Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/319926
5. Competitors – Social media forums are typically open to the public. How should employees treat competitors and their representatives? Many of the social media marketing objectives below are also part of your overall marketing strate- gy and aren't necessarily social media specif ic. What are your company's goals as it pertains to social media marketing? Is it to increase sales or drive brand awareness? Are you looking to acquire new customers, retain old customers or reactivate former customers? Are you a B2B f irm or a B2C company? Consider whether you are strictly an online business or one that has a product for sale available in retail out- lets. Are you trying to drive your retail cus- tomers online, or does your social media strategy engage customers across all distribu- tion outlets. Identify your target market. Target marketing dictates how your f irm integrates all of the various social media platforms available. Within target marketing are demo- graphic traits such as geographic location, f inancial resources and age of your clients. Psychographic traits are those that get at customers' interests. Are they adventure travelers or prefer the quiet lifestyle of a tropical resort? And finally, you'll need to be able to define client behavioral actions. How have they interacted with your company in the past? This will usually dictate future actions. Meeting planners are typically more involved in B2B marketing as opposed to B2C, yet many of the attendees will act more like con- sumers. Meeting planners will need detailed information about the organiza- tion and its attendees for a success- ful social media strategy. Where was an event pre- viously held? How did it perform in terms of overall attendance? What attracted this group to a particular destination? What f inancial data can you gather and how does that apply to your city? Does the organization in question rely on social media to get the word out? The list is endless. And finally, there is one aspect of social media market- ing that trumps all; people-to-people (P2P) communica- tions. Survey after survey suggests that long before social media arrived on the scene, information that comes from a friend, family or coworker is far more valuable than infor- mation gleaned from general market advertising. You'll need to find these influencers if you want to have any success. For meeting plan- ners it will typically be the heads of organiza- tions, associations or the boss. That's the B2B side. For the B2C seek those with large databases of social media contacts or well- respected authority figures. These people are master pro- moters and easy to find. 13 B M & T ••• March/April 2014 ••• www.blackmeetingsandtourism.com The Motown Museum preserves the birthplace of a musical legacy and the story of a Detroit entrepreneur who — with a dream, an $800 family loan and homegrown talent — created "The Sound of Young America." Detroit holds many more stories of inuence, like the Rosa Parks bus at The Henry Ford, honoring the heritage of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History; and other cultural inuences from the Arab American National Museum to Mexicantown, Greektown and beyond. Be part of America's great comeback city. View Allen's whole story at MeetDetroit.com/ Comeback-Stories – ALLEN RAWLS CEO, MOTOWN MUSEUM IT'S SO AMAZING THE INFLUENCE ONE LITTLE HOUSE OF MUSIC HAS ON PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD. •pg_12-17.qxp__BMT_pg3-58 5/20/14 5:54 PM Page 13