Making Social Media Work for You
Last month I had the chance to visit the Emarketing Summit at the Oregon Convention Center. It was part of Innotech, a regional conference for the technology industry.
The highlight of the event was the lunch keynote speaker at the Emarketing Summit. Rahaf Harfoush, an Obama campaign volunteer and social media strategist, discussed valuable lessons from the social media campaign that changed politics. At just 25, she is one to watch in the flourishing social media space. Here are some useful insights she learned on the campaign about making social media work for you:
• Create Incentives within the community – encourage more social media community participation by rewarding the most prolific contributors. For example, the Obama team gave access to key campaign officials for top volunteers, not just the big donors.
• Roll with the unexpected – if people unassociated with your brand share brand-related content they created themselves, embrace it. Utilize their enthusiasm to create awareness and build loyalty with their peers.
• Redefine Engagement – Be wary of arbitrary metrics (like web site hits) and focus on quality. Social media is all about relationships and providing value; having a core group of evangelists may be better than having 1,000 followers on Twitter.
• Personalize the mission – create bonds by making people feel invested in participating with your brand in social media.