A new medium - new rules: the 10 commandments for managing social networks and motivating consumers online

In the past it was simpler: gold advertising in prime time for peak events, along with supporting advertising in newspapers and on the radio on an ongoing basis - and most potential customers would probably know your business. It's just that the age of social networks has made the old laws irrelevant. So what, or especially who is relevant? The companies that will know how to internalize the following laws. Get the ten commandments for managing social networks and motivating consumers online​

​

​Welcome to the age of social networks. The one that was born at the beginning of the previous decade, with the launch of web 2.0: the configuration of the internet that allowed anyone - without a budget or prior programming knowledge - to upload content to the network. The move caused the American magazine TIMES to choose "You" (You) as the man of the year for 2006, and since then we - anonymous people, voiceless gossipers - have received a stage or rather stages - in the plural: Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube and Pinterest, if we name only the most central ones.

While private individuals, "users" as they are called in the language of the Internet, surf flexibly from network to network, collecting and generating information, commercial companies remain confused - with so many distribution channels, where and how do marketing messages be delivered effectively? Amidst all the noise on the net, how will we succeed in sounding out and motivating consumers to take action? We wrote the following ten commandments after two decades of working with commercial companies and brands that we accompanied from the off-line era to the web, in the hope that they will put some order in the mess and give a taste of our work strategy in Maximedia with commercial companies and brands in everything related to managing social networks.

1. Choose the right social networks for your business profile: Managing a social network is not an easy job even for an individual, but even more so for a commercial company. Therefore, you should choose wisely the social networks where it is true that the brand will be present. With all due respect to the magnificent growth of Instagram in Israel in recent years - it will be difficult for a brand that does not produce regular visual content to gain a foothold in it. Even the dry rule that Facebook is the "must" network among social networks is not necessarily true anymore. Studies and data published in the last year have proven that the young audience no longer opens Facebook accounts, so if the brand appeals to a distinctly young audience there may be no point in investing in it.

2. Create content from an overall strategy: Unlike a private person who uploads content organically to social networks, companies and businesses should manage social networks from an overall strategy. This means that at the beginning of the year, Gantt and consultants produce relevant peaks from the off-line life of the brand (sales, new collections). For each event, preliminary content, accompanying content and even documented content are created that is published at the end. Pick online events are added to the "dead" areas in Gantt - activity of surfers, or network-driven advertising campaigns, producing a dual network and field work that work together to assimilate the brand's messages.   

3. Guests at someone else's house: Unlike the traditional media - television and radio journalism, which is the exclusive arena of professionals, social networks are arenas of users, and it is important to understand this. Commercial companies may manage a Facebook page or WhatsApp services, but Facebook or WhatsApp, in their original configuration, were not designed and designed for them. What it means? Just like guests in someone else's house - managers of social networks of brands and companies must understand the local language, culture and laws, and behave accordingly. Here are some 'local rules' you should adopt for your brand's social media.

4. 20 seconds is a lot of time - be quick and sharp: Certainly, brands know how to be quick and sharp, because an average television advertisement lasts about 20 seconds. Only that in network time 20 seconds is an eternity. There are theories that the sharp increase in the use of Instagram is related to the social network's clear bias towards image-type content - the fastest unit of content to consume, more than text or video. And accordingly, we recommend investing the most of the brand's network budget on images, when the (short) text is integrated into them. When is it possible to produce a more complex content unit? When the brand produces content and not advertising.

5. Differentiate between social media advertising and social media content: Even social networks, just like the news edition of Channel 2, have "slots", a kind of real estate cubes intended for advertisements. If you launch a targeted campaign on social networks, you must produce content for these slots, and then it is indeed an advertisement. At the same time, even sponsored posts , and certainly in the posts that you upload to the company's feed, it is advisable to avoid advertising language. We return again to rule 4: we are guests in someone else's house, and advertising language is not the native language of social networks. If something in a post smells advertising to users - there is a high probability of low attention or they They will ignore the content, or forget about it immediately after being exposed to it.    

6. Content is the name of the game: In light of all that was said above, commercial companies that succeed in thriving online are those that produce quality content for free. A baby diaper company can produce a series of instructional videos for baby massage, or a tips article for putting a crying baby to sleep. Pharm company - content of make-up tutorials. To differentiate from user content, the content of commercial companies is made in professional studios, with good sound, optimal lighting and a tight script, and to differentiate from content from content providers - commercial content is free. This winning combination creates a "win-win" point for users and commercial companies, and is the great potential inherent in the network.    

7. Feel the heartbeat of the social network: All social networks suffer from high pulse, some more than others. In every social network where the brand has an account, a content unit needs to be produced for each metaphorical 'heartbeat': Facebook needs at least two contents per week, Instagram is already working on content per day. What will happen if you don't keep up? is nothing. Really - nothing. The consumer response to your pages will probably not be particularly alert, they will consider the pages somewhat "sleepy".

8. Likes/followers are no longer the whole story: One of the popular indicators to gauge the success of a commercial page on the net is the number of friends/followers (per page), likes/hearts (per post). At the same time, this is only a partial measure. why? First, since commercial companies can "buy" likes/followers in direct or indirect ways, and second, since studies show that most users also forget a brand's page they "liked" organically (not for a discount or a gift) a few weeks later. Therefore, in our opinion, the most important index is the engagement index of users on the brand's content pages. This is an index that consists of many variables including exposure, searches, responses, likes, shares and watching content and statuses until the end, and as long as you haven't seen it in the engagement index - something in your network strategy is not accurate.  

9. Don't neglect traditional media: This law is true to a greater or lesser extent depending on the nature of the company and its target audience, but in our opinion it is still relevant to everyone. Unlike the big buzz around "network influencers" (and without questioning their effectiveness) we suggest to remember the advantages of traditional media, and not to neglect it. This is because the network tends to produce "pockets" or in a less pleasant word "ghettos" of content. Situations in which it will appear as if the brand is popular and well-liked online, but this will not reflect general consumer behavior in practice. why? Because people on the net tend to share and consume content of those similar to them, and thus the brand can be very popular among a particularly noisy group of consumers on the net, but small in practice. The exposure of traditional media is wider and more consistent, and therefore it is important to cultivate it as well.     

10. Get users to create content for you: This section is actually the "holy grail" of a brand's online presence. The moment when users create valuable content for the brand and thus become independent marketing agents who promote the values of the brand they love in a voluntary way: cooking enthusiasts uploading photos of your mixer or chopper, or technology enthusiasts who are proud to have taken first place in line to purchase the new product you launched? If we talked about the importance of the engagement index - content creation by users is the highest form of engagement, but like all good things in life, it is not easy to reach. Only after years of building a sufficiently significant and unique brand presence in the field and online, can you expect it to begin to exist. At the same time - getting users to produce content for you is, in our opinion, the goal, which we believe every company or business, regardless of whether it is a huge conglomerate or a local business, should and can achieve.