Social Media Marketing Plan Case Study

Social media marketing plan case study – I recently had a chance to ‘meet virtually,’ of course, a great lady. Her name is Rhonda. She’s a singer/song writer and up and coming I might add.

Needless to say I we originally connected via LinkedIn. You can “Like” her page on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

My approach? Simple enough. I said I wanted to get to know her personally. Note-I wasn’t selling anything…We exchanged many emails back and forth. She built up quite an active following on several social media platforms. This is helping drive her fan base and increasing it.

She invests time in building relationships with her fan base. Key focus here – relationships. So I asked her how exactly she did it. Please note there is no exact process. This is all action she intuitively figured out on her own. And it’s working. She didn’t buy countless marketing ebooks that rehash the same material.

And I’ll let Rhonda explain pretty much in her own words from here on out her method that works for her business. You will find through trial and error (by doing of course!) what works and what doesn’t for you. Every business will be different, because we, as people, are different. It’s okay not to do Twitter if Facebook pages and Foursquare works well for your local retail store.

Oh and by the way, this is very refreshing because she isn’t some marketing guru selling his latest crash course. Rhonda writes from the heart. You will feel her sincerity right through the words. Thank you Rhonda.

Rhonda writes about her social media marketing plan case study….

“I wrote songs everyday in 2011 and while I was creating a catalog of several hundred original songs, I built a network of thousands of people across several social network platforms.

I designed an eco-system of communication that allows all my social network activity to flow through and around my brand which is planted firmly in my own website presence.

My content driven mini-blogs earned me a PR3 rank in Google, so fans can type ‘RhondasSongs’ or just a few words of a song they like and find me immediately.

My homemade website is a simple copy and paste HTML because I could NOT master wordpress…. none of that matters now.

The day I posted my very last song of the My365 project, I received a full offer delivered personally by the CEO of a major label. He included the CVs of the team that he’s assembled to launch my debut album…. each has a string of Grammy’s and Dove awards credit.

But I have to review competing offers with my manager first.

I’m leaning towards that one label because the CEO was proactive and I like that… I also like that he talks to me as a professional and doesn’t talk over my head as ‘talent’. I think we could launch a sort of ‘Motown’ movement…I’ve built relationships with hundreds of seriously talented people…underground types…imagine what we could do if we partnered with the deep pockets and vast marketing experience of a major that’s set on NOT interfering in the creative process, organic growth and development. Plus we’re excited and work dirt-cheap with zero egos… just loving what we do…

I could probably write a book. My information is disjointed… I was just too busy doing it…making it up as i went along. (Note: She went through trial and error. There was no blue print. She tested what worked and what didn’t. Perfect sage marketing wisdom she intuitively knew. I love it.).

I looked at it this way… I needed to create an eco-system of communication where everything…all my social networks…blogs…music…content…flowed through and around my website…I constantly seek ways to make the system tighter…more visible and defined…as interconnected as possible…some of my ideas haven’t been invented yet…or the technology is so new, no one’s heard of it yet…

I actually use Ping like a magic genie. I will ask if something exists and someone will deliver the link in a day or two

lots and lots of gurus follow me.

Lots because I illuminate the practical needs of people that aren’t all that computer literate. Earlier today I Pinged this question, “Can I manage all my social network connections from one place?” About an hour later..someone sent me the link to Summify.com. But it’s not quite what i meant

That’s the day we’re filming a music video… it was scheduled for the 31st of this month…but I’ve received and accepted an offer (I countered)…if the deal goes through, it could radically change my marketing plans…but if not, then I’ve only been set back a month…I’ve started to churn and build up all the groundswell of support and resources I’ve amassed over the past 14 months… I do so much Matt…I found a service to provide 5000 twitter followers in 20 days… that’s prospective fans or friends of prospective fans to me… so I’m following every one of ‘em back and sending a personal message to each one…and answering each one that replies…they’re swarming over my social networks and website. I’m going to do this several times.

