The 4 Rs of Social Media Marketing: the Right information at the Right time, in the Right format, to the Right people

Since I started using the Internet in the 90’s, something that I always liked about it was the availability of information. In fact, I am curious by nature and having almost no limits to what I can find when I am surfing the net still remains one of the best things of the Internet, along with the possibility of exchanging such information with friends and peers.

I still remember one of the slides I liked the most from a very old deck I used to present to clients at the beginning of my career (my LinkedIn profile is here): the 4 Rs of information. It was over 10 years ago and I still believe those 4Rs are absolutely applicable to today’s social media marketing.

“The Right information, at the Right time, in the Right format, to the Right people“: this is the secrect for delivering your social media message right.

Since the Internet for all of us is about information (didn’t Google become the giant that it is today because of all our searches on it? Don’t we like Facebook because of the information we can share about our friends – about our life, our day, our trips, and about what we like), even more, this rule should be “the” rule when it comes to social networks.

What should the 4 Rs be on Social Network?

 The right information: There is a lot of buzz in these days about the importance of PRs in social media and about how to better define  social media strategies.  The point is: what are consumers looking for on social networks? Social CRM specialists Get Satisfaction found, many consumers who follow brands online are only in it for the perks. Around 40% of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users in a recent study said they followed brands to get access to discounts and special deals: the right information brands should give to their fans is how to get special offers and deals.

The right time: What is the right time to deliver a marketing message on social networks? A recently published infographic from KISSmetrics answers these questions in ‘The Science of Social Timing.’ Here are a few key takeaways from the Science of Social Timing infographic:

• The best time to tweet is 5PM ET
• 1 to 4 tweets per hour is ideal
• The best days to tweet are midweek and on the weekends
• The best day to share on Facebook is Saturday
• The best time to share on Facebook is Noon ET

The right format: not sure you noticed the most frequent news today, other than on social networks, are around apps and web-apps. The reason is we cannot ignore the mobile revolution. As pointed out by this interesting ConsumerScape research by IDC,  smartphone users are growing worldwide, and what is growing the most in their usage is social networks connectivity. The right format (your landing page) should then be anything that is easily clicked and used on any mobile phone.

–          The right people: with over 60% of “pages’ fans” buying your product “usually” or “always”, as reported by Get Satisfaction (see figure below),  marketers should definitely consider who their fans are (and what they want from your fan page, as pointed out in my previous point), in terms of age, sex and location. One of the things I like the most of certain Facebook fan pages, for instance, is their ability to speak their fans language (the page “gets” where you are located). Communication to fans should be adapted depending who are you speaking to, never forgetting the tone should be always nice and official at the same time. Never forget it’s your brand speaking, not your community manager (or, worse, your intern).

Related posts:

– Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+: who is using social media and what to expect from social media marketing in the future

– Facebook fan pages vs (forthcoming) Google+ pages for business: lessons learned and tips