How to Apply Social to Marketing and Membership Recruitment

Do you work in Marketing?

Used in the right way, social media marketing can help you acquire new customers, convince customers to buy more often, and increase the amount customers spend with you. You can be right on time with exactly what your members and the market needs, and you can make the transaction just one click away. Social media can make your job more rewarding when you prompt your members to act and spread the word through their network about becoming a member or registering for an event they love. Your members want to spread the word about you, especially if you make it easy for them.

Running social media marketing campaigns takes specific skills, and it will be up to those in marketing positions to apply their skills to this specialty. You need to own the campaigns. You need to push your social media stakeholders to make marketing a priority, and then work together to keep everything you’re posting in balance with your organization’s core mission and your members’ expectations. You’ll be a Social CRM hero who gets more value out of every marketing dollar, and your social media skills will be important for your career and your success. Given all of that, what can the marketing team actually DO with social? What can YOU do to help your association get the most out of social? Everybody says you should be using social, but nobody tell you how. This is how.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE FULL “BE A SOCIAL CRM HERO” SERIES HERE.  These are short, checklist-style handy guides that take you step-by-step through the steps to rock your social media activities for your particular department.  

1. Manage the process of capturing and tracking leads. Followers and fans are nice, but the goal of social media marketing is to sell products, services, memberships, and event registrations. To be successful, you need to convert that follower or friend into a lead, and follow up with them in the right ways to make the sale. Promote your social media sites every chance you get in your email and direct mail marketing. And have every staff member use a signature block that lists your association’s official social media. Create compelling offers and landing pages for your social media audiences. Integrate marketing campaigns into your organization’s official social media outposts. Get to know the specific features of your outposts–i.e. Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups, and Twitter accounts–that you can effectively use for marketing. Work with your outpost administrators to plan the timing and exact messaging. Try some advertising on Facebook or LinkedIn.

2. Identify influencers and give them something to talk about. Social media has the potential to be a word of mouth engine. Each of your members and stakeholders are connected to their own network of people they know personally and respect. The art and science of compelling your members to share your stuff with their own network is worth practicing.  First, define influence and score members on both traditional and social influence.  Then build relationships with  your influencers on social media. Work with the admins of your official social media outposts and anyone else who engages on social media to monitor, respond to, and share content from your influencers. Make your influencers look smart and connected. Why would an influencer ever share your stuff? Because it makes them look good.

3. Reimagine content for the purpose of marketing. Social media marketing is all about breaking through the clutter and getting the attention of your audience. Approaching content as a marketing tool will help you be successful. That means collaborating with the content creators across your entire organization to add a layer of content designed just for driving lead generation and peer-to-peer sharing. Make sure that you share quality, current and relevant content—don’t become part of the clutter. Create bite-sized content in eye-catching formats. Align your social media marketing campaigns with the editorial calendar. Recruit content from satisfied customers who are happy to explain why membership is valuable, or why they are excited for the upcoming conference.

4. Look beyond the social media your organization owns. This is a job that is uniquely yours. No one else will take the time to do the research and the outreach needed to find potential prospects and customers engaging outside of your own official social media outposts. Advertising can help, but so can being social on sites related to your industry or profession. And being social is free.

Want more details? Get the full tactical scoop on social media marketing, and SUBSCRIBE TO THE FULL “BE A SOCIAL CRM HERO” SERIES HERE.

It’s never too late to start applying social media to marketing. You may already be doing some of this. And with a little planning and collaboration with your colleagues, you can keep building your audience and experimenting to find exactly what drives the best results. Good luck, and have fun getting to know your market in all new ways.