I’m working on building a group of people who can execute on various parts of social media projects when we need them. I’m calling them the pirates. (You can work with the pirates yourself, if you want).
When it comes down to it, though, I realize that the trick is going to be working with people who might be decent at blogging, who might be pretty good at tweeting, who have a sense of what to do on Facebook, but who might not work from the perspective of this all tying into a sales marketing experience.
I’ve been working on a sales marketing framework for a while. I’m going to release it into my newsletter audience first, and then on this blog. It’s nothing amazing, but it does line up where I feel all the social tools fall into the various parts of a sales cycle. For instance, AWARENESS involves everything from tweeting to blogging to video and podcasting. Depending on how the project is put together, I’d need someone who knows how to use my outposts methodology and then who could create in such a way that it is promoting without being that guy.
In thinking about this, and in talking with others who have started their own social media consulting efforts, I notice quite often that people use the tools in a very standalone methodology. For instance, they build a following on Twitter, but do nothing to reach out to them via email marketing. They use Twitter as a promotional tool, and an in-between conversation tool, but it’s not always clear who realizes how this fits into a marketing plan or any other type of formal business communications experience.
Here’s a sample of what I’m talking about:
Project: Product Launch
Goal: 1000 Signups in the first 10 Days
Secondary Goal: 20 blog posts with links to product site in the first 10 days
Strategy: Awareness through presence, through content marketing, and through blogger outreach.
Steps:
- Start Listening tool topic profile for product, space in general, top 3 competitors.
- Discover related blogging community. Begin commenting and building relationships.
- Build branded Twitter and Facebook presence.
- Build off-site blog to connect with the community of prospective users.
- Build conversion points on that blog.
- Launch face-to-face presence experience (meetup?)
- Bring Flip video cameras. Recommend specific hashtags. Solicit help covering event.
- Launch blogger outreach requests. Track affirmatives. Track for posts. Respond to comments.
- Continue promoting (following the “that guy” rules).
- Measure signups. Measure blog posts.
- Adjust, if necessary. Report all results.
There. That’s a very simple project frame (or a marketing plan, maybe?) for a promotion project.
Is that how you’re building your projects? Are you planning through all the various elements? Have you determined what the real wins are, how you’ll measure them, and how they convert to sales?
It strikes me that this is the next iteration. You understand that the tools are powerful. You get that this is different than traditional marketing. Now, make a difference and move some needles.
You with me?
Photo credit recursion see recursion