In
the last 2 decades, social media has gone from a curiosity to an
indispensable marketing tool. While social media has not supplanted
traditional marketing campaigns entirely, these tools offer several
advantages over traditional campaign tools. For instance, many
consumers have become less responsive to traditional marketing
avenues and a well run social media campaign is an effective way to
bridge the authenticity gap. Further, social media is free to set up
and use, making it both cost-effective and attractive to small firms
and start ups.
While
social media is powerful, there are right and wrong ways to market
yourself or your company. There also isn't such a thing as a
one-size-fits-all strategy when using these tools. Your company's
strategy should be built around your company's individual strengths,
mission, and history. For example, take IBM.
IBM
is a company with a long and storied history of being involved in
major technological innovations and moments in American history. Its
social media strategy takes advantage of this by sharing
pictures from the company archives depicting historic projects they
have been involved in. The immediate effect is to shares positive
nostalgia and contribute to giving people reason to be proud to be a
part of the brand. These posts also don't feel like advertisements,
which makes them more widely shareable.
This
also fits into IBM's overall media strategy. In there social media,
there are no hard sells or promotions. In addition to sharing
the company's photo archives, IBM shares and retweets articles about
cutting edge technologies and deep thoughts. In this way, IBM
positions itself as a leader on the edge of technology. It gives the
company a more trustworthy “personality” and the company hopes
that when consumers are making a choice, those brand associations
will influence customers to chose their brand.
Blizzard
Entertainment's social media strategy showcases a way to build a
company's presence around its fans. In addition to sharing and
tweeting about upcoming events the company is involved in, Blizzard
also shares fan art, costume contests, game achievements, and other
fan-generated content on its facebook page. This is a great way to
build their community and show appreciation to their fans and
seems like a particularly effective strategy for catering to the fans
of their games.
