Going social

A social media strategy has become an essential part of a wider communications strategy. Julian Saunders describes why

If your company had no website or customer service helpline, you might feel as though you had lost touch with the modern world and things needed a shake-up. Brand owners are beginning to feel the same way about social media. If you were reading this in 2012 you would be thinking, 'Don't be silly, of course we have gone social.'

Entrepreneurs and challengers are already doing it – developing a direct relationship makes you much less vulnerable to powerful intermediaries, both on the high street and online.

Anyone whose business depends on the say-so of, for example, Tesco or Amazon will jump at the chance to get closer to the people who buy their products and services.

People who have a flair for connecting with other people are creating new businesses, such as Tony Hsieh of Zappos, who sells shoes. His business uses Twitter brilliantly, and has 1.6 million 'followers' (see box, right).

The Zappos experience is a potent blend of chat, information, offers and customer feedback. It feels more like a community of like-minded people who happen to love shoes than a selling operation. The distinction is important. Tony Hsieh 'gets it'. But do we 'get it' too?

With social media there is a constant ground-swell of exciting innovation. Much that I write here will be out of date at publication. And it is not really free. You have to devote time to being good at it. So why bother? My case rests on the fundamentals of a healthy brand.

A MEASURE OF BRAND HEALTH

Social media can have a direct effect on both your reputation and sales. They are evidently not just the latest fad that the digital revolution has thrown up. More time is spent on social media than on search. In March, Facebook became more popular than Google in the USA. That simple statistic should make us sit up and take notice as it has happened very quickly.

Companies with any significant e-commerce already know that they must have a search strategy. Now they need a social media strategy too.

The two are interdependent, as success in social media is key to pushing your brand up the search rankings. Achieving a page one ranking on Google (without having to pay for it via pay per click) is one of the most cost-effective sources of sales leads. It is also a measure of brand health.

There is now a new metric of brand dynamism – to be the most linked. It has become as important as awareness, affinity, propensity to purchase or likelihood of recommendation. It may well be a proxy for all of these measures.

Zappos philosophy

'At Zappos.com customer service is everything. In fact, it is the entire company'

(From the Zappos.com website)

Zappos goes the extra mile and more in delivering customer service, which is what has made the brand famous in the USA rather than the fact that it sells shoes.

A big part of its success is Tony Hsieh, CEO, with his outgoing personality and his evangelism for the use of Twitter His tweets are a blend of comments on the world around him, the personal ('About to try KFC's double D. If I don't tweet for 24 hours call an ambulance'), life at Zappos ('Company picnic about to start. It's a medieval renaissance theme') and the business ('Woke up this morning to the newly designed Zappos website').

On April 1 he tweeted 'Zappos.com, Inc. sues Walt Disney Company' and then later 'Apparently some people didn't realise this Zappos/Disney video was an April fool's joke'.

Zappos staff also use Twitter to interact with customers. Hsieh has created a distinctive company culture (see the staff video at http://about.zappos.com), a rapidly growing business with high levels of repeat purchase and referral, and it is well placed to grow into other categories such as handbags and clothes. Doubtless Hsieh's 1.6 million followers will find out new lines about it via a tweet.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

The rapid penetration of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and the widespread use of blogs and forums, will be given a further boost through mass penetration of smartphones. Intense handset competition, combined with all-you-can-eat tariffs, means that social media are about to have their Martini moment – accessed any time, any place, anywhere.

Openness and accessibility – which internet gurus have been talking about for more than a decade – come sharply into focus.

People do not just want access, they want it right here, right now as they are on the move. And here is a double jeopardy: the good listeners and quick responders are lauded, the cloth-eared vilified.

Contrast Virgin trains and Eurotunnel. When a Virgin customer tweeted that the carriage was too hot it was picked up by Virgin customer services, who contacted the train and had the heating turned down.

Several tweets later and the customer was not just well pleased but had also told his network.

By contrast, Eurotunnel was the subject of furious tweeting when it cancelled trains due to cold weather. A PR disaster was made worse by the fact that it was unresponsive.

This is a new skill – one that has been called real-time brand management – that depends on the setting up of alerts and, of course, rapid response (see box, above).

Real-time brand management

March 13: a Virgin atlantic plane gets stuck on the tarmac for four hours, resulting in angry and unhappy customers. One of them, david Martin, posts about the ordeal via his iPhone. This prompts a call from the marketing department, offering him a $100 voucher for his troubles, which he rejects as inadequate. so the chief executive calls him and, after a short negotiation, he secures a full refund and $100 in vouchers for all the passengers.

