Have you heard the whisper?
One billion consumers use social networks.
Brands who harness the power of social networks are reaping huge rewards. Get it wrong, though, and you’ll do more harm than good.
Here, people happily give personal – even intimate – details about themselves. But in these democratised environments, people don’t want to be overtly sold to. In fact, they’re actively against it. Often adopting radically different personas simultaneously on different networks, users are also extremely difficult to pigeon-hole.
So, how to tap into the commercial potential of such vast numbers of people expressing personal preferences - without them turning against you?
If leveraged properly, social media optimisation can provide an unrivalled platform to communicate, engage with and learn from your consumers.
The difficult part isn’t to create a presence on a social network, its knowing what presence should be created, where and for what purpose. Social media can’t just be a tick box exercise where if you have a profile on a social network then you are done.
By following the simple steps below, any brand can start to harness the true power of social networks.
1. Open your ears...
You're involved in the social media space whether you choose to be or not.
Listen in to the online buzz in sites like Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Flickr, the various forums, communities and blogs. Social media search engines like whostalkin, Social Mention, Delver or tuSavvy are great to use alongside Google analytics to get a good overview of your social media profile and performance.
2. ...before you open your mouth
Word of mouth - one of the most powerful forms of marketing. If you’ve got a great brand everybody’s talking about it. If you don’t have a great brand, everybody’s talking about it.
Before getting involved in social media, think carefully about your approach. Be prepared to share information or even tell stories about your company or products like Coca Cola’s conversations.
Sometimes it's best to listen for a while and let your fans talk; sometimes it's good to jump right in like IBM with its company blog. But ultimately, the more actively involved you are, the more open and transparent you become, and the better your relationships will be.
3. Embrace your fans
Your hard-core fans are one of your greatest assets, so seek them out, embrace and reward them, make them VIP’s, invite them to openings and launches, actively get their advice and they’ll continue to spread the love.
Research shows us that approx 1% of the online community actually create content, 9% contribute information, and the rest consume it.
Once you get your advocates and fans involved they’ll help fuel interaction, engage the participating community, attract new ones and, as long as the community is nurtured not ignored, it will start to take care of itself.
4. Add value
A third of social network users are likely to click through to a web site featured in a social network, and go on to make a purchase or interaction on that site, according to a recent study on digital marketing effectiveness and online behaviour*,
But, before you embark on a social media frenzy, think carefully about what you have to offer people there. Not all places are relevant to every business and it’s not enough to create a Facebook page and ignore it.
To get involved in the existing social media space you’ll need a raison d’etre and you’ll need to offer something that can’t be found elsewhere. Some examples,
YouTube isn't for everyone but Blendtec's $50 marketing spend resulted in over 6 million visitors to their Will it Blend web site in 5 days back in 2006 and shot the struggling company into the limelight. Today, its channel has more than 175,000 subscribers and over 3m channel views of it’s wacky but very engaging content.
Monty Python recently put free clips of their YouTube channel with click-to-buy links underneath. It's reported that even though the online content is free, Monty Python's DVD sales skyrocketed 23,000% on Amazon and reached #2 on the Bestseller list.
Twitter isn't for everyone, but Virgin America use it well to provide proactive customer service. And Dell is one of the first companies to publicly state that they created a ROI, '$1 million in revenue' by using it to promote their sales items.
Then there’s the mighty Facebook, the world’s most popular network, visited by 47% of web users in the UK each month and 12% of its 200m users have registered as a ‘fan’ of a brand. Online fashion retailer ASOS currently have about 45,000 fans there and if you join you’ll be engaged with competitions, free delivery codes and first peeks at their latest products.
Some social networks are working at creating their own micro-affiliate platforms, to allow people to recommend products to friends and earn money in return. So, a presence in the networks might well improve your clicks and sales, but keep in mind, community sites aren’t all about making money – it’s about reaching your audience and letting them engage with you on their terms.
* i-level
5. Provide tools
Consumers want a personal online experience with relevant, credible information. They want to hear what others, who think like they do, have to say about a product or service, and they need to feel confident about trusting a business or brand.
Provide the right tools, at the right stages to make research, interaction, exploration, comparison, purchasing, and word of mouth a cinch and it will have a hugely positive effect on your brand.
Community features like user profiles, kudos systems, rating, ranking, wish lists, 24/7 customer service assistants, avatars, videos, virtual environments, room planners, wardrobe planners, referrals, recommendations, visualisation techniques, 360 rotations, videos...the list goes on and on. .
Take Ikea, whose online product catalogues encourage customers to place post-its on pages, circle items, and zoom-in to get a better view. In addition, readers can bookmark, send, and print specific pages to send to themselves or friends. Ikea also have a useful app for home design that ties directly to purchases. Their virtual planners for kitchens, bedrooms, and offices are used to design entire rooms, get estimates, and because it links in with specific product numbers customers can purchase the whole lot.
