Social Media Marketing - tips for success, and what not to do!

I attended a one-day course yesterday, presented by Luke Mitchell from @reachstudents on Social Media Marketing. With Luke's permission here is my summary of the day (part 1!).

The day worked around consideration of a triangle of Aims, Value and Audience.

Aims: We first considered what we were trying to achieve (ranging in our case from contacting old alumni to promoting events and new schemes).
Value: We then thought about what we had to offer (knowledge, new content, customer support etc). If you have no value to offer you are probably wasting your time.
Audience: And finally considering who we were marketing to, and where they might be. The consensus is that most undergraduate students are on Facebook, with pockets using other sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

The secret to social media marketing is to find a method of marketing that matches all three of these; you have to have something to offer to someone and know what you want out of it. Once you know this you can match the most appropriate social media. This is best illustrated by a pair of case studies where companies got this very right (and very wrong!).

1. Habitat - how to make Twitter uses hate you by getting the etiquette all wrong

Habitat decided to use Twitter to raise awareness of special offers. They employed an agency to help increase visibility of their tweets, and the agency decided to use trending topics to boost views. Only they happened to use hashtags which had nothing to do with habitat. Like hashtags relating to the Iran election (#MOUSAV) for example.

image reproduced from: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/103334

The Twitter community reacted very badly to this, accusing Habitat of spamming them. Habitat tried to make the problem go away by removing all the tweets, but the internet doesn't forget that quickly. For more on this case study read socialmediatoday. Clearly Habitat did not understand the codes of behaviour of their chosen medium and by trying to 'Black Hat' they were trying to cheat the medium.

2. IKEA - How to get users to drag their friends to your Facebook profile

IKEA knew their audience were on Facebook, and wanted to get them enagaged with their new store. Their store manager created a Facebook profile, and posted photos from the catalogue - then they opened a competition. Whoever first tagged themselves or one of their friends in the photo (ie tagging yourself as a chair) won the item.

image reproduced from: http://www.opedefeijao.com.br/2010/08/24/sensacional-as-20-melhores-campanhas-de-midia-social/

The photos then started appearing in users streams on updates, encouraging more and more friends to visit the page. Users were effectively promoting Ikea personally, and signing themselves up to a mailing list.

Ikea had something to offer - prizes, and knew exactly how to engage their audience. The best way to learn more about this case study is to watch Ikea's video about it.
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We discussed many more examples on the course but these two I think illustrate the risks and rewards of social media marketing nicely.

Both cases stemmed from a marketing agency having a novel idea of how to use the existing technology, and doing a copycat is never as effective as being the first, so I don't suggest you copy what Ikea did. I don't believe you can teach people how to have novel ideas, so I'm off to think of something cool to do on Twitter that no one has tried before...hmmm...