Waving Not Drowning In The Social Swim!
Website owners swimming in the open seas of uncharted social media tend to stop frequently in an effort to contain the flowing waters of content sharing behaviour. Having dived in the deep end and flayed around for a while to no avail, they suddenly want to know who their targeted customer is and the social media services they consume!
The endless quizzing over social media utility and the return on time and effort continues unabated. The incorporation of social engagement into a 21st century ethos of online marketing has never sat too easily in the minds of some business owners. But having been grudgingly persuaded to get involved or get left behind by the Facebook and Twitter revolution, it’s all too apparent how little to no thought has gone into what they are doing with the channels and what results they might realistically expect.
The relationship between a website design and marketing provider and their client should be one of mutual listening, trust and understanding. Achieving practical goals for website performance is based on both a client’s proposed marketing strategies evolved through a developer’s knowledge and experience of today’s online audience channels and platforms of interaction.
Social media is increasingly in the driving seat, determining search engine indexing and ranking of online content and website pages for activity, relevance, authority and value, as voted for by prevailing audience participation within complex, shared social networks. Monitoring website analytics tells a story of what happens at any given time for particualar selected reference points, whether the CTR on SEO keywords, impressions, or inbound links from multiple, diverse sources.
Too often, as a result of time constraint or lack of resources, there is no coherent understanding or intuitive immersion in the realtime ebb and flow of the social tide and the needs, searches and conversations of the moment. Thus, a traditional scattergun broadcast approach is too easily adopted. A bit like shouting at your PC screen – no ones’s listening. Except of course, in reality, a tuned in audience are simply waiting for information of interest, value and use, specifically for them!
Social engagement needs to be understood not as today’s service channel alternative to telesales! Creating awareness of brand identity is no longer enough when trying to understand how to develop and reach out to a niche market audience. Companies need to open up, identify themselves and be responsive to an ever changing stream of potential as their offloaded cargoes of content may land in unexpected harbours.