June Recap – Comparing Social Media Models

 Our June meeting covered a requested topic from our Uservoice forum: Comparative SM Models. We were asked to take different types of companies and delve a little deeper into how social media could be used to address their specific needs and challenges. To that end, we created four very different business profiles, which you can review here, defined their goals and explained their challenges for our panelists.

Our first business was a start up looking to not only expand their business but also expand their customer base into a different demographic. Pat Harter gave us some tips and tricks to get a fledgling business off in the right direction; how to manage your web presence and maintain your identity and how you could use YouTube and internet based radio program to implement a focused communication campaign.

Next up Heather Herr took us through how you’d approach a new brand being test marketed locally. Heather’s solutions focused on not only building brand awareness and achieving the test marketing goals but also positioning the brand for its next stages of release; how to use Facebook as a primary portal, creating outreach programs to build brand ambassadors and how a video platform such as 12seconds could be used to capture consumer thoughts, opinions and testimonials.

Our third business on the agenda had a different problem – how do you use Social Media to create a community based program for a larger corporation to effectively change public opinion. Jenn Maggiore discussed how best to tap into LinkedIn to build partnerships with local municipalities and how traditional public relations strategies can be combined with tools like Twitter and Facebook to reach your audience, assuage fears and educate the population about your business.

We closed out the evening with a non-profit organization looking to build awareness of services, increase their volunteer base and donations. Chad Swaney gave us some strategies to meet all the needs of this non-profit; using Facebook as a content tool to reach potential clients as well as volunteers, focusing your event based organizing around Twitter and build additional event buzz in the community by leveraging geolocation applications like Foursquare to generate interest through event check-in’s and badge rewards.

We covered a ton of ground on how to take your marketing strategies and apply them through the use of social media tools. While no single tool is the panacea for all businesses, matching the right tools with your goals will make all the difference on how successful your strategy is. Many thanks to our panelists for providing us with a wealth of ideas and taking the time to explain the thought process behind their solutions.