Social media can help businesses serve customer needs across the lifecycle, not just at the top of the sales funnel.

Lee Odden  |  Social Media Smarts  |  December  5, 2011 |  4 comments

Yes, Facebook is dominant in most countries (but not all), Twitter is toppling governments, LinkedIn is getting everyone head hunted, and Google+ is at 67 million users in no time. However, these social networks have a combined worldwide market share of 78 percent (see Wikipedia); they are often not your social network of choice especially in many Asian countries, such as China, Korea, and Japan. {READ THE REST}

If your target market is one of those in the 22 percent, the landscape is often very fragmented, broken down by ages and topics. Care must be taken to select the social network that best represents your target demographic.

When faced with many choices, the temptation to be on all of them is high. Don’t, because building word-of-mouth successfully in social media is about creating high quality engagement. A bunch of half-hearted presences is only detrimental to your brand.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

It’s important not to be too self-centered when building up your social media presence. Apart from sprucing up your page/group and making it lively, it is also critical to know what is going on “out there” away from your page/group. Many tools can help you do that, to gauge the ”temperature” on your topic of interest, or to find out exactly who’s-saying-what-from-where-and-when. Granularity of your need is directly proportional to their costs – the deeper you want to drill, the more expensive the tools tend to be.

How to select these tools is easily another long article, but the main point here is that you will need some tools. Don’t think you can do this meaningfully manually (there is only so much those interns can do!).

7 Tips to Enhance Your Brand on Social Media

To build your brand encompassing the shorthand marketing messages that create emotional bonds with consumers built into your social media marketing, break it into its component parts and consider how to apply each to your social media execution and content.

1.What’s your brand promise? What’s the one thing your brand always delivers to your customers? It has to be easy to describe so prospects, customers, and fans remember it. Blendtec’s Will It Blend videos consistently show its industrial strength blenders by humorously testing them with a variety of well-known products including iPhones and iPads in a lab setting complete with hard hats, protective eyewear, and white lab coats.
2.How is your brand positioned? Jack Trout and Al Ries taught that positioning is what you do in the mind of your prospects and consumers who own your brand. American Express Open created a social media forum for business owners to help them build their dreams. By providing premium quality, useful content their customers need, American Express helps businesses while positioning its brand.
3.What’s your brand’s personality? To extend this to social media, think about which social media platforms you plan to engage on. How will you engage with prospects, customers, and the public? Remember, you must be consistent in your social media approach. Cable provider Comcast created ComcastCares on Twitter to interact directly with its customers and give its customers another conduit to reach it. This has helped Comcast’s brand image.
4.What logo, icons, or other graphic elements represent your brand? Think in terms of how you represent your brand across various media formats, including text, photographs, video, and audio. Wrapped in its blue and white packaging, Oreo’s Facebook fan page puts the classic circular sandwich cookies and its customers at the heart of its social media presentation with weekly photographs of customers eating Oreos. [Read the rest here]

HG: How do you encourage people to engage in actions that benefit Dell (follow, fan, share, click, buy, etc.)? Can you give specific examples?

RD: Sure:

1. Incenting employees to create content is one thing: you can put hard metrics in their performance plans or propose a little friendly competition and the promise of something appealing. But incenting people outside your company can be a challenge. This requires companies to build brand loyalty – something Dell accomplished with its creation of CAP days. Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel (CAP days) takes some of Dell’s greatest supporters, as well as some of Dell’s biggest critics, and brings them together to hash out what’s working, what people like, and what they think Dell must improve upon. This breeds brand loyalty that goes far beyond a simple “like” or “share.” While we realize this is a large-scale project and that not every company is capable of constructing something similar, the underlying goal can still be accomplished in much smaller ways.
2. Providing great thought leadership content on a regular and highly frequent basis encourages people to connect with us to get access to the content in their streams. Our Enterprise Efficiency and Tech Center communities do a great job of keeping customers engaged with great content.

