Social Media Marketing
For me, social media marketing is about giving: Helping others, sharing your knowledge and connecting people who can help each other. If you only use social media to shout that people should buy from you, you miss what makes it so exciting.
The video is from April 2009 and introduces the Social Media Marketing chapter in E-pusher. The figures, platforms and my thoughts about their future belong to that time.
Social media marketing is more than a new platform
I call social media marketing one of the newest and most exciting trends. But social media is not new in itself. Amino was four years old at that point, and Dating.dk was a social medium too.
What was new was that Facebook and Twitter had reached critical mass. Facebook reportedly had two million Danish users. I was sceptical about that figure because I thought some people had several profiles. But even if we assumed that a million different Danes regularly used Facebook, it was a huge medium.
As an online retailer, you could not ignore that scale. I had spent the previous few months seriously learning how to use those media in a business.
I had worked with the media from the other side
You might ask what I knew about it if I had only been working on it for a few months. But I had actually been involved with social media for almost fifteen years.
I had helped create Jubii Chat, which was used by seven million people in Europe. I had also helped create Amino, Jubii Debat and Euroinvestor. So I knew the media from the side where we produced them.
Now I was working on a different question: How can you, as an individual or an online retailer, use social media to make money? Part of the answer is quite straightforward. Use what you know to help the people you want to reach.
Lawyers and accountants found customers by helping on Amino
If entrepreneurs are your target audience, you can go on Amino, write intelligent posts and help as many people as possible. Your signature can show that you are a lawyer or accountant so people can see what you do.
In the video, I say that I knew lawyers and accountants on Amino who got up to half their customers that way. They did it by helping and answering questions.
They were not running around saying: Look at me, come and buy my services. When people later needed help with a court case or a task, it was the helpful person they called.
That is how I believe you should use social media. Give and give and give. Show how much you know and how much you can help others. Also think about how you can give people something they can pass on to others.
Give garden owners tips they can use and share
Imagine building a following of a couple of thousand people around your shop and regularly giving them something for free. If you have a garden maintenance business, for example, you can share tips on caring for roses and lawns.
In the video, I also mention a Facebook competition for the most beautiful garden. Users can vote and you can give prizes. It is one of my examples of getting people involved and giving them something to come together around.
If you understand the giving part, you help people who can then help each other. You are at the beginning of that chain. My expectation in the video is that, after a few months, customers start coming through that activity.
It is fine to make money once you have provided value
Once you have helped a lot, there is nothing wrong with holding out your hand and offering to help people further for a fee. People know you are a retailer, or a lawyer who needs to earn money.
They understand that you cannot keep giving everything away for free. When you eventually offer something they can buy, they have already seen what you can do. It is a long-term investment.
You show your generosity and that you have something to spare. You share the knowledge and help you have on your shelves, and you can bring in friends who can help when you do not have the answer yourself. Help people and connect them.
Learn the principles and gain your own experience
The chapter contains advice on Twitter and Facebook. But I also say in the video that some of it is almost out of date by the time you read it. The platforms change their appearance and features constantly. We were in a period of a lot of experimentation with these media.
So you need to invest time in trying them yourself. Set aside a few hours a day for a while, play with the features and get a real feel for the media. The tools in E-pusher give you something to start with, but your own experience is crucial.
Some tools will disappear and others will emerge. In 2009, we did not know whether Facebook would still be the interesting one in two years, whether Twitter would disappear, or whether Twitter would become bigger than Facebook.
That is exactly why you need to understand what lies behind it: Networking is about giving. Share your knowledge without demanding something back straight away. That is how I believe you can get the till ringing. Have fun.