Chris Beaudoin, Creative Director
I am student entrepreneur and marketing junkie. I am in charge of coming up with creative ideas and implementing them into our campaigns. I enjoy connecting with people all across the web and when I'm not working or studying I enjoy being active in my school and playing a variety of sports.
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Integrating the Social Web into your Communication Strategy
I was recently invited to run a session at the Eastern Canada Leadership Retreat (ECLR) annual conference. The main goal of the conference is to bring business students together to network and learn from each other. I was invited as a student and to run a session on using social web tools to promote student councils and groups. My session was divided into these three sections: using the tools, listen and learn, and putting it all together. Here is a summary of what I talked about.
Using the Tools
It is very important to utilize social web tools when promoting your council or group. One principle in marketing is that you have to go where the people are. With students, their main hang outs online are Facebook and Twitter. With the right tools and communication strategy, your website can become one of these hangout too.
The first thing I showed the group was this slide:
The reason I showed this was because many students are still not aware of the potential that Facebook has for utilizing their already existing networks. But there are rules. Using Facebook as a promotion platform can be a tricky thing. You shouldn’t just start inviting everyone you know to your Facebook page and send them updates if it’s not relevant to them. You have to be careful and find your target market; is the content relevant to them, or is it just another way to get your crops fertilized, if you know what I mean.
After you have established your target market the next step is to grow your network, luckily there are many ways to do this. One method that I have found to be very effective is giving stuff away. You can turn your communication strategy into experiential marketing by giving away your product, or service. Let people try out what you’re selling and let them talk about you.
A creative way to get traffic on your Facebook page is to tell people to upload their best pictures from the last event you hosted and then share them with their friends. The picture that receives the most “Likes” will be deemed the winner and will receive a prize. This will encourage engagement on your page and will show you the best pictures to post on your website.
Last thing to remember with Facebook is to communicate with your members on a consistent basis. Marketing is no longer a one way conversation, members of your network will engage you in conversation if you let them.
Similar to the first section, I introduced Twitter with this slide:
Twitter is not only people talking about irrelevant events that occur throughout the day, it is also filled with experts and interesting people that love to share entertaining and valuable content. even though Twitter does not have the adoption rate among students that Facebook has, it can still be an effective tool for providing your members with quick, efficient updates. It’s a great tool for connecting with potential partners for your council or club.
Another benefit of using Twitter is the knowledge you can gain by following the right people. By mining the right conversations and listening to influential people you can aggregate valuable information and pass it on to your followers. By sharing this information you are providing valuable content to your followers which encourages them to stick around and listen to what you have to say.
Listen and Learn
I find that a common mistake made by people trying to offer a service is that they think they know what their audience wants. I myself have been guilty of this many times and I’m now taking the steps to listen to my audience first. Same thing applies to student councils and groups, you may have a good idea what you members want, but you should ask them to know for sure.
Since people don’t always want to fill out a survey, there are many other creative ways of getting them to tell you what they want. With Facebook and Twitter it can be as simple as asking a question in your status update, “At this years business dinner, would you prefer chicken or fish?”. If you have been engaging your network properly you should see many responses. As well, Facebook allows you to create simple polls for voting which you can embed into your fanpage to get most measurable feedback.
One creative way involves a little guerrilla marketing. Say you want to know which event to run between a pub night and a hockey night; just ask your followers. Create a fan page for the pub night and the hockey night, then ask you followers to “Like” whichever page they prefer. The page with the most “Likes” is the event you should run.
Lastly, Google have created a few simple tools to help people listen to the world around them. These tools are Google Reader and Google Alerts. With Google Reader, you can aggregate relevant blogs and articles into one place for efficient reading. While Google Alerts allows you to monitor keys words that are flying around the inter web. Google Alerts will send you an email with a summary of where your key words appear in blogs, news articles, and more. These tools will help you stay abreast of current events so you can deliver the most relevant content to your followers.
Putting it all Together - Your Website
This is where you can get creative and bring all of your social web tools together in one place; your website. One thing I like to tell people is to not try a create their own portal because, believe it or not, they’ll be in direct competition with Facebook, Twitter, and more. What I tell people to do instead is integrate all of these tools into their website so that it’s easy for people to interact with them on any social channel.
Common steps involve, embedding your Facebook page into your website to encourage students to connect with you on Facebook. As well, posting your Twitter feed on your website allows you to update your website and deliver short messages to your followers with little to no effort. You can also embed polls, surveys, and other tools to gain feedback from your followers. Doing this allows for your followers to receive all of your updates whether it’s on your website, Facebook, Twitter, or any other portal you choose.
This brings me to my new favourite tool, the Facebook “Like” button. This button can be embedded on pretty much anything and it take only 5 minutes to set up. By embedding a “Like” button on the content on your website you create multiple links between your site and Facebook. This creates an easy way to share content from your website on Facebook
Last point, share everything! Everything you post on your website should be shared through all of your social networks. The more content the better, as long as the quality is there.
Conclusion
After reviewing all of the steps outlined in this post your next move is to create communication strategy that involves all of your social networks. But before you begin, you should ask yourself these three questions,
- What message do you want to communicate to your followers?
- Who will be in charge of these communication channels?
- What ways can you promote and grow your network?
Once you have discovered the answers to these questions you’ll have a base for creating an effective communication strategy. Remember that it doesn’t cost anything to have someone in your network so connect with as many relevant people as you can. The more people you have in your network, larger your reach, and more student you can get involved.
Last word
Get on these channels and play around. You’ll find that that trial and error is an effective way to learn how to use these channels. So spend some time on the social web and find out what works for you. Last, but not least, don’t forget to have fun.
- Cbeau
