The Four M’s of Social Media Every Marketer Should Master
Did you know that approximately 93% of marketers use social media to bring attention to their business and drive website traffic? Social media marketing used to be a simple two-step process: write content and then post it. Today, it has evolved into an intricate process that seems more like performing brain surgery, as a variety of tactics are used to monitor, manage, measure and monetize each campaign.
Underneath all of its complexities, the fundamentals of social media marketing are what ultimately determine the outcome of a campaign. Once marketers have mastered the four M’s of social marketing, this intricate process and these tactics can be refined to a simple and successful plan of action.
So what are these four M’s?
1. Monitor
Social media is an increasingly crowded and busy arena. The downside is that manually monitoring social-media efforts is time-consuming, if not impossible. But the upside is that when a company uses a platform that can track and analyze social media chatter, it can tap into real-time intelligence about an industry and its competitors that will sharpen its strategy.
Monitor activity before you launch a campaign. Obtain a clear idea of a competitor’s strengths and weaknesses on social media. Look for market opportunities and see what consumers react to within the industry. Monitor campaigns to optimize performance.
2. Manage
Once a campaign is launched in the social sphere, management can make or break the campaign’s success. Refine your campaign by tracking performance and reacting to what works and what does not. Take the workload off your social-media manager by letting him or her schedule posts and tweets. Add a new level of social-media intelligence by listening to what users are saying about the company’s campaigns and brand.
Management is the execution of the social strategy. And with all the emphasis on the software, analytics and strategy, execution is still what drives the success of a social-media campaign.
3. Measure
Measurement is increasingly important on two fronts. Social media is fragmented across multiple platforms. Tracking and analyzing the full scope of social-media use is now more difficult than ever. Secondly, measurement is one of the most important ways to demonstrate the effectiveness of social marketing to chief marketing officers, company executives and board members.
Measurement involves tracking results on earned, owned and paid media. Engagement can be gauged across all social-media platforms and how traffic is driven to a company’s website. It’s also possible to analyze how paid advertising on Twitter and Facebook encourages participation on social-media campaigns and a company’s website.
4. Monetize
The Holy Grail of social media marketing is sales. If marketers can draw a direct line between a social-media campaign and sales, all the guessing over the value of engagement ends. The return on investment is indisputable.
As the use of social media advances, mastering the four M’s of social media marketing becomes an increasingly important skill set for marketers. Perfecting these skills let businesses leverage the viral and sharing nature of social media to inspire the purchasing decisions of their target audience with user-generated content or through coupons, discounts or prizes.
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