Five Sucessful Social Marketing Tips

The effects of social media on marketing and branding have caught many CMOs off guard. Just five years ago, it was conventional wisdom that social media would quickly peak and fade in importance. Then two years ago, CMOs found themselves scrambling to launch Facebook fan pages and Twitter streams, trying to catch up with consumers who appeared to be migrating in droves to social networks and smartphones.

While the 30-second TV spot has held its own, the evolution of social media marches on. It continues to grow, and is entering its third stage of evolution. It is now becoming the focal point for consumers and citizens to form strong links and communities centered around shared values and common goals to persuade corporations to participate in building a better world. A few brands have caught on with cause-conscious marketing initiatives like the Pepsi Refresh Project, Starbucks' Shared Planet, Walmart's Sustainability Index, Nike's Livestrong partnership, and Procter & Gamble's "Clean Water Blogivation" effort, to name but a few.

Social media represents a significant and permanent change that CMOs must embrace. Disingenuous efforts to fast track your social-media footprint simply by stockpiling "fans" will not only prove ineffective but will backfire. Savvy social-media customers know when there is no authentic commitment to engage with them.

The key today is CMOs must shift their strategies from trumpeting their brand as the "celebrity" (with all attention directed inward on themselves) to being the chief celebrant of their customers' community. This shift entails rethinking many fundamental elements of your marketing strategy. Here is a step-by-step strategy for brands to build customer engagement by leveraging the evolving tools of social media.

1. Define Your Core Values. Rethink how you want to define (or redefine) your brand. What are its core values? Its purpose? The answers should not be framed in terms of admirable but empty promises, but authentically humanistic values that are constructive and shareable within your brand community.

2. Get Leadership Buy-in. As CMO, you need to facilitate the adoption of these values throughout the company. It starts with getting buy-in from your CEO, and must extend down through the leadership and management ranks. You cannot let the inertia of the hierarchical organization become a stumbling block.

3. Align Employees Around the Values and Purpose. Your employee base is your first line of loyalty and word-of-mouth advertising for the brand, so you need to ensure that your brand's support for social cause resonates with them. A powerful way to do this is to invite the CEO to craft a video message or contribute to a blog especially for employees. Also, promote employee volunteer activities and celebrate the good works they do on their own time within the company culture.

4. Celebrate Your Customers, Not Your Brand. This step is one of the hardest for CMOs who have built their success on traditional broadcast thinking. It involves transitioning from a push to a pull strategy, from "me first" to "we first" thinking. One of the key shifts here is to share the brand's storytelling with your customers. You must invite them to co-author the stories your brand is telling and allow them to be partners in the distribution of content about your brand. The guiding principles of a pull strategy are as follows:

    Recognize that your story is now your community's story.
    Lead with listening rather than talking about your own brand.
    Start treating customers as living, breathing people with concerns about the world.
    Invest time and energy in building relationships as well as making profits.
    Expand from a sales focus into a service mentality.
    Become a day trader in social emotion by constantly monitoring your brand's reputation.

5. Focus customer service on engagement. Be mindful of the social footprint of your customers and see them as partners in disseminating your values rather than as purchasers of your products.

Taking these steps may feel uncomfortable at first, as they probably go against the grain of existing business models, profit centers and incentive schemes. But they are reflective of the new marketplace of customers that gravitate to social media at every chance they can to talk about their brand choices. Your goal is to authentically inspire your customers to become emotionally invested in the company's success not only because they love your brand but because they respect your values and purpose.

Article Source: http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/tips-social-media-marketing/227857/

5 Big Differences Between Press Release Submissions and Article Submission

Building traffic for a brand, whether a storefront or online requires lots of work, dedication, and above all, writing.  Creating content is how you reach the masses, but knowing what to write for whom you are trying to attract can be very different.  Creating quality content is no good if you aren't directing it to, and in a manner that will allow the reader to digest and use it to the best of their ability.

1. Press releases should be written for writers or news media and outlets.  Think of it this way, your press release is a sales pitch, the idea is to get someone as much information as possible in the least amount of time and contain content that can in turn be re-written or broadcasted to the ultimate demographic of the project you are pushing.

2. Press releases should not be written for your demographic.  When writing a press release, you need to assume that the person you're sending it to has almost no knowledge of the content.  Write the press release so the content is easily digestible and understandable by a broad audience.

3. Articles are usually longer and contain more in-depth compared to a press release with the goal of attracting readers and can be used as purely informational, to sell, to suggest or to link to another article, but to drive traffic.  Unlike press releases, articles are written specifically for the target demographic that is to read them, so utilizing keywords and looking at current trends is that niche is essential.

4. Articles can be written to optimize search engines to get inbound traffic.  They can also be written to link to, or have links in-bound from other sites, unlike press releases which are once and done pieces.

5. Press releases are time sensitive.  They are used within a narrow window to make an announcement, draw attention and start a buzz, but they usually point to or reference an article, so in may ways they work together but are definitely different.

Before you start writing, look at who will be reading your work and what you want them to do with it, take from it or remember.  Writing articles usually involves more time and a longer thought processes, they tend not to be time sensitive and most are written with the intent on being archived on the Internet for years to come.  Creating a press release should be more focused on the objective, getting the reader to tell other people about the contents of the release.  Providing them with the tools, information and data they need to do this in an easily readable, no-nonsense manner will increase the chances they follow through with it.

For more information of press releases and public relations contact the Montari Brooklyn Team at 1-855-937-2538 or visit us on the website at www.MontariBrooklyn.com