HG: How do you think social media marketing drives revenue or saves money for Dell? Can you give specific examples?

RD:Sure, here are a few:

1. A McKinsey study recently found that 69 percent of surveyed companies gained measureable business benefits from social media, including product innovation, more effective marketing spend, lower cost, and higher revenues.
2. Social media drives people to our purchase process on our website. Social content on our website increases the number of people who convert to revenue.
3. Online customer support and communities reduces the number of people calling into our call centers.
4. B2B communities allow people to get access to experts to push them down the purchase funnel.

HG: How do you measure the success of your social media marketing – what are some of your main metrics/KPIs? Can you give specific examples?

RD:The whole point of your social media efforts is to address pragmatically fundamental business goals. You need quantifiable insight into how online engagement with customers can improve the key value drivers of your business.

1. We look at the links between customer behavior in social media and revenue both off and online (which I mentioned earlier).
2. We also look at the impact on costs (in customer support, for example), loyalty, product innovation (by incorporating social feedback in product roadmaps), and brand reputation.
3. One relevant metric is the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures the loyalty of your customer base and lets you identify opportunities for increasing your overall brand health. It also enables you [Read the rest here]

During a session at SES San Francisco this week, XA.net CEO Rob Leathern presented data from Facebook ad testing system optim.al that hinted at accuracy problems for Zip code-based ad targeting. Specifically, Facebook’s estimated addressable audience in several Zip codes in Fremont, CA and Pleasanton, CA did not match to census data for those places.

In the case of at least one Zip code (94566), Facebook’s user estimates are grossly inflated compared to the U.S. Census count. Facebook pegs its audience at 808,000 for that Pleasanton postal zone, whereas census data puts it at 41,000. [read the rest here]

Recent news events have certainly indicated a new rush of attention toward Twitter:

- The service has seriously been investing in new ad formats and (more importantly) new advertisers. Jack Daniels most recently bought ads on the site, becoming the first spirits brand to do so. The company is reporting not only a great engagement rate, but also that the brand spiked in tweets, not necessarily related to the ad.

- Twitter is also experimenting with new text ads appearing on the site in the side bar. This seems to be a small test now, but it clearly hints that Twitter is trying out a few different formats to figure out which is the most effective at generating revenue.

- A new forecast seems to have picked up on this activity. An outfit called BIA/Kelsey is predicting that ad sales on Twitter will grow at 65 percent (compound), which is twice what regular old boring display ads will do.

- Twitter seems intent on recapturing come control over the Twitter experience. There are ridiculous strong rumors of Twitter buying TweetDeck, a highly popular desktop client for the service. Of course, Twitter already has a desktop client (which is quite good), but imagine if there was some other way to access the iTunes store, besides iTunes?

- And, finally, Twitter has had its big breakthrough moment in the U.S. operation that killed Osama bin Laden. The particular nature of this event meant that the U.S. media announced that a special report was coming from the President, but wouldn’t say what is was. But the news was already out and all over Twitter. In that moment, Twitter trumped television as the place to go for immediate updates, in very much the same way that television trumped print before it. The idea has been established in the minds of the media public. Check Twitter first. [read the rest]

Beyond the Check-In

As the market evolves, companies that offer location services will need to look for new ways to beef up their offerings beyond the check-in and fulfill more mainstream roles. While we all love checking in and sharing info, users will tire of the many steps that now exist (think about the many questions on if you want to share, where you want to share, associated confirmations, and on and on). The “check-in” as a popular concept in LBS will be in for some serious changes in 2011 as consumers look for more convenient, private, and rewarding ways to declare where they are.

Better Deals integration: Facebook has intimately linked its Places offering with Deals. The service is a natural extension of its local marketing initiatives – small, medium, and large businesses can all benefit from linking their company’s Facebook page to a physical location on Facebook Places. Business owners can then use the combination of Places and Deals to increase foot traffic. Facebook Places check-ins have also become a focus of the Sponsored Stories ad units. Brands can have friends’ likes and Places check-ins turned into small ads that show up next to a user’s newsfeed. For example, if someone’s friend check in at Starbucks on Facebook Places, he would see that check-in called out alongside the other Facebook ad units.

