The Four Ps of Social Media Engagement

Over the last few weeks, I’ve done a number of new business calls (cross your fingers for me please). Naturally, social media comes up in pretty much every conversation, usually as a response to a request to explain blogging 🙂 so I recently came up with a very simple way to explain the phases of social media engagement. I tried it on a call last night, and it really resonated with the folks I was speaking with, so I thought I’d share it with you. 

Let’s call it the Four Ps of Social Media Engagement, with a nod to the good ole Four Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

First, PREPARE. Before you do anything, you have to listen to your customers, find out what they care about, what they may already be saying about your company, competitors and industry issues. How? Monitor blogs.Listen to podcasts. Join the relevant social networks and groups.

Next, PARTICIPATE. Leave comments on blogs.Share personal experiences. Start twittering. Get to know the people in the community, and give them a chance to know you — as individuals and as representatives of your firms.

Then and only then, should you PUBLISH (a blog, podcast etc.) or PITCH (a program, a product). And of course, all the usual rules still apply here: relevant, authentic, appropriate, honest, respect, etc. etc.

You can start participating simultaneously with publishing a blog or doing blogger outreach, but it’s always better if the first few times people "meet" you, you don’t have an immediate objective. Give first, ask much much much later.

Also, notice that in both Ps, promotion is last, preparation first. And now think about social media programs that have failed. Usually because the promotion preceded the other phases, isn’t it?

I recalled that somewhere, somewhen, I had seen others use the Four Ps metaphor, so to give credit where credit is due, I did an all-tweet to make sure I didn’t unintentionally plagiarize someone. Steve Rubel, Rick Short, and Toby Bloomberg have all used it to discuss the content of a blog, not the phases of engagement. Nathan Gilliat’s Four Ps is somewhat similar to mine and is most likely the one I remembered. His post also links to some other alphabet soup posts for those who like that sort of thing. In that vein, I must give a nod to PR blogger David Wescott’s Three Rs for Blogger Relations and my own Five Cs of Viral Marketing. If you’ve done something similar, please add it in the comments, email or tweet me and I’ll add it to the list.

One company that is doing an excellent job of listening and responding to its small business customers lately is Intuit. I helped out at its Just Start promotion in South Station last month (on a purely volunteer basis), and just wanted to remind my readers that entries for the company’s Just Start contest end this Friday December 15th. If you have a new business idea, it’s worth taking the few minutes to enter the contest for a chance at the $50K prize.

Finally, don’t miss Dilbert has The Knack. Especially if you are an engineer or married to one.

Tags: social media engagement, Four Ps, Intuit