Social Media marketing best practice from Marindepot.com

This is going to be a slightly unconventional post, but recently I’ve been hooked on a new hobby. Here’s my story on how social media played in, and how successful companies use this to their advantage.

What for me started out with a single goldfish a few weeks ago have now taken serious proportions. Having educated myself and aided the poor goldfish with creative solution for a goldfish bowl filter, my interest quickly swayed to the marine side of the hobby… Nano reefs.

A couple of weeks later, having spent endless amounts of sleepless hours on forums, I now sit with here with a newly acquired 30L (8g) Marinus Nano Cube, Reverse Osmosis water purifier, few kilos of rock and a “sea” of other equipment and tools. The best part? In about 2 months time I may even be able to add a little shrimp to the tank (the water has to go through a certain cycling process).

So what does all of this have to do with Web strategy and Social media marketing?

After having been hooked on the idea starting a Nano Reef tank, I started my online research on what I needed to commence. Rest assure that I’vent been any near close to a trade show, a TV ad, print ad not even an paid online banner have influenced my buying decision.

So what have I been influenced by? By people and brands that could provide the information I was looking for, that could give me answers on questions and that seemed to be an authority within their field.

Although a number of sites, people and brands have passed through my eyes the past week, two really cought my attention and became my most visited sites:

• Marindepot.com (Online shop for all things marine aquarium)
• Nano-reef.com (Forum with loads of friendly and experienced Nano reef keepers)

So what is it Marindepot.com does so well?

Remember the 5 key areas of a successful social media program? Let’s look at a few excellent examples of how Marindepot.com does it:

Listening

I don’t know the organisation or technology behind their contact center. Regardless if they use tools such as Radian6 to keep up with forum mentions or just manually monitor a few key threads, they are actively listening to conversations. I’ve seen this being excellent on their owned social media channels, but also on forums such as Nano-reef.com:

Talking

Marindepot.com has an excellent content strategy in place based on educating their customers and prospects, both in how-to-use as well as in new product offerings. Blogger, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are the propriety channels that Marindepot.com are publishing their content in, that’s secondary though.

A big issue I had was to understand how to mix the saltwater, after a while I understood from Nano-reef.com posts that I probably would need to go for a Reverse Osmosis unit. Being a total newbie to that Marindepot.com obviously had the answer:

Supporting

It’s one thing creating great branded content that your follower base responds with. It’s another thing being able to actively support your customers and prospects when needed. @wborroto had a question on the salinity of the water and Marindepot.com had a public twitter reply back the very same day:

Energizing

Although it’s standard on all online shops these days to have public customer reviews and ratings displayed, it’s probably still one of the best ways to energize your customers. Amazon has gone a step further and added wish lists. I would have added social sharing options once you have written the review, I’d be more prone to share my review than randomly Like or Tweet a product page.

Embracing

Embracing your customers almost literally mean “to hug them”, to take them inside your business and let them have a say. or at least let them belief and feel that they have a say. Many companies have chosen branded forums as their tactic for embracing their customers. Turn your browser to forum.marindepot.com and you’ll find a branded InstantForum.net setup. How well they are using this forum for research and potential customer focus groups is unknown, but they are at least on a good start. If not, their SEO-team is most likely enjoying it.

And how does Nano-reef.com and other forums fit into the equation?

I’d easily estimate that a very large percentage of Marindepots.com customers are also members of some online forum dedicated to marine aquarium life. It’s here where the decisions happens, it’s here where people go for advice and shopping tips. If you’re not stocking the products that are being talked about, you’re going to lose. If you don’t listen to the feedback and get a crisp picture of what your core influencers are thinking, then you’re going to lose as well.

This is not about reaching out the the forum admin and asking him to sweet talk your products in return of some free perks, this is about making really good things for real, things that works without taking cheap short-cuts that will back fire on you. This is about being a transparent and honest business having a real passion and commetiment to what they do.

Marindepot.com; hats off!