The general expectation right now requires all businesses to respond to customers in real-time. That’s fine for the big dogs who have the vast personnel and financial resources, but it’s a really high fence for small businesses to jump. There are 3 ways larger companies move at the speed of social and keep pace with their target audience in real-time: influencer marketing, sentiment analysis and amped up competitive intelligence. And although you can’t compete with their budgets, you’re good enough, smart enough and your have your client following! Here are some creative ways to compete in each area:
1. Influencer Marketing
Building excitement for an event across a wide spectrum of social media platforms is a given when you’re a big name, so it’s probably not surprising that the United Nations was able to carry out a social awareness campaign with stunning stats. Or is it?
The massive interest and engagement around its recent #ForgiveForPeace hashtag resulted in “1.5 billion impressions (500 million reached) and started trends on Twitter in 14 countries, as well as over 22,000 pieces of user-generated content.”
Can you create an influencer marketing effort like that on your own? No, but here’s what you can do: Network. It’s all about who you know, or more precisely — who knows you. Sure, a tool that’s consolidated these influencers for you is great, but that doesn’t mean you can’t recreate some of that on a smaller scale with a bit of legwork.
You already know you should be following people in your industry on Twitter; connecting with them on LinkedIn; interacting with their Facebook pages and all other social sites for that matter. if you’re not doing it strategically, it’s wasted effort. And that’s all well and good for B2B, but what about B2C? More on who to connect with specifically for each will follow.
2. Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis is understanding what your audience is feeling, and why and how it relates to you. It’s about finding adjacencies and opportunities you weren’t otherwise aware of and then using that insight to support marketing strategy. Although real-time sentiment analysis is amazingly effective, connecting meaningfully and consistently with your target audience can create fantastic results for the rest of us too.
If you’re B2B, you need to be strategic about connections — that means focusing on LinkedIn. Find fellow executives who are active online and employed at the big firms with the resources you’d want. Follow them closely and let them pay for the analytics, and piggyback on their findings. If you connect with insightful folks, you can spot and hop on trends ahead of your similarly positioned peers.
If you’re B2C, connect with influencers on Twitter and let them know you genuinely appreciate their insight and that you know them (keep notes on what they focus on besides your brand).
And if you spend 15 min keeping up to date on what is happening in your industry and participating in conversations, you’ll not only understand what’s happening and why — but influencers will be more likely to watch you as well. And when it comes time to amplify your message, you’ll be on point with latest happenings in your space and more likely to attract that organic boost that all marketers crave.
3. Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence naturally flows from doing what’s mentioned above effectively, but beyond that, you should become familiar with Google’s advanced search options, and definitely Google Alerts. Why? It’s free and here’s what you can monitor the following using the right search terms:
Your brand: Set up alerts to let you know every time your business name or website is mentioned online.
Your competing brands: Keep tabs what is being said about the competition – what are they doing right, what are they doing wrong, and then leverage that to your advantage.
Niche segment: Pay attention to the questions that are emerging in conversations about your product or service. This will help you to position yourself as the expert and build brand loyalty.
And once you have those setup, take the time to understand IFTTT and all it offers for both monitoring and generating awareness of your brand.
Written bt Mary C. Long
Originally posted on notey.com