Combining Social Media with Sun Tzu Art of War

As we know, social media marketing is about social first and marketing second. Same for Sun Tzu Art of War: it is about art first and war later.  

'Art' in Sun Tzu Art of War refers to how we do things, while 'War' here refers to winning in the business battlefield. Social media marketing is about how we do and not what we do.  For example, it is not about how nice your photo is on FaceBook but how you post your photo: do you post it with a positive or negative angle?

On the surface, Social Media is a 201x thing, while Art of War belongs to 2,500 years ago. Yet they both share a common origin: the Yi Jing (or Book of Changes) written 5,000 years ago: life is about evolution. Social media is always evolving, while Sun Tzu Art of War is too evolving with the times as Sun Tzu advocates flexibility as the key winning strategy.

Today I shall look at the 5 Elements of Sun Tzu Art of War and they can be applied in our Social Media Marketing. 

1. Know Yourself Know Your Opponent, a Hundred Battles will be without Peril. In social media marketing, we need to know ourselves and how we want others to know us. That's why we don't post everything about ourselves but only things that we know well and how we want others to know us. For example, I post pictures about Chinatown because I know I am familiar with Chinatown. 'Know others' in social media marketing refers to knowing what netizens are concerned with at this time. If I post videos about what people are concerned with now, like the Lee Kuan Yew death in March 2015, I will get more shares and reads
2. Timing is Everything: Sun Tzu said in war, a shorter but better timed war is better than a longer and poorer timed war. In social media, shorter but more frequent posts are more read and shared than longer and infrequent posts. Also,the timing of your post is important: you should post when people are more free to read, like after 10 pm on weekdays and after 11 pm on Saturdays. Never post anything after 1 am, unless you want to capture the late owls eyeballs. 
3. Start from a High Position: In war, if you start from a higher terrain, you can see your enemey clearly and victory is assured than if you start from a ground. Same as social media. Start from a high position, which is never the low position like complains, pessimistic and hatred. A high position in social media is about three things: love, care and concern
4. War is about Deception: Sun Tzu advocates using deception, which is simply changing the perception, as tactics in our war. In social media marketing, we use tactics like branding, positioning and edification to elevate the perception of how the public view us
5. Dao is Everything: Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of having the right Dao or purpose for your war. If you have a good and strong purpose, people will follow you. Like the USA won the Iraq War in 1991 because the purpose was strong and righteous, and lost the Iraq War in 2013-2010 because of dubious reasons. In social media, our purpose is always one and only thing: connecting people. If your messages on social media are connecting people, people will follow you and do what you say.

By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer Coach at www.asiatrainers.com.  Follow Andy at www.fb.com/AndyTheCoach and WeChat him at 65-8201-4347 now