Tanmay Mohanty

Conceptualizing and creating cutting-edge creative and promotions is one part of the job. Targeting and communicating it to the right audience is the other and equally important part. Customer mapping to platform of communication and aligning the strategic communication objectives is the job of the strategist that can help set realistic ROI milestones.

On social media platforms we see varied activities by brands as they find the consumer behavior changing and been able to build long term relations with customer at lower cost than ATL activities. But lack ok vision and pre-defined goals that is missing in the social media marketing activities. I will list eight ways brands should use social media to build corporate reputation.

1. Customer support – rather than looking as a cost-center, social media can be used to provide the same support at not only lesser cost but benefits from crowd knowledge of the product and service.

2. Market Research – crowd sourcing is though becoming a popular but smart brands need to use social media platform to understand the opinions, feedbacks and insights to brands from both rational and emotional points.

3. Brand building – as I have discussed earlier the social media help us recognize competitors from emotional point of view. Similarly understanding customer behavior and communicating how the brand can impact their life will help build stranger brands.

4. Customer education – Using social media to educate customer and excite them can be primary drivers of some of the new brands. The social media also brings out customer with “Guru” syndrome and they add value to such an activity.

5. Employee recruitment- Attracting right candidate and mind-set can be looked as primary driver of social media marketing for organizations which are driven on both quality and quantity.

6. Public relation – social media platforms present a new dimension to PR as it can help deliver the news to a larger base and take help of the evangelists in crisis management also.

7. Cause marketing – corporate social responsibility is to achieve larger goals and help strengthen brand relation with the society. On social networks the same can be achieved faster and over a higher number of populations.

8. Product Sales – not only e-commerce platforms but also other services and products can use social media to drive the numbers at fraction of cost. Mostly SMEs and b2b marketing should use the platforms to find right clusters and right target audience.

This lists some of the goals smart organizations and brands can use social media. You are welcome to keep on adding more goals to the same list. Regardless of the focus of your social strategy, the ability to track, measure, and listen to consumers in real time presents an opportunity that has never existed.

Note: If you aren’t tuning into what consumers are saying about your top management, your brand, your industry, your product, and your competitors, you’re missing the point.