Social Gardening Digs Deeper Into Search Engagement Soil!
All aboard the brand awareness bandwagon! It’s called doing social media – marketing style! Or that’s the way many business owners still see Facebook and Twitter and having a company blog. A low-cost method to indulge a little more self promotion and push marketing. But this is not what social media does. There’s no real intent to listen and engage, just broadcast and sell!
“ It’s all selling really, isn’t it?” is not an uncommon remark uttered by site owners who decide that doing social media is not so bad after all, as everyone else seems to be putting Facebook and Twitter buttons on their home page. A nice cheap method to get a bit more brand awareness and site traffic!
But social networking intent, as a result of the search and sharing of valuable content, is not free promotion for an eCommerce site, especially when all content must always refer to their products or services as if they and their target audience might exist in a bubble.
Nowhere is there an understanding of the key principles of human engagement and responsiveness to the expectations and needs of niche audience and search prospects. A revolution has taken place on the web and traditional business mindsets only seem to recognise the cosmetic signs of a transformed landscape. Otherwise they assume it’s ‘business as usual’.
As online marketing morphs into ‘responsive’ website design, which intuitively flexes and adapts to mobile, tablet and the online / offline interface of multichannel and platform, consumers have taken control of the B2C relationship. But too many site owners are still afflicted with corporate ‘silo mentality’ to comprehend the evolving territory.
Today’s search and social terrain is not temporary top soil, upon which the traditional wheels of industry can blithely continue to steamroll their usual way to ‘go to market’. It’s not a case of just using new terminology – social media is not simply ‘publicity’. Tweeting, blogging and content sharing are more than marketing strategies “everyone is doing on the web now”.
Concerned voices are being heard, which make mention of a kind of tumbleweed fatigue listlessly stumbling around the social networks. A new chapter may be beginning in the social narrative between business and customer. Increasingly, the emphasis has been shifting towards the demand for consumers to be listened to – an engagement with intelligence and respect.
It’s no longer enough for site owners to think in terms of maintaining brand identity by ‘push’ marketing content, which rarely connects and honestly engages with intended audiences. The reason being that the messages are being ignored. The time has come to listen and discover what audiences really want to know and need to find.
It means replacing brand awareness with customer responsiveness.
Dig a little deeper into the social topsoil and listen to the deep strata buzz!