Social recommendation engine: Expect growth in conversations around places. People do not just want to share that they’ve been somewhere, they also want to share what they think about it. Foursquare’s Tips feature makes it easy for people to leave behind tips about a location like what to eat, what not to eat, and what to do. Other apps will follow and extend this content from a supporting role to a key component of the experience.

Users will also start extending recommendations to other places outside of the current location. For Google, this means making robust updates to its suite of location apps. Google has already rolled out updates to make its Latitude and Places products more appealing to everyday consumers, such as Google Places’ HotPot, a location recommendation tool that is fueled by Netflix-like ratings of locations and a social recommendation system based on places friends have liked. Yelp has started using Facebook’s Open Graph API to make social recommendations based on reviews Facebook friends have posted.[Read the rest]

For organizations large and small, the choice to engage in social media is not a casual activity. Innovation and the ability to master social media technologies to be proactive are the keys to success in today’s business landscape. A 2009 McKinsey survey found that 69 percent of surveyed companies gained measurable business benefits – including product innovation, more effective marketing spend, better access to knowledge, lower cost, and higher revenues – from social media initiatives. Furthermore, B2B companies that spend half or more of their marketing and communications budget on social media activities experience a 60 percent lower cost-per-lead than those that focus on traditional activities, according to HubSpot’s report.

Social media is about creating a sense of intimacy, satisfaction, and loyalty among employees and customers. It’s a tool linked to the growth, perception, and the overall health of a business, but takes a conscious effort and knowledge of key social media fundamentals for business leaders to implement most effectively. The choice to engage in social media is now a business decision and is being recognized as such by more and more business leaders. In fact, among the world’s 100 largest companies, two-thirds are using Twitter, 54 percent have a Facebook page, 50 percent manage at least one corporate YouTube channel, and 33 percent have created company blogs. In addition, 79 percent of Fortune 100 companies are using at least one social media channel, with the highest use in European (88 percent) and U.S.-based (86 percent) companies, according to the 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. [Read the rest]

I suppose every brand should be considered an individual so it’s very hard to generalize. But below are some general tactics our social media team has been practicing with clients on Facebook. If you’re stuck in bottleneck writing posts for your Facebook brand page, you can use them as reference.

1. Think personal
First, you need to design a persona for your brand. You might have heard many advertising gurus tell you the importance of designing a brand personality. When managing your brand in social media, this traditional brand management wisdom still works.

However, don’t confuse it with advertising copy writing. A normal person would not talk like the way Tony Tiger does in a Kellogg’s commercial. Imagine your brand as if it’s a real person you like to talk to. You also need to define what type of “friends” you want to make on Facebook. Do you use only local language or bilingual? Do you use colloquial speech? Based on responses, you can fine-tune the most appropriate tone and manner for your brand.

Now you can review your designed brand. If your brand is a person, do you want to sit next to “yourself” in the next banquet? Are you an interesting person worthy for “yourself” to “like” on Facebook? Ask yourself candidly.

2. Think lateral
All right, you have designed your brand personality. You can start thinking what kind of content you want to post on your Facebook brand page. Consider your brand as an individual again, what hobbies does he/she have? What type of magazines/websites is he/she reading? What other brand pages does he/she “like”? (besides the competitors’ page you are spying on).

The reason for doing this exercise is to avoid restricting your brand’s conversation topics within your company’s territory. In fact, no one wants to “like” a brand with only one dimension. The most “social” brands are usually the ones that care about the world and the community. Think laterally from the point of view of a brand as a person. Then actively look for relevance with the most topical conversation that your brand can participate in.

