A social media strategy is so yesterday

Just getting round to adding a social media strategy to your marketing mix? It's time to rethink. Even if a social media marketing strategy was new to you last week, you need to play catch up...and fast.

I've been online for just over 15 years. In that time, many internet marketing 'fads' have been and gone. Some have evolved into more exciting things. Others have just melded into 'the way we all work or exist online'.

Social media, previously known as Web 2.0, is one of the latter.

Social media isn't a separate entity, waiting for you to focus on it and develop the relevant strategy or portfolio of identities on different social networks, bookmark sites, micro blogging platforms or any other.

The world has changed, moved on, particularly where marketing is concerned. The last 15 years have seen some enormous changes in marketing, and many, many people, businesses and agencies have failed to keep up with or grasp the significance of the changes.

Marketing stopped being about you years ago. For a long time now, all marketers have had to adjust to a world where commerce had less power than it realised and much less than it hoped. The consumer voice has been getting increasingly loud over time, and the Internet has given it several hundred decibels more than any corporate can ever dream of. (Except maybe Google who seem absolute experts in what they are doing, although the naysayers are never far away, even from the big G.)

Consumers have a secret you may not know - they know how to find others of like-mind.

So, if you could come up with the single most important strategy you should be adopting in 2010, what would it be? Tweeting? Creating a Facebook page? Adding your links to every social bookmark site? Joining multiple forums and perfecting your sig file? Uh-uh. Nope. None of the above....try again.

Setting aside budget and human resources to deploy your social media strategy? Well, you'd be getting closer but it's not entirely about spending money and people's time either.

What you need to do is deal with every single one of your potential customers as a human bean. And to do that, **you**, yes **you** need to become more human, less corporate. Less about targets and more about interaction, conversation, establishing relationships, developing dialogues.

Think marcomms and then drop the bit that is 'marring' your communications!

It doesn't matter which so-called 'social media tool' you use. Get it right in one place and word will get around. There's nothing you can do to stop that. Which is nice ;o) People will use the tools which suit them to find the info they are seeking. They will ask their peer group, friends, colleagues, random strangers through any one of multiple sites. Can you really afford to be on all of those sites, monitoring and watching for a keyword or opportunity to post a reply? Waiting on the off-chance that someone may happen past and find you?

No. You wouldn't do that in the real world, would you?

Just as any good host or hostess will tell you, you need to work the room. You can pick 10 rooms to work as a business, or just one. Whichever you choose, you need to work it/them very well.

Whilst you may, for instance, choose Twitter as your 'room', it is highly likely that your audience will come from far and wide. You will be retweeted (RT) by people who have automated all their feeds into one - so you may be found on Facebook, Digg, Stumblupon, Delicious, an RSS reader, blogs, in forums etc just from a single RT. You don't need to be in all those rooms though to benefit from the original RT.

What you need to be doing is listening to your audience, communicating with them, responding to the emails, tweets, phone calls, orders. You need to direct people to you, for sure, with information that others share, and then listen, respond, help, talk, deal with complaints, offer advice, a shoulder to cry on,

It has to be about 'getting personal'. You can have 10, 100, 1000 loyal followers. 100s of thousands if you are a celeb. But if you do not treat each one as special, you will lose them.

Know them by name. Remember the last hiccup, celebration, or trauma in their life. Follow up with after-sales questions and advice and help. Make it personal. It's got nothing to do with social media and EVERYTHING to do with treating people as people.

If you are a business of 1, remember that you can really only cope with 150 'friends'. (You are a primate - I presume - and therefore this is a known fact). Choose your friends carefully and nurture them. If you are a business of 3 people, 5 people, 10 people, then look after 150 potential loyal followers, subscribers, customers etc * your staff numbers committed to being online.

Remember though that one bad apple can sour the whole cart so watch out for those people. Deal with them. Not harshly, but gently. Redirect them to somewhere more suited to their needs. Don't banish them and ignore them.

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

An irate complainant can do huge amounts of damage to your online reputation. Nip malcontent in the bud. Woo your difficult customers, don't just ignore them as they can go on a crusade to destroy you and you will be hard-pushed with your resources to look after the good guys in your network. Deal with them as you would an unwanted or belligerent ex-friend. And always remember to protect your loyal friends first and foremost. Help them. Advise them. Don't hard sell them. Introduce them to each other, knowing that for that contact, you may be remembered forever - even if it seems to have cut you out of the loop.

And if you think this isn't marketing - think again.

Why do you do exhibitions, attend breakfast meetings, join the Chamber of Trade, or even place an advert? It is to attract like-minded individuals to you. People you can network with, talk to, share contacts, ideas, sell your amazing product to.

Think out of the business box. Why do you go out with friends? Down the pub? To a restaurant, concert, the theatre, or to see a film? Is it to sit in a wholly isolated bubble all evening? Of course not. It's all about INTERACTION. With friends, strangers, even the lady selling popcorn, the barman, the waitress in the restaurant.

Many things you could do at home, if you didn't want to 'get out for a bit'. You aren't a hermit in your personal life, so don't be one in business.