Social Sharing: How to Inspire Fans to Share Your Stories

Do you use stories to market your business?

Are you wondering how you can get people to share your content?

To learn how to inspire your fans and followers to share your stories via social media, I interview Simon Mainwaring for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Simon Mainwaring, author of We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World. He's a consultant who's worked with brands like Nike and Motorola. Simon also hosts the upcoming We First Social Branding Seminar in West Hollywood in a few days.

Simon shares the importance of tapping into the power of your fans to share your story.

You'll learn how you can create a story and the kind of content you need to use to succeed.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Social Sharing
Why is it important to tap the power of fans?

Simon states that the power of social media is not in the ability of a brand to sell directly to a customer; it's more to inspire a customer who made a purchase to talk about your brand to others.

With traditional media, it was "one to many." A television commercial would reach many people. Whereas with social media, it's about "one to one to many." Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, said, "One member of those thousand fans and those thousand fans will promote you to so many other people."

Apple's marketing looks effortless, but they do very conscious things to build their rabid fan base.

They celebrate the customer through the priority they give to the user experience. There is no other brand out there that spends so much time and attention to make sure their customer experience is so well-captured in the product itself.

Apple really listens to their customers and the marketing is done in a very human way. The video below shows the campaign for the iPod, which was done in very simple language.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaVFCdwT0hk

You'll discover what else Apple does to tap into the human dynamics and how they have a raving fan base.

Not everybody has the brilliance of what Apple has built and Simon says there is a fundamental shift that every brand needs to make.

The shift is for companies to market themselves not as the celebrity of their customer community but rather as a celebrant. You have to stop talking about yourself. Instead talk about your customers. Now thanks to social media, there is real-time dialog between brands and consumers.

If you want to inspire your fans to promote your brand and build your business, you need to reframe your marketing as a celebration of your customer community. You'll hear the questions you need to think about that get customers to share and what gives you the power of one to one to many. You can then use your marketing platform to celebrate your customers.

There are many entrepreneurs and big brands that transform their experience with social media. Brands have changed their positioning and it's become a benefit to their customers.

Coca-Cola's marketing used to be "The Real Thing." Now they've changed it to "Open Happiness." Pepsi was "The Joy of Pepsi," and now it's "Refresh Everything."

You'll hear how Sharpie celebrates their customers and what Intel did to make it all about their customers with the launch of the Museum of Me.

Listen to the show to find out how the direction of conversation has reversed between brand, company and customer.

What's happening in the PR and advertising industry to bring about t...