No amount of social media marketing will overcome any deficiencies in what you provide your customers. It’s quality that counts – not what you say on your Facebook page.

Marketing Lessons in a New Social World

1. Embrace Excellence

Ask the right questions, and your customers will give you the answers you need to:

• make the most innovative, unique, and easy-to-use product.
• go above and beyond their expectations to deliver the best possible customer experience.

Remember, your social media presence is established after you earn it through achieving excellence in your business.

The Net Promoter Score is a handy tool to assess where you stand in your customers’ esteem. Customers rate you on a 0-to-10 scale, “How likely is it that you would recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague?” and results will show the promoters, passives, and detractors of your business.

As the question “How many thermometers do you need to know the turkey’s done?” asks, Net Promoter reveals the multiple layers behind your customers’ satisfaction levels.

By the time a customer complains on Yelp, it’s too late. Keep a standard of 5 stars, and worry later about your Twitter marketing plan.

2. Keep Your Focus

Get your house in order first, then worry about the social media. Because there are so many new social platforms, so many shiny, new tactics to try, businesses grow confused over where to focus their efforts. Start with these two proven strategies:

• Create great content to increase website traffic
• Work on your email marketing

Hiring a blog writer who will perform these tasks is a far more efficient use of your time, energy and money than anything else done on social media. Don’t abandon social media. Use it to promote your awesome content and enhance your email efforts with someone in-house who is attuned to your business.

Generating first-rate content involves going back to asking the right questions. By knowing your customer’s interests and needs, understanding them as people – thanks to your conversations on social media – you will be able to serve up a savory blog post, even if your industry registers as “boring.”

Your email marketing begins with capturing your website visitor’s contact information. There are free email management solutions available, such as MailChimp, as well as a host of others with reasonable fees, including Constant Contact. Make it easy for them to share their information by placing your request for email sign-up somewhere at the top of your website. Your social media buttons can go below.

3. Have Realistic Expectations

Social media platforms are constantly changing. Not only that, but you don’t own your Facebook page. Why put your money into a system that is potentially unreliable and unpredictable? Whereas it is an integral component to your overall marketing strategy, social media alone will not get loyal suscribers to your website.

In addition, recognizing the value of long-term relationship building in social media is like seeing the forest through the trees. Don’t neglect the details of regular conversations, but be patient for the time-consuming end results.

Concentrate on the Moon

Think of social media as part of the broad spectrum of your marketing plan. As in the scene from Enter the Dragon, when Bruce Lee told his martial arts student, “It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”

By trying to market using social media sharing, you’ll miss out on your overall marketing potential (and worse, you’ll chase followers away). Looking beyond traditional marketing is absolutely necessary. Just remember to keep the big picture in mind.