Integrating social media, emarketing and your other plans isn't easy... but it's very worthwhile

Following recent discussions with a 'stressed' marketing team last week, I wanted to suggest a few tips on how to integrate e-marketing and social media. There seems to be a lot of worry around having to manage too many different streams of communication with key audiences. Understandably, the growing number of communication routes can seem a bit daunting but the key is to not use all of them for everybody!

Here are my suggested tips on how to get the best balance between these types of communications to support your sales, marketing and relationship management objectives:

1. Survey your audience to determine email and social habits

Find out if your existing 'social media followers' and email recipients are in fact the same people. Many organisations assume that they are and treat them as the same audience. We know from
independent research that twitter users aren’t the same as Myspace or
Facebook audiences and that those who prefer email updates aren’t
necessarily the same people who follow a Facebook fan page.

2. Develop different messages for each audience

Therefore, if they are different we should ask them directly what they want from our businesses (and charities too as this is equally applicable) via the media they prefer. We then develop appropriate messages or services. For example, a member of an online support forum may not want to
receive lots of email messages from you but may be quite happy to
be a fan of your Facebook page and be updated this way. The
trick is to ensure that the messages you need to communicate are
included across several media and tailored appropriately.

3. Use email to grow social media audience, and vice versa

Just because audiences have media preferences, that doesn’t mean ‘never the twain shall meet’. It’s smart to use each media to offer the opportunity for audiences to communicate with us through a number of
channels. In practice, this means enabling Facebook fans to sign-up for email
updates and introducing your Facebook personality to your email
subscribers consistently and in a way that is relevant to them. It’s OK
to plug ourselves in our own comunications!

4. Coordinate multi-channel promotions for product or service launches

I’ve long talked about the importance of consistent and integrated messages being used across business and charity communications activity and this a prime example.

If you have a campaign or major fundraising drive (like a major Trade event or an 'Awareness Week') you should be thinking about what messages you need to communicate and to whom, first and foremost. Only then,
do you look at the best media to deliver them and interact with those target
audiences.

This way, you are focused on the objectives and audiences and end up integrating the media choices almost by default. I see many organisations start at the other end, with the media, and try to work their messages into these frameworks. As a result, you end up communicating in silos
and not delivering as powerful and consistent messages as you could.

Put simply, how many of you have heard “what shall we do with twitter?” as opposed to “what shall we do to achieve objective x?” to which one of the answers might be “use twitter”? This is the wrong way
round!

5. Stagger messages over time and across channels for seasonal campaigns

The ‘awareness’ day, week or month is a useful example of how messages can be staggered over time to build to the crescendo of your event or campaign.

The trick here is to deliver your specific tactical messages whilst linking them consistently to your overarching campaign objective / message. The charity Dogs’ Trust for example, uses twitter extensively to update its
followers on the latest events. More details are sent via email,
posted on their website and via Facebook. They don’t need to
communicate every detail through every media. And this is a charity with very limited resources, proving that it can be done.

6. Don’t forget that these are 2-way communications channels

You will receive feedback via emails, through Facebook and twitter and it is now a cardinal sin to ignore it, the cost being that your audience simply stops interacting with you. That’s not to say you have
to respond personally to every message you receive across the widest
range of media. Just remember to implement ideas that your audiences
share with you across the various channels and definitely tell them when
you’ve done so.

This gives you credibility because you are listening as well as broadcasting and are interested in what they have to tell you. Similarly with supporter or customer feedback; if someone has sent you a
picture of them using your product or their latest fundraising event, it’s dead easy to post a
photo and a short comment across all the media you utilise, always
linking it to your core objectives and other campaign websites. (if you haven't used these media before, check out YouTube and flickr as these are huge search engines as well as free hosting sites for your communications)

7. Dedicate real resources to integrating your communications

Lots of business and charities still doubt the efficacy of social and even e-marketing communications. We need to recognise that our opinions simply don’t count! It’s what your audience prefers that counts. You need to communicate
using the channels that they prefer and, as media choices increase, we
all need to acknowledge the need for resources to do this effectively.

Some organisations have dedicated teams looking at social media and e-marketing but that’s not always possible. In this case, I would suggest that everyone can contribute to the communications
effort via these channels; the investment will come from putting
together a policy or framework within which the team will do so.

Get these parameters in place and owned by the communications, sales or account management functions and integration of messages becomes much easier.

Remember the simple cause and effect we are looking for:

Integration = communications delivering consistent messages = improved brand/campaign awareness = increase likelihood of action by audiences = better results for your business or charity.