The 3 Phases of Social Media. What Phase are You In?
Social Media is a must do when it comes to growing a business, communicating with customers, acquiring new customers and becoming a real brand. Many companies are not doing it, Many companies are “kind of” doing it, few companies are doing it successfully and only a small fraction of businesses are running social media at the highest level.
We break out Social Media Marketing effort into 3 Phases.
Table Stakes (thanks to Eliot Frick from BIGWIDESKY for this name)
Successful
Top One Percent
*We don’t even consider not doing it a phase. If your company is not on Social Media, please call us right now, at this very moment so we can get you up and live on social. Every second you are not online and up on social media the quicker your company will die.
Table Stakes
When it comes to Social Media Marketing there is a minimum level of effort that must take place.
Having live profiles that contain consistent and accurate company information, imagery, posting content regularly at some frequency and linking to these profiles from other places on the web including your website, other social profiles, email, etc.
This is easy and will give you a boost in the search engines, overall customer visibility, website traffic, foot traffic, leads and sales.
Example Table Stakes Social Media Profile
The Dallas Furniture Bank
https://www.facebook.com/DallasFurnitureBank/
https://twitter.com/dalfurnbank
The Dallas Furniture Bank has consistent and accurate information, while posting regularly.
There is not an a large amount of engagement and obviously not running any paid promotion.
This is fine for many companies and should be getting done, but could be getting done in a more significant way by moving into the Successful Social Media Marketing phase.
Successful
To be running at the Successful Social Media Marketing phase, you must be doing everything in the Social Media Table Stakes phase plus driving consistent meaningful engagement through strategic organic & paid tactics as well as relevant strategic content (copy, images, videos, documents, etc.).
Example Successful Social Media Profile
The Watering Bowl
https://www.facebook.com/TheWateringBowl/
https://www.instagram.com/thewateringbowl/
The Watering Bowl has consistent and accurate information, while posting regularly.
There is good engagement, they respond, comment, message and are running some paid promotion.
This where most companies should be, but there is still one more level that your business could be reaching, it is the Top One Percent Social Media phase.
Top One Percent
To be in the Top One Percent of companies on Social Media you must be everything from the 1st and 2nd phases, plus creating a massive amount of content, promoting accurately through all means possible, engaging like your life depends on it and having passionately dedicated resources to work on this 100% of the time.
Example Top One Percent Social Media Profile
Red Bull
https://www.facebook.com/redbull/
https://www.instagram.com/redbull/
Red Bull does everything on social media, all the time, in every corner of the web and is engaging, relevant and passionate. Strive to be like Red Bull when it comes to the social media part of growing your business.
