Who?What?When?Where?How and Why?

My blog is designed to share with you ways of using technology and the web to improve effectiveness and efficiencies in the way we work, learn and do other stuff with a few off tangent posts about my other passion - flying. For my first ever blog post I thought I would give a short introduction to my take on doing Social Media well. Having delivered training sessions in social media and also having sat and listened to presentations in this area I feel I have a nicely rounded approach to using SM effectively.

Before I encourage others to start digging into the use of social media, I always get them to revert to basic marketing principles. I don't consider myself to be a marketing guru, but having studied it at degree level, one of the key practices we were taught about choosing the right communication channels for your audience are the 6 W's The Who, What, When, Where, How and why? Although very similar to and often confused with the marketing mix (Price, Product, Place and Promotion) I feel this analytical approach is simpler and more direct. I often encourage others to ask themselves these when embarking upon a new marketing campaign. It is only until you understand who your market is and how they behave, that you can then start choosing the appropriate tools to communicate with them. Andrew R Michaels has written a really useful article around this and poses some questions that you might use when running a marketing campaign:
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-6-Ws-of-Target-Marketing&id=1877512

Social media can be very useful for gaining insight and answering some of these questions. We can search for trends using Twitter. We can tap into what people are saying about our industry by joining peer groups on LinkedIn and so much more.

Once you have gathered your marketing intelligence you can then start using this information to decide on how, and sometimes if, social media is the right tool for promoting your product/service or business. The biggest question you should consider before using social media to support your campaign is how will you create buzz.

 Buzz is what social media is all about - how will you get people talking?

 Are you going to run competitions? Are you going to piggyback on something else that is trending e.g olympics, Euro 2012.

 Buzz will deliver results, just sending information or spamming social media users with your advertisements will not.