Top Social Brands reveal their digital marketing secrets!

The trail blazers of digital marketing - MTV, American Express, Xbox, NBA and AT&T reveal their digital marketing secrets!

1. Be human 

“Nailing a tone that resonates with your audience is of paramount importance,” says Tom Fishman, manager of social media and community at MTV. 

At Xbox, there are 15 people on the Xbox Tweet Fleet, all of whom tweet with their own personalities and “create a collective voice” by being passionate. Each tweeter signs off with his initials so the consumer knows who tweeted at them (American Express also does this). 

It’s important to be real and not sound like a press release. After all, people are opting to follow you — don’t give them a reason to unfollow!

2. Know what you want

MTV's goal is to crystallize communities around shows and bands. While promoting the new show Skins, Fishman says MTV was able to build a hyper-passionate community before the show even premiered. He says it was an eye-opening experience when it comes to "thinking about how to approach special campaigns in a pre-promotional phase." MTV Vice President of Digital Media Colin Helms told Mashable in January that, “We usually build a community after the show has launched. We did the opposite with Skins.”

3. Listen and respond

No one likes asking a question and not having it answered. The @XboxSupport stream sends 5,000 tweets per week, and it is the Guinness World Record holder for most responsive brand on Twitter. The average response time? "Three to five minutes, if not faster,” Eakin says. And Baccus says AT&T usually responds within 15 minutes — impressive, huh?

4. Diversify and pace your content

At AmEx, Forman focuses on hitting a balance of proactive and reactive tweets. Proactive tweets result from events that are planned on an editorial calendar — promoting Small Business Saturday, for example. Then there are reactive tweets that respond to inquiries from followers and cardmembers. “We’re cognizant of what we’re pushing out, and we know that people are following us for different reasons,” she says.

Brands have to be careful not to push too much content — no one wants to hear from a brand more than they hear from their friends and family.

5. Inject yourself into the conversation

hen someone tweets about a problem with his Xbox — even if he's not tweeting at Xbox — the Tweet Fleet team responds. In fact, someone on shift is responsible for “engagement finds” — tweeting at users who mention Xbox to let them know the Tweet Fleet is there to offer support for technical issues.

6. Get feedback in real time

A perfect example of this flexibility is AT&T's “Plead Your Case” Facebook app campaign. AT&T discovered a high dropout rate — people weren't clicking through to the end. Instead of letting the campaign fail, the AT&T team made some quick tweaks based on the real-time data it was collecting from the app. The result? More than 90% of people went through the entire process once the fixes were implemented.

7. Know your audience

Eakin says that the Xbox audience is so diverse — moms, dads and kids — that the same tone doesn't fly for all tweets. She says her tweeters take the extra few seconds to click on a user's Twitter handle to find out who they’re talking to, because a working mother should be spoken to differently than a 14-year-old gamer. That personalization is simple to implement, and it goes a long way.

8. Know the platforms

Twitter and Facebook are not interchangeable, and you should have a different approach for each. In general, Twitter is more of a two-way conversation — a brand’s Twitter feed is a timeline of responses to customer inquiries, "thank yous" for nice tweets, brand updates and conversational dialogue. Facebook, however, is more of a community -– the wall can be treated as a sort of bulletin board for announcements. Having Facebook posts push to Twitter and vice versa isn't the best idea — the platforms serve different purposes.

9. Create a user centric experience

Social media has changed the way we market — billboards, print ads and commercials were always one-way. Now, brands engage in dialogue with the consumer, and communication has become a two-way street. Fishman says that, for this reason, you must make sure that the most important thing is to be “100% user-centric.” He adds that everything the MTV social team does is first assessed through the lens of, “How are we adding value for our users?” 

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/04/12/digital-marketing-lessons/