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Filed under: marketing

7 (+4) tips for succeeding as a Social Media Strategist

via mashable.com

A precise and thoughtful guide for those who wants to become a corporate social strategist.

Here's a few suggestions on top of the super informative and educational guide and the writeup by Mashable.

  • Be brave - We can't totally apply this to the local market as the industry is still taking its form slowly, but be brave to imagine and never stop believing. Broaden your knowledge base, all the time.
  • Be updated - Things change from time to time, you must be on top of all and truly understand the changes to customize your steps to move your programs, internally and externally.
  • Widen your fields - Don't be obsessed about tools. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare are tools, be open minded and learn about programming, project management, people skills, on top of marketing, customer service and PR (name more if you wish).
  • Get it rolling - Sometimes things just can't happen due to red tapes or organizational restrictions. Kick start something now not later, experiment makes perfect and it helps you to have deeper understanding towards social media.

Just some thoughts, hope it helps. Do share in the comment if you have any add-ons.

K'naan, rapper, poet and how he delivered Coke's flag wavin' marketing victory

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via fastcompany.com

This is a long article, thrilling and a little emotional, click the link above to read more.

It's been a few years I find myself in marketing industry helping brands crafting out their strategies, innovating ideas and campaigns. May that be digital or physical; meeting tangible or intangible objectives -- I learned that a complete marketing strategy is a puzzle and you have to find all the pieces, especially the centerpiece, to mashup your success.

Coke found their flag wavin' victory by successfully identifying the centerpiece, but what's awaiting the poetic and intelligent Somalian singer in the future of his music career?

I don't mean to be philosophical

But reading Ogilvy on Advertising is seriously a roller coaster experience that rocks my thoughts.
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According to the advertising legend there are few ways to identify advertising (or marketing?) big ideas, here goes:
  1. Did it make you gasp when first saw it?
  2. Do you wish you have thought of it yourself?
  3. Is it unique?
  4. Does it fit the strategy to perfection?
  5. Could it be used for 30 years?
I mean, 30 years? Seriously!

How many of the ads out there these days fits into any of these criteria? Especially the 30 years duration, that's quite a long probation period I'd say. I'm on my way doing research for a few articles that's about to come to their deadlines in a few weeks (some even days) time and this book has confirmed a few of my principles and thoughts.

Among others, I really believe that marketing is a process of enriching people's lives, because it helps people to make decision in a market that every products looks and smells the same. We help them to choose. (Another thing I strongly believe in, is design)

Ogilvy puts it best: It is about the positively good. In a parity market, product that wins in creating confidence that the product is positively good among the consumers, wins.

Time to start packing for dinner, gotta hit somewhere that I can watch the next match. Have a good week ahead folks.

Talk to me!

I see more and more workshops and seminars coming out telling you that they can teach you how to earn money from Facebook and Twitter, good thing.

After observing a lot of Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, social media contests and campaigns, I realize that a lot of people are still wearing their conventional marketing hat while doing this. No doubt more and more organizations and brands are jumping in, but from my conversations to many decision makers, they are still puzzled about social media marketing, and the possible outcome it will bring.

Mostly, they are in denial mode to pursuit new marketing, while trying to pursuit it. This is bad.


Welcome to Me-Marketing

Look, you can craft your marketing messages go ahead, I just don't care. Old marketing is all about top-down communication, you create messages and feed the market, hoping people will pick up somewhere. But now we're consuming a number of information you can't imagine 10 years back, so the problem is not you, it is me. I got swarmed already, so please, excite me with something that I'm interested in, not your profit. Why would I care?


Get loose dude, have fun!

Yes you got me right. I was raised in old marketing, where you work hard to come out with smart ads, confusing strategies to manipulate the market, stop that. Social media marketing is more PR than ever now, we are here to make friends, so be one or please walk away from my life. Don't be stressed up and fake, be yourself and communicate with everyone honestly, genuinely, and fun. You are about to build an army of marketers and salespersons, they're motivated by themselves, with a little push of excitements from you.


It's a long term battle

I'm not asking you to dump in big money for long run, which you totally don't need to, but be prepared to spend longer time here because its worth doing so. Replying messages takes time, answering complaints takes time, finding good information to be aggregated takes time, building conversation takes time.

To wrap up this short post, I think the final message is simple: Talk to ME. Marketers may want to throw away all their tactics and tricks to sell because the social media demands you to become a trusted friend, an aggregator, a human that cares about ME.

Or you shall be ignored, I guarantee.

Originally posted at Tribe-Up.com on October 31 2009.

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