Social Media Marketing and Brands
Be Sophisticated and Show Up To Play Or FAIL
The blend of social networks and social behavior and business has been a joy to watch and participate in.
The best part of the equation is the value exchange. When there’s no value there is no currency so it fails.
This works because both the consumer and the brand develop best practices around behavior.
It is like digital natural selection if you will. The weak marketing practices will not survive. This requires
a level of sophistication by the brands and those messaging on their behalf.
An understanding way past, the still not obvious to some, permission based marketing. Have mine first or do irreparable harm to you brand.
Social media marketing requires a far clear view of the culture and community as well as the communities values and behavior. If you can enable or increase the value of these things you can enter the room.
Which is just the first step the next is sustaining value another (not so simple) rung in the latter to brand
reputation and identity in the social media universe.
The below graph represents the number of people following a variety of brands on the socialmedia micro
blogging site Twitter.
Zappos, H R Block, Baskin Robbins, Jet Blue and Comcast shown by their Twitter screen name below.
These are examples of active brands on Twitter.
This first graph shows the number of people following the brand on Twitter. While the numbers are but a small fraction of the brands consumer base. I can assure you that they are a vocal and active group of influencers that no brand should fuck with.
This is a good example of the first step mentioned above.
The customer is following you. Their option and hence permission to communicate. The next step is managing the communication. Which is the definition of CRM to the core.
The data in the following two graphs are where most loose the plot. Both of the below graphs address the signal strength and understanding of the nature of social media.
They illustrate the number of people the brand is following and the number of conversations and or tweets they are putting forth.
This is important because this is you listening to your customers and also goes to your brand identity
and reputation.
The identity and personality of each brand on any social network should be and different. Each may have its own level of chatter, signal to noise ratio, brand goals, and results. This should be determined by business and brand logic.
You have jumped into a complex channel and relationships fading out and going away is not an option. Sustaining your value in the community taking into mind the afore mentioned goals is the new full time (and I mean full time) order of the day.
This is why the frequency graph is included, it helps you see your communication over time. I included a couple
of brands to compare their usage. Again there is no clear amount of times a day rule. This is about signal, not
frequency. Also as mentioned each brand will use the channel in its on way with it’s own logic.. The one rule
on frequency; it has to be measurable.
Brands should not lurk on social networks they are the equivalent of corporate virtual artifacts that go unvisited in Second Life.
I linked to each brands page on Twitter to show that their are design layers and many other aspects to the brands identity. I found it quite candid and touching to read Baskin Robbins Twitter around the loss of Irv Robbins. You do not get more real than that.
The below series of graphs shows the differential over time between followers and following. Each graph shows the brands trend for number of people following on Twitter and the number of people the brand is following on twitter.
How are you participating and tracking your participation online as brand, as an agency, as an individual? Are you measuring performance and using tools/resources to increase your value in the space.?
Spending time with both creating and then viewing results around campaigns in the social media space (both ours and others) continues to be an amazing learning experience.