At first, you might be asking yourselves ,,why the f**k is the chick bloggin’ in English”, anyway?! Well, there is an explanation for that, just that I won’t share it today. Maybe it’s because the online environment is international and I sometimes do my social networking in English. And this post is all about social media. Or maybe I just feel like speaking English for a while. Once in a while. Anyway, kids, it’s English hours today, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about social media.
I basically live a part of my life online and that is no secret. Yet, what you might not be aware of is that lately I’ve been trying to take this further and go pro with it. In October, for example, I’ve been social networking for quite a big brand. For a few months. It was a good exercise – for both me and the brand. I saw a lot of ,,what might happen if” and ,,what’s not gonna happen even if” happening. And trust me, that was some interesting shit.
Then, later on, I kept pitching even some more for social media activities.
Conclusion? Whenever you’re gonna try and explain a potential client what benefits would social media bring into his brand’s life, he’s gonna nod and say ,,ok. what about ROI?”. What does ROI mean, anyways, besides ,,king” in French and ,,large group of bees” in Romanian? – you might ask. Well, R.O.I.=Return On Investment. In other means, the client would always ask – ,,how on earth will I get my money back and even get a profit out of it?”. Sure, it’s nice to have 5000 friends on Facebook and groovy tweets all day long, but as long as this actions won’t translate into cash, well… we’d have what some might call ,,a nice waste of time”. ‘ Cause it’s business, baby. Not love. And no company- small or big – would be eager to invest money in having ,,fb friends”.
So – is ROI important for the social media? Sure it is. Can you measure social media results? Yes. Is it difficult? Well – I won’t call it ,,difficult”, but it surely takes some time. What I learned from my last experiences is that in order to have good results, social media must be taken seriously, and – most important – needs a lot of patience. So,dear social media ,,experts”, stop promising thousands of friends and a nice chat with clients! In terms of business, media measurments = 0. Go further and talk to your client about increasing online sales, even offline, providing great customer service and increasing branding. Put up some timelines. Organise! And dear client, don’t expect ROI over night. Social media is like a prodigy. Like…Einstein (did you know the guy hasn’t talked ’till he was 3 and he was considered a bit retarded and antisocial in school?). It takes a lot of time and care, but when the time comes, it will reward you in ways you’ve never dreamed about. And the word you use to open his mind to the world is – PATIENCE.
As far as my experience’s concerned, small companies are more flexible, thus they adjust easier to the speed of communication, to the lack of classical marketing limitations, to public reaction and interaction of the online environment. Bigger companies move harder. They have a lot of restraints, a lot of people who need approving every move in social media, every tweet or status, making things happening a lot harder or not happen at all. This is why working with bigger companies in social media needs better setting up. Strict timelines, clear objectives. Reasonable ones, because things will never happen overnight. Neither in 2 weeks. And not even in 2 months, not if every picture posted on your facebook wall needs at least 3 days of approval.
Bottom line – be careful what you’re promising to your client. Size does matter. Stay away from media figures. Go to sales, PR, customer service and branding stats in defining your objectives. Set up timelines. Stick to them. Be patient. Don’t give up. Believe. Communicate.
To make things even more clear, I’ll embed here a short presentation I found here the other days, scouting for social media stuff:
