Social networking is, of course, the hot button topic in online marketing.  Low cost / high traffic platforms like Facebook are extremely attractive to brand owners after years of paying for search optimization or fancy media buys.  But Tweeting alone does not an online brand make.  Instead, look at social networking as a part of your larger strategy to acquire and retain customers.

Of course, the first step in social marketing (or really any pursuit) is knowledge:  know your company and how it interacts, and know your customers and how they buy.  If you sell hardware in a residential neighborhood, your networking strategies will be very different from an owner who sells vintage clothing near the university.  Both brick-and-mortars are seeking to drive sales and awareness but their customer demographics, technographics, and buying patterns are widely different.  Consider also that a vintage clothes enthusiast might be more likely than a hammer buyer to see their purchase as making them a part of the store’s community and thus be more inclined to include the business as a part of their online network.

Given that you know who you are and who you serve, the challenge is then to tailor your online presence to build and strengthen your customer relationships not only by providing an integrated brand experience to reiterate your key differentiators but also by creating and delivering greater value for the customer:

In the end, remember that today’s consumers demand authenticity.  Social networking adds an additional level of challenge to that requirement because, online, customers interact directly with your business as if it were one of their Friends.  They are not simply looking for a product or service but instead an experience – and only those businesses that provide such will succeed as social marketers.

– Dan Liska

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