Social Media Marketing Jungle : Embracing the wilderness

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.

"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.

"I don't know," Alice answered.

"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

(from 'Alice in Wonderland')

Social Media Marketing enthusiasts often ask me about which Social Media technology they should use : Facebook or Twitter, Youtube or Blog , .. and so on. Seems like they are all excited to engage in Social Media, and determined to leverage this social media boom at the earliest. But often they miss the point that planning or action has a pre-requisite - a clear, concise, and measurable goal.

This mad rush for first mover advantage - being the first to set up online communities related to a particular product/service, or to sign contract or take control over existing communities/web-portals relevant to firm's product or to launch viral marketing campaigns - soon leaves them exhausted with little returns. Through an analysis of several social media marketing failures in the past year, we realize that most common factor is not lack of passion, rather it is lack of direction. In other words, you may call it : The Curse of Choices. Since, there are so many ways to engage(and invest time, money and effort) in social media that unless you have a concise goal, clear definition of target audience, and a sound marketing strategy, you would end up with few returns.

Having realized the importance of a concise goal, let's look at some examples of good goals for social media marketing campaigns. Do resist the temptation of adopting any of them "as is", since that way you would end up landing at someone else's destination, rather than reaching yours.

• Increasing brand awareness
• Increasing relevant visitor traffic
• Increasing conversion of visitors into consumers(pushing down the conversion funnel)
• Managing reputation

Having distinctive goals shall not only be a good guide during this safari, but also shall help you get the maximum utilization of your resources by spending them strategically. It shall help you to analyse the several social media channels for their effectiveness with respect to your goals, and define the metrics of success to be constantly monitored, and analysed.