From James: Today’s post is the first in a series of four articles on social media marketing – all part of a contest within TopRank Marketing for a chance to attend Social Media Marketing World. Watch for the next post in the series on using social media for customer service.
They call it the “privacy revolution.” People are wanting more privacy when interacting online, so they are gravitating to new private social networks, like Ello and MeWe. How do marketers capture this audience and engage on social channels without advertising or company pages?
For the purpose of this discussion, we will concentrate on MeWe. In her predictions post, Phyllis Khare touts the potential of MeWe among the newcomers in the realm of private social networks.
“MeWe empowers its members to comfortably share their real lives online and easily communicate with the people and circles that matter most to them,” said Mark Weinstein, CEO and Founder of MeWe during an interview I conducted with him about the launch of the platform.
Before Facebook and LinkedIn had company pages, marketers utilized groups to meet their audiences. Khare predicts MeWe will grow, especially among small interest groups. Is your audience one of those groups? If so, utilizing MeWe and other private social channels should be on your radar.
Ideas For Marketing on Private Social Networks:
- Create a company group for your fans, customers and employees (who are your biggest fans).
MeWe’s Get Started screen.
- Join like-minded groups and post interesting, engaging content.
- Create an interest group for your market.
- MeWe allows you to change your persona for different groups. Utilize this to highlight information and ideas you want to come-through based on the interest group.
- Add a MeWe share button on your blog and website. If you are creating great content, make it easy to share on these new networks.
- MeWe allows you to upload files (similar to Dropbox) for sharing and collaboration. Consider creating a collaboration document to encourage members to add content. Or, share a white paper, without requiring going to another site.
MeWe makes it easy for users to share your posts on other social networks (even at the same time), raising the potential for content sharing to move beyond MeWe to the other popular social channels.
No Curated Content
Mainstream social media platforms use algorithms to decide what they think users should read, which really frustrates marketers. The private networks contend they are not tracking user data, so all content posted has the potential to actually be seen by followers or group members.
“MeWe is the platform for the future,” said Weinstein. “It lets users actually see all the posts they want to see, because we do not curate their feed.”
Better Understanding of Group Members
Group tweet, a MeWe feature, allows members of a group (depending on personal settings) see what other members are tweeting. It’s a great way to aid in your research to identify group member interests and potential influencers.
Businesses and nonprofits might consider utilizing MeWe personal groups for internal collaboration. The private group provides editable documents, private messaging, event calendar, separate discussion groups, and the ability to build threads off of different idea streams.
How have you utilized private networks to aid your marketing efforts? Can you share ideas with our readers?
The Social Media Marketing World conference on March 25-27, will include a Social Future Track looking at emerging opportunities. I wonder what the experts will say about the “privacy revolution” in San Diego?
Images courtesy of MeWe.