If you are Gatorade, for example, besides posting news on the numerous sports, your fans might also care about the latest research on sports nutrition and health. Even if you are an airline flying to only a few destinations, you might think you don’t have much to say. But you can actually cover destination related topics from the most typical to the most trivial. For example, as smartphones become popular, a lot of travelers would like to know if any data roaming package/local Wi-Fi services are available for their coming travel destination.

The content above might not have a direct relationship with your brand. But this information is usually those your customers will care about. To make it relevant with your brand means to make your brand more relevant with your customers.

3. Think global
If you are lucky enough to manage an international brand, you have no excuse to run out of conversation topics. Do you think Starbucks fans in Hong Kong would be interested with another exciting campaign from Russia? I would say yes. By tracking what your counterparts is doing is not only as important as spying your competitors, but also useful for sourcing inspiration for content from other third party news channels. In many cases, local fans aspire to brand stories from overseas market. So it’s a very good way to keep refreshing your brand at the local level while leveraging resources from your mother company. Developing an inter-offices exchange practice will be even better.

4. Think seasonal
Any Facebook manager should develop a conversation calendar for the brand. Don’t do it monthly. Do it at least three months in advance. Map out some key topics your brand will talk about in the next few months. The topics can be seasonal or according to your product launch/promotion roadmap. Nevertheless, you can still be flexible and come up with new topical posts in response to current events. The key is you need to see the bigger picture in order to better evaluate your content strategy in the long run.

Seasonal content doesn’t mean it has to be just about festivals and events. You can also prepare a lot of smaller conversations such as mentioning about the weather changes, holidays, long weekend, and so on. If possible, make these content relevant with your brand or product. But don’t try too hard. [Read the rest here]

One scene that has stuck with me since I saw the movie takes place around the middle of the story. Zuckerberg’s business partner is arguing with him about how Facebook would make money. The partner is convinced that they should begin selling ads on the site, drawing value directly from the huge traffic coming to the site. It’s the traditional way of thinking, but Zuckerberg is refusing. He says (something like) “we don’t even know what Facebook is yet.”

I love this scene and I hope that it is accurate. Certainly at that point, the founders of Facebook knew what the site did. They built it, after all. But what it was is an entirely different story and Zuckerberg was smart enough to realize that what something does is different from what it is. What something is can evolve in many directions and often is in the hands of the people who use the technology. I wonder, for example, if Steve Jobs (and the rest of the Apple team) dreamed of a highly connected digital living experience when they released the first iPod? That was something that provided a pretty narrow set of features (play music) that evolved into a highly robust and profitable ecosystem.

It’s critical to have that open mind and allow something to evolve. Increasingly, I am finding people involved in social media trying to leap ahead of themselves and tell us all what social media really is. I think they are missing many points and leading us into making several key mistakes.

The Mistakes We Are Making With Social Media

The desire to define social media in settled absolutes is taking us in some directions that are not necessarily bad, but aren’t allowing us to make the best decisions. Here are a few that I keep seeing pop up in the community.

Motivational Statements Instead of Mission Statements

Way too often, we see pundits and other self-declared social media experts provide hollow-but-exciting statements as business advice. Declarations to engage in the conversation or have authentic dialog with customers sound great and someone should post them up on the bulletin board, but they provide a pretty flimsy platform for building a business. At the very least, we need to couple these lofty statements with a reason to do them. “Engage in the conversation with moms to answer the questions that cause them to hesitate when considering a purchase” is far more directional and clear about the reason for using social media.

Ego-Centric Measurement Fixation

The human condition leads us to continually think that the thing that is easiest to measure is the thing that is most important to measure. In social media, this is the big number that greets us everytime we log on to any social site: the count of fans, followers, “likes,” views, and mentions that we get. The size of this number is always used as an indicator of success and often the goal of the project itself. But we are all smarter than that and we need to stay focused on what we inherently know – big numbers are great for presentations, but never, ever tell the whole story. Put that big number on the first slide of your report and then be done with it. Insist on knowing what the real story and the real value of the campaign is.[Read the rest here]