An in-depth answer to the question surrounding going social.

The continuing rise of a range of social networking technologies has made it increasingly easy for people to share their voice, opinions, rate their favourite products, review their favourite interests – generally, communicate with others.

Why go the social media route?

There are many reasons for small businesses to adopt a social media marketing strategy – increasing brand awareness, driving improved customer relationships and better corporate reputation, gaining a better understanding of emerging issues and trends, enhancing product development and improvement efforts and generating increased sales and incremental revenue.

For the SME just getting started with social media, building up a presence and starting to attract followers, the answer may be a free social media strategy, tapping into online social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, building fan bases for the brand and communicating directly with ‘friends’ to glean the data and information required to meet the aforementioned business objectives.

Mixed results

Indeed, many SME businesses have done just this, but with mixed results; ultimately, the free public social networking sites do not belong to the brand and there is little or no control over the conversations around the brand. The mass aggregate social networks like Facebook, control digital assets and even monetise them. As such, the opportunity for the SME to reach interested consumers with creative, engaging content is not only restricted, but control over the content others may post, or the advertisements is severely limited, putting brand reputation at risk and essentially handing over advertisting revenue that could be yours.

Whilst ‘free’ networking opportunities offer compelling enough arguments for many organisations, at Reality Digital, the two concerns we hear most often voiced from customers small and large are brand safety and control, both aspects subject to compromise when using free social networks. A public social network allows only limited control of the customer experience.

Launching your social media strategy

Fortunately, the maturation of the social media sector has allowed for a number of alternatives, previously prohibitive to the SME on cost grounds. Now the SME can launch their own branded destination offering control of the users, the ability to offer a mix of social networking features appropriate for the community and importantly, the ability to drive revenue through advertising, sponsorship and other means. In a nut shell, putting the brand in the driver’s seat whilst offering a rich media environment where consumers can network with each other, contribute their own content and safely interact with the brand.

Companies typically adopt a social community in order to create an environment where consumers will connect with each other but importantly to enhance communications with their brand. In addition to the total control over the content and advertisements that appear on the site, a niche private network allows businesses to provide a much deeper engagement with their brand. A small business may, for example choose to share images of its newest product, post a video or poll its fans on Facebook – a perfectly strategic and valuable activity.

However, by combining this activity with a branded social media solution, the brand could enhance their marketing impact and communications with interested consumers in a variety of different ways such as:

•    Customised fan page
•    User-generated video-content
•    Interactive customer community for product feedback
•    Sponsor advertisements
Again, as with any investment, there are important considerations before strategically committing to a course of action such as:
•    Budget – clearly a deciding factor for many SME’s as outline above but with market and technological developments, building a branded online community is now a highly affordable option.
•    Internal Resources – An often overlooked element of any social media effort, internal resources will determine the amount of content that can be created and the time dedicated to maintaining the network
•    Content – Planning the content required for the site / strategic decisions on whether to allow / monitor user-generated content or hosting video or photos.
•    Control – Setting the level of control over the content that appears alongside the brand
•    Monetisation – How to effectively monetise content through advertising or ecommerce without alienating the key audience

As an SME, getting what you pay for is of fundamental importance. There are certain situations where a free social marketing strategy can be effective and appropriate, such as driving traffic and awareness back to a brand’s private social network.

However, for brands that are keen to provide a deeper level of user engagement through a brand-safe niche community, the moderate financial investment to put the brand in control of the experience is as a rule, repaid ten-fold.

The establishment of niche social media tools may carry a small financial investment not associated with the big, free, public sites but as an SME, if the business decides to limit social media marketing to the free sites they run the risk of missing out on a key method of communication and run the risk of handing control of your brand to a disparate and untrained audience.