Still plugging away at the 20k people in mailchimp…but I have decided that capturing names is old school…it’s more important to create and cultivate an enticing communication eco-system that has no clogs in the system…flow is vital…

Example: that agency finds me a twitter follower with 20k followers… I will investigate that person as much as possible and do my level best to get a retweet or reply so THEIR followers see me. Some of those people then follow me also and I repeat the process…going deeper and deeper along that line…meanwhile these people go to my website because that’s the ONE LINK I post everywhere and in all my tweets…my website is a gateway to my eco-system…if I was smart enough to do it…I’d have little links for people to buy products as they flow along into Facebook/LinkedIn and other places…today I added photos and rearranged a few things on my site…tweaking…testing…

I don’t need that label to eventually be breath-taking successful in music…but it would make my launch much easier.
I don’t know the names of any of the things I’m doing and I want to stress it’s not any particular technique…it’s like being a caretaker of a duckpond and all the little ditches and waterways leading to it and through it… you don’t know what you’re going to need to do to keep things flowing…to deal with floods and drought and general maintenance.

I trust my very first instinct and invariably do that. But I have the basic guiding rule of trying to never say anything that might offend or embarrass anyone…the advantage I have here is a ‘feeling’ for words and the possible emotional connection/meaning behind them

So for example when my lead-generator supplies me with 1000 warm leads (new followers) i don’t have time to mess around… I click on their profile, read the bio and a few recent tweets…Decide if I should investigate further or not in a few seconds… I almost always leave a personal message to anyone with a genuine photo and less than 300 to 500 followers… they are very likely to write back immediately, RT and avidly stay connected…

But someone with thousands of fans is usually in some sort of business…so i quote something from their bio or mention the title of their latest book or a song on their new album that i listened to or scanned a bit…they will invariably RT that to their thousands of fans…

Someone with a huge following in a foreign language… I will Google Translate their bio and see if they’re positive or not…then I will respond in their language by typing something very simple that references something in their bio…that’s invariably a RT and I get flooded with more people in that language…it’s why I’m desperate for a real-time twitter translator service.

When language is no longer a barrier…I will grow much faster…I already have fans in every developed and developing country on the planet just about.

But I don’t live at the computer…I clean my house…take my son to school…go shopping…live my life…it’s just this work is an integral part of my day…everyday for now…but I’ve already started outsourcing things I can afford to pay others to do..such as lead generation…one day I’ll be able to afford to hire someone to manage the entire eco-system…I’ll be on the road singing night after night…standing on a stage one day thanking my fans for my Grammy and stuff like that.

Just a quick update (as of January 27, 2012).

I did get a full offer and accepted with conditions through my lawyer, but I don’t think they liked my reservations.

I’ve teamed up with a hi-profile bunch of musicians and we’ve agreed to make an album together. 5 of my songs and 5 of theirs. My lawyer’s okay with it because we each keep 100% ownership of our own songs… it’s like a barter and we get studio credit royalties if anything takes off on the other parties song…they’ll take me on tour with ‘em. So as it stands I still own ALL my intellectual property.

I now stream Live every Tuesday. Featuring a song I wrote that week… it’s all about content flow.

I launched a social network with ning, to keep my blog and events calendar and community all in one place…some people don’t like Facebook… I needed a place anyone could use. But ning has an annual fee and someone told me about Jamroom.net which is a one-time fee and unlimited members…so I’ll pay for ning for a year but stop promoting the ning brand and just call it my ‘community’ so i can switch to Jamroom without too much trouble… the ning site has 150 member minimum otherwise i have to pay a much bigger annual fee. I’m looking for the best, cheapest and easiest to use social network with my brand that’s sustainable.

A webhosting and design company got in touch and they set up a store for me. No charges except a small fee per download sale. simple, easy to understand and fair. I’ll probably stay with them forever.

I realised one thing about myself. My entire eco-system is based on point and click or copy and paste. Any engines I have to drive MUST have a dashboard that’s intuitive otherwise I drift away until I find something that I feel comfortable working with. I look for price and prefer to pay one-off’s rather than on-going annual fees. People surface if you just publicly discuss what you’re doing…what your challenges are and if you have a fixed point on the Internet… my weekly podcast is a good example…the audience grew in just 3 weeks. It will continue to grow and I’ll run the show to the end of the year.