Page 90 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Before you launch your SMM campaign, make sure that you’ve done an inventory
of all the other major campaigns going on at the same time that target your cus-
tomers or are within your industry. The last thing you want is to launch a cam-
paign in which you’re asking your customers to do basically the same thing that
they may have just done for a competitor.

In 2017, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) imposed guidelines on how
pharmaceutical companies can market using the social web. Those regulations
cover the promotion of FDA-regulated products. More information can be found
on this FDA website: www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofMedical
ProductsandTobacco/CDER/ucm397791.htm. If you’re a pharmaceutical company
or are operating in another regulated industry, be sure to check with your lawyers
about what you’re allowed and not allowed to do before launching an SMM
campaign.

Influencer outreach

Among the most common form of an SMM campaign is the influencer outreach
program. This campaign typically takes the form of identifying influencers on
Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and elsewhere who your customers follow. They’re
the expert influencers who cover a topic or a passion point and have a following.
The best way to think of them is as media that publish content, accept relation-
ships with brands, and build fan bases. Many accept advertising but typically have
day jobs that they’re balancing unless they’ve done extraordinarily well as
influencers.

Influencer outreach programs incentivize these influencers to publish about your
brand or product. You can give them incentives by inviting them to the R&D labs
of your company and treating them with the same deference that the mainstream
press gets, to sending them sample products and providing them with prizes with
which to run contests through their social media channels. Campaigns are some-
times built around these influencers.

It’s important to note that the debate continues to rage online about influencer
compensation. Some influencers absolutely refuse to accept compensation,
whereas others are comfortable with it. Some companies, such as Aveda, a natural
beauty products company, give influencers gift cards or spa treatments but no
outright payments. Influencers typically accept these gifts with the understand-
ing that their review will not be influenced by a gift of any kind. Companies want
honest evaluations, and their readers demand it. You must know where your tar-
geted influencer stands on this debate before reaching out to him.

74 PART 2 Practicing SMM on the Social Web