This is Worthless…Social Media

This article is the final portion of a 5 part social media article series we have featured over the last month. If you missed any of the before published piece you can read them through the links below:

Part 1: Don’t Play Follow the Leader

Part 2: Strategy, It’s Your Foundation

Part 3: Social Media and the Customer

Part 4: Engagement, It’s the Secret Sauce

Social Media Marketing Can Be Great, And Also Completely Worthless

Yes, I just used 2,341 words (Part 1-4) to tell you social media marketing for your funeral home is completely WORTHLESS…

If you don’t do the following:

Educate

• Learn how a comprehensive social media strategy works (internally).
• Learn about your customers and understand their (met & unmet) needs.

Prioritize

• Understand which social media channels to use and why.

Measurement

• Determining the correct measurement areas (baseline vs. KPI).
• Determining success.

Culture

• See how social media can play a role in firm development and all marketing initiatives.
• Gaining the knowledge and understanding on how to make a cultural shift to social media.

It’s Closing Time

Social media marketing can put a human face on your firm (outside of the arrangement room and funeral home), replacing the impersonal with the highly personal. And they can give your customers a platform to help each other.

A social media marketing strategy that embodies your firm in a useful and engaging way can deepen the connection between you and your customers and earn your funeral home a larger place in their lives.

Every funeral home has already invested time and money into the Bought and Owned media channels. A customer focused social media strategy utilizes the Earned channel where the social media conversation begins and sustains itself.

Once funeral directors are able to figure out the very basic equation for social media they will begin to understand that social media is not about pushing content out through a new channel. It’s about having a conversation with consumers via a new channel.

In the past 20 years there were few ways that potential customers could talk to funeral homes (outside of a death). With the rise of social media, customers can talk and more importantly: Share. Comment. Watch. Listen. And that’s why social media is so important. It’s real, not magic.