7 critical success factors for managing social media in 2013

Do your social media plans allow for the latest trends?

This is a very useful SlideShare presentation from We Are Social. Useful before you step into your next round of content or social media marketing planning. It's simple and succinct with important take-aways - 10 of them in fact.

Here are our 7 reflections

These are our take-aways, from taking a few minutes to flick through the SlideShare, it's well worth it:

1. Mobile, mobile, mobile… The penetration, usage and therefore importance of mobile to your marketing is, I feel, still startling. I say it, believe it, agree with it and then each time I see more data the sheer scale shocks me. We talk about mobile and it's importance, but slide 4 really drives that home.
2. People, portable, practical… what a great mantra to build in to your marketing planning. Of course it's easier said than done in most organisations (I'll say it before you do!), and yet it's the reality of our world today and helps to set the marketing vision - the reality of people's mobile habits and behaviour is simply too big to ignore.
3. Nurture communities and the value in them… Our consumers don't fret about your new app or web service, about Smartphone vs TV vs iPad, Twitter vs Instagram vs Facebook. Whether you want to call it customer-centric, or platform agnostic, it's useful to question whether you're planning around the platform or creative concept, rather than a person's passion - your community's passion.
4. Content Tapas… a useful term. As marketers, we're inspired by the epic content, watching Red Bull pull off another master class, and yet the point made here is important. Know your audience and aim to connect with and entertain them around the small and simple things in those short 'in-between moments'. Of course, remembering to add value is the point, not injecting more sales stuff into their lives.
5. Commitments not campaigns… I find this one of the most annoying things about brands, they'll "activate" in social when they're ready, and miss the point that their fan base is around everyday to interact and converse with. Committing to them, day in day out, is what earns trust and the necessary permission come selling time. Extending that level of conversation and commitment into wider 'social CRM' seems such a missed opportunity for most organisations.
6. Build social into sales… whether it's harnessing social recommendations of your products, or driving a larger social foot-print through brand endorsement by incentivising social sharing, thinking tactically to get people sharing your product story feels packed with opportunity. As stated on slide 42: 'Create opportunities for non-monetary transactions'. Sounds great to me.
7. 'Do Social' by Being social… Design social into your business by opening up customer service across more touch-points, and through more people. As well as in-company communications. This is a hugely challenging concept, even for small businesses, and still such a futuristic and worthwhile mission as organisations design products, services and processes for the future. The key, I suspect, is designing what this means at an organisation level, making it meaningful.