Moving beyond the basics
Over the past year, I've noticed a significant increase on overall adoption of social media by corporations. More importantly, I'm seeing overall sophistication improve, due in part to recent traction achieved by a new wave of internal social media marketing professionals and a growing number of agencies providing supporting services and tools. Unfortunately, a vast majority of companies are still underachieving when it comes to truly harnessing the power of social media. I aim to address that shortcoming in this article.
eMarketer recently conducted a study of social media tools and tactics favored by marketers. As if to validate my concerns about the general level of savvy and competency within corporate marketing departments, you can see below that the most popular efforts are relatively remedial and tactical (social sharing links and basic content). Measurement is equally lagging; most marketers are satisfied measuring gross quantities of "likes," friends, and followers (versus engagement or revenue).
In a recent article, "9 ways to lose friends and alienate people in social media," I outlined the most common mistakes corporations make in social media. My hope in writing the article was to highlight the chasm between doing social and doing it well. A few years ago, I wrote "6 social media platforms at a glance" and the follow-up, "6 socially savvy brands." I suggest newcomers to social media read those foundational articles before moving on to advanced tactics, as outlined in this article.
That said, many companies seem to be fairly well-versed in basic social media tactics, but they're refusing to go further. They are not adopting more advanced strategies, tactics, tools, and techniques. Thus, I've put together the following recommendations that outline advanced uses of popular social platforms as well as second-tier social platforms worthy of attention.