The key thing to think about is, what services or functions can I add to make the experience of my brand so much easier and so much more enjoyable.
6. No place like home
With fans on Facebook, 'How To' videos on You Tube, should you still embrace and engage your customers on your own turf? Yes, you should.
Whereas Facebook and MySpace promise ‘mass appeal’ and provide a way to attract new people, there’s no place like home. It’s your own place where you can harness the opinions, feelings and mood of your community.
Take MyStarbucksIdea for example - they're prepared to listen and make changes and if enough people are calling for something, they make it happen - most notably free coffees on US Election Day.
Then there's Waitrose, who have launched a social networking site to get customers more involved. Online fashion brand ASOS, who are launching a channel to drive customer interaction. And Asda, who are creating an interactive online forum to compare products and prices on its drive for 'absolute transparency'.
Sometimes your advocates find you regardless, Cadbury's Wispa fans started internet campaigns, groups on Bebo, MySpace and Facebook in an attempt to 'Bring Back the Wisp' These campaigns prompted Cadbury to announce that the bar would be relaunched in late 2007 and the bar returned on a permanent basis in October 2008.
Ikea has an active Facebook page, useful great web site and an 85,000 strong fan site built by the retailer, no, built and run by loyal fans. It promises 'free information about stores, kitchens, furniture, help with the IKEA planner, pictures of products, answers questions, provides spare parts, and shares the love. Say no more.
What these brands and retailers realise is that having a community of loyal people, giving something back, providing openness and transparency is what people want and have come to expect. And if you have the right outlook and approach, they might even build something for you.
7. Don't just sit there
If you listen hard enough to your customers, they’ll tell you what they want; they’ll even help you create new products.
Brands and customers can work together to develop and design new products, take the much loved toy company Lego, it encourages its customers to design everything from robot operating systems to new sets.
Companies like Threadless have built their entire business model on community product design and by involving the community fully in the product design process, Threadless is able to build loyalty for its designs and concepts and to some extent guarantee a market.
Others, like Starbucks, Dell, and P&G crowdsource; they harness opinion and feedback to create better products/services for their customers and making more money for themselves.
8. Make it fun
Turn your products and services into useful and fun applications. Engage your customers with apps that help them understand your products and make the process enjoyable.
STA Travel created a number of widgets that tick both the useful and fun boxes. They make it easy for their customers to take advantage of special offers, make to do lists, set up reminders, count the days til their holiday and even compare the weather at home and abroad from desktops, personal pages and Facebook.
During the US presidential election Burger King launched its 'Poll-a-rizer' - a particularly nifty application that allowed users to compare their own political views with their friends and told users how their own views compared with the social media community as a whole.
Nike+ went a step further connecting offline products online. Their deal with Apple and the development of the nike + ID really builds community around runners. Not only can they measure distance, pace, time, calories burned, they can upload this info to the web site and compare their progress with the world, get personal tips and find running routes.
9. Create virtual experiences
People are doing Google searches, checking out the very many comparison and discount sites. In fact, these sites dominate the search results because of the breadth of content.
On 'snow day'(Monday 2/2), it was reportedly one of the busiest shopping days on record. By mid-afternoon, the discount site My Voucher Codes recorded 310% more transactions than usual.
Aggregation sites too may well play a larger role - taking a one-stop-shop approach, so a consumer can find expert reviews, comments, product info and more, all at one website, rather than making consumers do all the legwork.
10. Start relationships, create partnerships
UK mobile internet users have the greatest tendency to access a social network via their mobile handset, with 2m people doing so (23%), compared to 10.6 million in the US (19%).
Mobile retail apps are currently being tested out by Amazon and ShopSavvy, an android based mobile phone app, is already available in the UK. Watch out for US based savebenjis too.
11. Don't forget mobile
So sometimes it goes awry, but there are usually good reasons for it and part of that comes from old methods conflicting with what online consumers have come to expect.
Just banging up a profile on Facebook and forgetting about is just not good enough. And on hearing a bad response to something, doesn't mean you should ignore it. If you want to know what not do to by example here's a great A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk'd by Social Media from Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research.
Talk to Yomego
Social media is not a flash in the pan activity. It requires commitment and planning and working across a range of disciplines in your business.
Tie your social media activity into your wider strategy because if you listen, join in, are useful & authentic you’ll get ideas for product or service development, and real insight into customer’s needs and behaviours and make money too.
Steve Richards is managing director of Yomego, a social media agency working with brands like eircom, MTV and Ladbrokes to build, retain and monetise digital communities.
steve@yomego.com
