

ONE: RE-THINK YOUR STRATEGY.
For many brands, there’s still an unwavering focus on fan count (the number of likes) on both Facebook and Twitter. While everyone enjoys having a big community, and growing numbers to report to management, it’s much more important that fans you do have stay engaged over time.

No product or service exists in a vacuum. It’s important to remember that Facebook is the place for your fans to talk about their unique experiences with your product. Why it matters in their lives. Your job is to facilitate that process.

Everything you do on social should inspire evangelists and potential fans to submit more original content. More of their own stories. The greater the level of participation, the more potential customers you create.

TWO: SEQUENTIAL TACTICS.
One area where even reasonably sophisticated brands fail on social is the timetable for tactics. Here’s why: Let’s say you’ve put a good deal of time and expense into developing a cool contest or a new smartphone app. It has to be created, tested, implemented and evaluated. This requires a lot of attention. So once the new tactic is up and running (Thank God, it’s working!) there’s nothing ‘ready and waiting’ to follow it with.

Tactics like custom polls, contests, sweepstakes, smartphone apps and custom Facebook pages will all help build fan count and engagement. However, what really matters is what happens after all your new fans have signed on. How do you plan to keep them engaged over the next six months? What’s in the pipeline?

THREE: REALISTIC INVESTMENT.
Social media may be free for each of us, but it’s not free for brands to take real advantage of opportunities there. Just as Facebook was set up as a way to harvest information that can be sold to marketers, individual brands need well-funded programs to stay ahead of competitors. Facebook advertising is a great value, but not inexpensive.

Brilliant thinking never comes cheap. Neither do the best smartphone app ideas, social microsites, innovative tactics or even intelligent strategy. New opportunities are happening almost every day to make social work better for your brand. But in order to capitalize on them, you need to hire social marketing pros who are dedicated to staying ahead of the curve.

FOUR: IMPROVE FAN ENGAGEMENT VIA NEW APPS.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: Anytime Facebook implements a new feature, it may look like was designed to ‘improve the site’. But the reality is it was implemented to make Facebook more valuable to marketers.

The buzz for big brands on Facebook these days is all around Open Graph. This is a big step forward because it enables people to connect around topics they’ve already expressed interest in. Amazon was an early adopter, and that was before Facebook added 60 new sharing apps that look for ‘action verbs’ in your newsfeed. Timeline apps are starting to pop up as well, from brands like Ticketmaster, Rotten Tomatoes, Foodspotting, TripAdvisor and others.

FIVE: IDENTIFY EVANGELISTS.
The primary reason why sheer number count is not the be-all, end-all when it comes to social media is only a small percentage of those people are vital to your program. Simply put, your true brand evangelists are doing the vast majority of the work for you – by posting, responding, sharing and informing friends. Smart brands are identifying these individuals, and then creating tactics that make them feel rewarded.

There are a number of tools that have come out in the past several months that make the task of finding your evangelists easier. Here’s a story on Mashable today that features three of these.

SIX: INNOVATE.
The best marketing and advertising has always been done by those willing to try something new. So be brave and shake up the works a bit. ’1984′ by Apple anyone? The same rules apply here. Don’t just mimic. Find someone with real imagination and hire them to create your program elements.

SEVEN: INTEGRATE WITH ALL OTHER MARKETING EFFORTS.
This might seem like an easy one, but you might be amazed how infrequently it happens. Make social a part of all your other communications: Advertising. PR. Collateral. Packaging. And especially your website. And not just the little blue ‘F’ you can put there. Show some content from your customers on your home page. After all, they funded it.

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