Be a Houdini in Social Media Marketing

Who's Houdini? He was a Hungarian-American illusionist and stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts a hundred years ago. And how does this tie into what we are trying to accomplish with Social Media? Everything! 

In today's class at Stanford I was introduced to a very basic concept that I never knew the right term for up till now. eWom, or electronic word of mouth, is one of our most powerful tools in Social Media Marketing. 

Back in the day when we went somewhere or bought something we really liked, we would share this via the word of mouth with individual targets. Times have changed with the impact of eWom, that now becomes a touch point with a pool of individuals through the sharer's network. 

How do I as a business discretely push the incentive of eWom? 

Imagine your customer is visiting your office, you have a logo awards wall (like the one the celebrities have their picture taken with as background, the I was there effect) - now you have the incentive. Invite your customer to engage by politely asking them to have their picture taken with you, in our all time favorite manner The Selfie. Tweet the picture and tag the guest - what is the first thing the guest is going to do when they see this? They RETWEET! This is just a simple example out of many on how to have a strategic social media approach to create engagement with your company and brand.   

Now you are probably wondering how you sustain the efforts and activity. Nurture and be proactive about your social media branding. Create the incentive for the user/customer to actively become part of your social media community by being inclusive and by inviting your community to become
co-editors of the content distributed through the channels you own. 

The self sustainable food chain of social media is free, but it is not easy.

Again this is why you need a designated content marketing machine for the purpose, and converting your initial prospects to customer, fans and even evangelists, is a positive development in creating that necessary content flow. 

The Levels of social media user engagement and its channels:
Prospect (SEO, AdWords/PPC, Traditional Media)
Customer (Your Website)
Fan (Social Media: Blogs, Facebook Twitter, Linkedin)
Evangelist (eWom, pushes content and drives community)

The Evangelist can be extremely positive to your community, however this can also be the customer from hell, and this particular customer is very powerful, and will go the extra distance to expose your business. They do not hit often, but when they do, it is of the essence that you treat the case cautiously and strategically. Do not fuel the fire by arguing at the same level through public media, learning from the Barbara Streisand effect will help you to damage control your brand exposire in case of emergency. 

Conceptualizing the social media success recipe is not an easy task, but by pushing a variety of content, and by having a content machine that follows a Fun-Serious rhythm algorithm through videos, images, infographics, polls, blogs, podcasts etc. you create an exciting space that people want to be part of.

Content is key like food at a party, and a party with no food is dead on arrival.

Another very interesting point that came up in class tonight was the Virtuous Circle. This was a fairly new concept to me in regards to Social Media, and the meaning of it is actually really simple, however the execution part gets much more complex. We all know that relationship building is key to any successful business. You must deepen the relationship with your audience through typing out meaningful content and distributing the content adequately through tweets, posts, snaps and photos. Get the eWom going. 

What do all social media platforms share? The concept of  I have a profile - the carbon lifestyle. Target the I. 

Here on Linkedin you can produce serious content, and use Facebook for Family, Friends, Fame, Fun & Fake. You probably wonder why a negative term such as fake is mentioned as a Facebook concept, the background for that is, that Facebook is simply an illusion. It is a happy place where we share happy content and make others happy with our happy thoughts and likes. And as we also know, unfortunately nothing is happy all the time, but it is ok, we drain those outlets elsewhere where it is appropriate. 

Email Marketing is an important part of a Social Media Strategy, and is by far the most powerful tool to build strong relationships. An email inbox is an intimate space shared with colleagues, friends and family, so if you make it there you are in. Furthermore if you become an asset to your user in shape of positive reception of the meaningful content that is relevant to the receiver and do not spam, this is a brilliant go-to-market strategy. 

The very last Golden Grains I would like to share with you are these amazing tools that will support your succesful social media journey. Use Feedly to find content, Bitly to manage and shorten your links, and finally Hootsuite to stay organized and active on all channels. Use the tools to feed on each other and on other people's content, and create an automation flow of your profiles' feed distribution.

And according to my professor, when people ask you how you do this? You answer:

I am amazing and I never sleep.
Feed the illusion.