10 social media marketing strategy tips

Photo by Andreas Eldh

The internet is rapidly filling up with social media experts, consultants, charlatans and everything in between.

To sort the wheat from the chaff, it’s generally a good idea to listen to those that have walked the walk rather than just talked the talk.

So then, it was interesting to listen to Luke Lewis, UK editor of Buzzfeed and former editor of NME.com, both of which have sizeable social media followings, to find out his top tips at the recent News:rewired conference in London.

1. Twitter for ROI: Twitter rather than Facebook was the largest source of revenue to NME.com as measured in direct clicks and subsequent page views and associated ad revenue
2. Repeat successful Tweets: most of your followers won’t see most of your Tweets, so Tweet again if it works. In his experience, those that have seen it will probably ignore it rather than complain.
3. Greatest hits: don’t be afraid to Tweet your greatest hits. Not everything on Twitter has to have taken place in the last 20 seconds.
4. React, but find an angle: if it’s the Olympic opening ceremony, then find an angle appropriate to your brand and Tweet about it. A good example during the recent critically panned Brits Awards 2013 was a Tweet from NME with a link to Oasis’ Blur spat at the 1996 Brits.
5. Planned spontaneity: you’ll go mad trying to chase every bit of news, but if there’s an important event, such as an election result, sporting occasion,  then prepare a viral which you is reacting to the outcome, e.g. 10 reasons to still be a Aston Villa/Wigan fan where both are ready and the appropriate one is released almost immediately following the result.
6. Tweet a lot: while he certainly wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a huge following, NME Tweeted around 50 times a day to cut through the clutter. Actually, let’s hope you don’t follow this one or the flood of Tweets will get worse…
7. Ask questions and respond: any good (or bad) social media consultant will tell you it’s all about the conversation. Yes, ask questions, but actually respond to the answers, e.g. NME asked for ’50 songs that give you goosebumps’, and some of those songs formed the first set of features in NME.
8. Ignore the haters: don’t pour fuel on the fire, life’s too short. Delete or ignore – you may get a short term burst of traffic, but it’s unlikely to be the right source of visitors for the long term health of the site.
9. Be upbeat: NME had a famously sparky letters page in the magazine, but the tone on social media was much more upbeat, largely due to avoiding creating a whole set of no.7 above.
10. Don’t follow the rules too closely: just to contradict himself perfectly, the one exception was when NME managed to upset Lady Gaga by naming her album the most pretentious ever and a whole hoard of ‘Little Monsters’ descended on NME’s digital presence after the ever pretentious Gaga (see what I did there!) Tweeted her angst:
    

    Oh the irony of winning “Most Pretentious Album Ever” from none other than NME. *eyeroll* I might laugh forever + then return to narcissism

To create some on mischief, NME couldn’t resist a follow up post on the 50 Angriest Lady Gaga fans which not only fueled the fire, but also was the right tone for the core NME audience who probably agreed with the original article and were enjoying the mayhem.

For more of the same, read our round-up of how the Facebook algorithm works.