Four Steps to Social Media Marketing Success
Companies that appropriately engage in these four steps will take their product or service to the top.
Companies that appropriately engage in these four steps will take their product or service to the top.
Whether you’re a business or an individual, you must wrestle with many complex issues for social media. These can often be overwhelming. Where to even begin?
Rather than be paralyzed, it’s often best to understand that there are four simple, yet critical, steps to social media:
It’s easiest to think of it as a stairway, and the diagram is laid out as such. If you learn anything from this column, it’s that you need to take that first step. It’s also the most important one. As showcased in the diagram, the four steps are:
Companies often enter the social media fray and jump straight to step four, selling. This is the worst thing you can do, and it won’t be effective.
You need to start with step one, which is listening. Without listening, the other three steps won’t achieve any degree of success. As many have said before me (including Li Evans), there’s a reason we have two ears and one mouth.
Notice in the diagram that the steps for the customer than happen in the reverse order of the company. This is huge. It’s these steps that the customer takes within social media that give an exponential return (good or bad).
If it makes it easier to grasp, you can consider these steps 5, 6, 7, 8. This is where the magic can really happen.
That’s the beauty of social media. As a company, if you appropriately engage in the four steps, then the stairs in the diagram act more like an escalator (pun intended) rather than a traditional stairway. It will create a positively circular motion, which, with the appropriate greasing (effort), will continue to take your product or service to the top. And that is the true beauty of Socialnomics.
Some of the best strategies in social media are often the simplest.