Social Media Strategy for Suppliers

We enjoyed talking with Saturday Morning Meeting for Suppliers’ Andy Schuch for the SMM4S Social Media Special.

One of the points that came up in the conversation was how you get started with a social media strategy. The best starting point is always your goals for your business. You need to identify what you’d like your social media campaign to do for you, be it brand awareness or product positioning or market data or  increased engagement with your customers. Then you have to see how that goal can be measured through social media.

“A lot of companies do it backwards,” Rebecca pointed out, and that’s true. Often, clients will choose to track Likes because they’re on Facebook, so of course you should track Likes. But Likes may not correlate with their actual business goals.

“If you only pay attention to those Likes,” I suggested, “when you get to the end of the year… you’re disappointed. Not because it didn’t work, but because you didn’t have a clear connection between what you wanted and what you were measuring.”

We went on to discuss specific social media strategy for a campaign designed to build awareness of a product with a particular group of people. You have your goals in mind, you’ve decided on the actions in social media that would support that goal, and now it’s time to stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about your customer.

You have to understand the people you’re talking to and what they’ll enjoy, so you can provide the kind of content that will resonate with your customer. It’s a new and important kind of customer service, and a good way to connect with customers and potential customers.

The video

There’s a lot of good stuff in this episode of Saturday Morning Meeting for Suppliers, from a number of digital marketing companies of various kinds. Once you watch the video, make sure you download the free ebook! The ebook provides step by step instructions for social media strategy for CPG companies.