Social media: what you're doing wrong
Using social media like Facebook and Twitter offers significant rewards to egaming companies like yours, says Matt Nash, chief exec of OOSocial - but needs more than your office junior's downtime to make it work...
THE EGR LIVE conference and exhibition in London this week included the packed ‘Tweetwise’ panel session on social media, and for good reason: everyone is talking about social media, everyone knows they should be acting and engaging in that space, but no-one really knows what they should actually be doing.
Too often, the ‘Social Media Expert’ in a company tends simply to be its youngest person, as he or she is the one deemed most likely to be using Facebook or Twitter ‘recreationally’. That person is not necessarily given any budget, nor support, and often looks after the company’s social media only as an add-on to their main role in the business.
This is a mistake. If a company or brand wants to achieve any significant success within social media, they need to be willing to invest: in time, in resource, and in budget; and invest not only in achieving that success, but also in educating other employees to sustain it.
Social media is not just a six-week campaign – you are entering into a on-going conversation with your customers. If someone were to just turn around and walk away from you mid-sentence during a face-to-face conversation, you would consider them rude. And the same applies in social media.
Engaging in a conversation with your customers will enable your company to start building a rapport with them, and inevitably increase the level of trust they have in you.
This relationship and trust is a key contributor to being able to retain your customers. The online gambling space is a saturated market, with plenty of offers trying to win players away onto new gaming sites. If your customer feels an affiliation or personal link to your site, they will be more likely to come back to you, and not just be tempted away by the bright flashing offers appearing in their sidebar.
Communicating a relevant message to the right person, at the right time, in the environment where they spend the majority of their time online – typically social networks – is key. Brands that achieve this will reap the rewards.
Matt Nash appeared on the Tweetwise panel at EGR Live on Monday, together with Judith Lewis of Seshet Consulting and Bjorn Gustafsson of Skull Media Group.
Thoughts? EGR welcomes pitches for blog posts of between 250 and 350 words on topical issues in egaming. Email online editor Jon Parker for details.