What is value based social media marketing?
It's no secret that social media marketing can at times be a difficult venture. More so if the market that you are trying to target doesn't quite exist yet (such as with new products), or if you are in a crowded industry. One approach that we have adopted is to employ what is called value based social media marketing. This is simply making sure that the content you are putting out both serves your business AND the customers that would normally use your services.
I believe, and this is particularly true for modern start-ups, that more traditional forms of advertising are falling massively out of favour for young (and some older) demographics due to an ever growing competitive space that most brands occupy. More people are now wising up to selfish marketing strategies, and nearly everyone I have spoken to actively dislikes traditional advertisements (so why do companies still try this?).
Value driven marketing is, in my mind, a step in the right direction to try an fix this issue, as it is objectively more of a fair trade. I give you, the customer, something that serves a need, such as information or entertainment, and you put up with some form of exposure to our brand. Simple!
Employing VBSMM.
To fully illustrate the concept, I want to walk you through the process of how you might go about planning for this type of marketing, with our business as an example. Hopefully this will give you a clear step by step guide that you can follow (or draw inspiration from!) to come up with your own plan to grow your online presence. We did this originally by accident after much back and forth between Matthews and myself, and while you can chase this organically like we did, this really boils down the essentials and gets you there faster (at least I hope so!).
1: Your company, your needs.
The first and easiest step is to look at yourself and your business and ask, what is it that I NEED (and maybe want) for my business to thrive? Now this doesn't have to be complicated, and you can go into as much or as little detail as you want to. For us, our goals are relatively simple. All we continue to need is a small set of people with an interest in either playing games or developing them, who have regular eyes on our company, so that when it comes time to release our product (at the end of our business year) we have a stable group to sell to. This is very different from conventional sales models, so take some time to think about what allows YOUR business to survive.
2: Addressing your company's needs.
Following on from that, we need to address what types of content would solve this identified need. We need engagement and brand identification, so we are looking at platforms with this in mind. This for you, if possible, shouldn't be too time consuming, and remember to be realistic in terms of the size of you staff as different platforms have different commitment requirements (sometimes drastically so).
For us we brainstormed several different types of content ideas, but at this stage simply stuck to the types of PLATFORMS that seem to have reoccurring viewers, as we'll get to the meat of the content later. This was a good start for us and helped us identify things like podcasts and episodic YouTube videos as generating that level of consistency. Doing this gives you a solid and focused vision from which to work further so you can decide what you will actually be producing.
3: The customer, their needs.
This next stage may or may not be difficult for some of you, depending on your profession, but when deciding the actual content on your chosen platforms, you have to ask yourself what kind of value as a company or individual do you have to provide to your approximate client base? What might that customer want that you can offer with your unique skill set? Sometimes it can be really difficult to find something that feels unique or worth-while, but I guarantee that you have something of value to offer.
Our own approach for example is not unheard of (especially within indie-games development), but is unorthodox within our community. Typically, gamers of our target demographic enjoy the content of the games themselves, or game-play videos/reviews of said games through platforms such as YouTube or Twitch. As an aside, this also supports our assumptions about our chosen platforms/formats), so if something like this comes up, listen to your gut. As part of the subset of people interested in game update videos is also a group of individuals interested in the development process, as I have been for years. This is where I realised that there is a distinct lack of completely open and well produced content following the production of a game from start to finish, with the inclusion of technical content. There's nothing wrong with being part of your own demographic (it means that there's a market, no matter how small).
As a result of this realisation, our value as a brand is based on education, but there are plenty of other ways that your brand can stand out to your clients/customers. A good example is emotional value, in which a piece of content might evoke a certain feeling. Pet brands, such as our friend Mel's business (@_houseoftails) benefit a lot from this, making use of cute animals to make customers feel a sense of happiness and fondness towards the brand. Another type of value might simply be entertainment, such as with funny social media posts, or well crafted videos, that provide viewers with a sense of happiness or amusement. It's important that you identify what kind of value you have identified as closest to your brand, so that you can really home in on content that matters to you.
4: Tying it all together
We now need to try to bridge the gap between the customer and the types of content that we as a company can produce. It's quite a task, but try to start the process of where all of the things we have looked at line up. Hopefully certain patterns will have emerged in your thought processes, when exploring the previous stages and you've already begun to home in on some content ideas. For us, our primary skills are very practical and broad, and relate to games and to a lesser extent business development.
As I've said, we realised that there is a gap in the market for a complete raw exposure to the games development process. Typically videos found on YouTube going into the details of games development are very heavily edited or just short updates that don't go into any real depth. To address this, and to meet our limited time constraints, we realised that we could live stream the games development sessions we had, and in doing so be working at the same time as making informative content. We walk viewers through what we were up to and have a dialog with our followers at the same time. Ideal for the part of the market that is interested in that kind of content! As an added bonus, after having live streamed to twitch, we can upload the whole session in its entirety to YouTube to be played back at any time.
Now this example is only one of the types of content we actively develop, and will obviously more than likely look very different to the kinds of solutions your business will require, but hopefully this gives you some inspiration in your own work. It's important to remember that in this day and age there is a very strong desire for customer bases to relate to individuals rather than just a brand identity, which is why live-streaming works so well for us. We can talk and interact directly with our customers while also providing something informative. You should aim to get as close to this kind of interpersonal solution as you can, if you are really looking to have that connection with customers.
As always, I hope that this has been somewhat helpful in shaping your own ideas about how you'll tackle your own marketing strategy. Just don't be afraid to experiment or go completely against the grain of what I've said if you really want to. Business after all wouldn't be business without risk, and you have to do what feels right for you and the brand that you are building! Good luck in your venture, and I hope you have a great week :)