Working with Product Marketing on Social Media Marketing Plans

Social media is not just for teenagers anymore, it is for everyone. Especially in a COVID world, it is where people are going for information, and it's under-utilized by companies.

Most companies have not even let people go back into an office, let alone started meeting with customers in person. One-on-one communication with current customers and internal stakeholders is happening via various online meeting tools, but how are you getting new leads and piquing the interest of new customers? The answer is through online platforms like social media.

You used to be able to launch at massive trade shows, but currently these launches are done solely online. One of the best ways to get the word out without breaking the bank on paid promotion is through social media.

In today’s world, social media is where people are consuming their information and spending much of their online time. People buy from people they know, like, and trust, and without being able to actually see people in person the best way to build your credibility is with social media.

Getting all of your stakeholders on board with social media is key to getting the word out about products. Keep in mind, they get paid the same if they post on social media or not--why not encourage them to post and share the messaging?

There are tons of different social media platforms and yes, some are for teenagers like we discussed above, but many C-levels are now using social media themselves to grow their brand along with their company’s brand. The two main business-focused social media platforms are LinkedIn and Twitter.

LinkedIn is great for longer content and is 100% business-focused. You will find very little personal content on there. People tend to read and watch longer things on this platform, so the content that you use for a product launch does not need to be "snackable" like it does with other platforms. It can be a bit longer and/or link out to longer pieces of content. Great pieces of content for a launch that get great engagement on LinkedIn include:

• Longer videos and interviews

• Customer and partner case studies

• Native blogs written on LinkedIn

• Blogs written on other platforms and cross-posted

Twitter is the other platform that tends to be more business-focused for launches, however, it does have more personal stuff on it. Twitter content should be more "snackable" and shorter. Twitter actually limits the amount of content you can put on the platform. For example, native videos must be shorter than two minutes and twenty seconds, and they limit the amount of characters you can post to 280. Some examples of great Twitter content are:

• Infographics

• Short sizzle reels

• Short written pieces that link out to longer blogs

• Pictures with info about launches, webinars, or events

I would recommend you work to seed the content above to company-branded handles, then encourage your internal stakeholders to simply share the content from those handles. It takes less than 60 seconds for them to do and it allows their entire network to see the launch materials with a very light lift.

Just like the business world is becoming more social-savvy, so is the consumer world. How many times have you seen an ad on Facebook and just known you needed that random thing, and you don’t even know how they knew? Advertising on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are huge for promoting consumer-focused products that you are launching.

Many consumers are spending a lot of time on social media, so the algorithms know what those consumers are looking for, what they read about, and what they want to know. That makes targeting them much easier. For business social media we talked about your stakeholders sharing content from corporate handles. However, if you are launching a consumer-focused product, I would focus more on using the corporate handles themselves to advertise. You can quickly hone in on a demographic with the advertising tools and use these platforms to reach out consumers.

It is not bad if your internal stakeholders share from the corporate handles, but since usually these platforms are more social, it may look odd if they are advertising on their own personal handles that aren’t often used for work.

It is definitely a shift in culture to get your stakeholders to start sharing on social media, however it needs to become part of what is done on a daily basis. Even as a things start to open up (and who knows when that will be) businesses will come to realize they don’t need to do as much in person as they thought. A lot of technology companies are performing just as well without paying out so much for travel and the time it takes to do the actual travel.

Businesses will likely cut down on travel and expense budgets, trade shows, and in-person internal and customer meetings. Social media via corporate handles and personal handles are going to be a huge part of launch campaigns. Social media will evolve and expand as it becomes an even bigger part of how the world communicates.