How quickly after its premiere do you know if a film is a success or a failure? it used to be two to three days, according to Greg Brandeau, executive vice-president of Walt disney studios. now, if you monitor Tweets and Facebook postings, you can know within hours.

Conclusion: every company must have a 'brand radar system' to monitor social media. Mistakes and bad customer experiences need not be disastrous provided the company has a reservoir of goodwill and is quick to respond

Source: Harvard Business Review

MAKING SALES

Personal recommendation has always been the most powerful form of advertising. Surveys show that it has increased in importance versus advertising and editorial.

The customer rating, familiar to users of TripAdvisor and Amazon, showed that people did not just trust friends; they trusted people they barely knew and complete strangers. Now social media makes getting recommendations from your personal network both live and real time. Consider two scenarios.

In the shop trying on jeans 1

Her: 'Does my bum look big in this?'

Him: 'No, you look great (yawns). Can we go now?'

Her: 'You weren't even looking.'

In the shop trying on jeans 2

Her: takes photo of her bum in the jeans, uploads to Facebook and captions the image 'Does my bum look big in this?' Then goes off for a latte and gets eight comments back on her smartphone over the next hour from friends who advise combination of immediate purchase, rapid weight loss and ask where the shop is so that they, too, can buy the jeans.

Fast-forward a couple of years: social media made manifest. The shop, noticing this behaviour, will make it easier for customers to share, for example, by turning the changing room into a kind of photo booth that is directly linked to the web.

Location-based apps will have added another dimension. Our shopper will effectively be able to say: 'Here I am shopping for jeans, where are you?/come and join me/any suggestions for good shops near me?' What could be more fun or sociable?

 Right person, right time, right place. The demo film for foursquare – a location-based app – visualises the commercial potential of unlocking that holy trinity in making a sale: right person, right time, right place.

Other social media brands know this too. Click on 'nearby' on tweetie – an iPhone Twitter app – and see a live map of other Twitter users in your neighbourhood.

Its commercial potential has yet to be realised but watch this space – Twitter needs to make some money to pay the overheads.

PREDISPOSING PURCHASE

We tend to buy from brands that we like and trust. Likeability has long been a predictor of an effective TV ad. Social media are another route, but the planning and mentality are different.

Listening – a good way of being liked more. Brands need to be better at listening and responding to people on their own terms and less prone to pushing out a message or a party line. But listening properly is not that easy.

You need a picture of your network, the conversations taking place, and how they connect to you. Much can be done using free tools but you may want to employ one of the new social media research firms.

Sociability. Imagine you are at a party and you run into the neighbourhood bore. He is always on transmit – if your arm dropped off, he would not notice. He should resist the temptation of posting that YouTube film.

But elsewhere there are different characters: the introverted expert who does not say much but can speak with an engaging passion; the storyteller, who knows how to entertain an audience – and he does at least laugh at your jokes. And there is the host who makes it possible for people to meet and share interests.

These people are naturals for social media, where you can be yourself but where you also need to listen, and be tuned into the codes and habits of the social group.

It is about a value exchange, not selling. Value comes in different forms: the pleasure of linking up with like-minded souls, or being the first to learn interesting things, or access to information and offers.

When you study the Zappos case or successful fan pages on Facebook – such as M&S's 125-year celebration – they blend several types of value with sociability and a distinctive voice.

ARE YOU SOCIABLE? JOIN IN

The likes of Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln are all different, young and constantly evolving. Mobility adds another dimension. Brands need to open up these channels and experiment.

The time to start is now. But brand management also needs something else – people who are not just bright but who are innately sociable. Maybe HR needs to hire not just the brainy types but also those who love to party.

Listening workout

There are more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (weblinks, news stories, blog posts) shared each week on Facebook. The average number of tweets per hour is around 13 million. Making sense of this social media chaos is a challenge, but follow this 30-minute listening drill to get a feel for your brand's temperature online.

Define your audience. Translate what you already know about your customers into categories that make sense online: choosing a topic your audience is likely to discuss would work. So would choosing a channel that your audience is most likely to use.

Decide what you really want to understand. Depending on your brief, your listening might focus on different data points in social media. For instance, a good grasp of popular discussion topics can help to optimise your PR campaign. Attention to the behavioural patterns can save you resources during microsite development.

Take on your customers' perspective. Think about the number of entry points to social media that your audience uses – search engines, Facebook news stream, email chains – and look for the signs of the most entertaining, relevant and useful content (it might be all three).

Keep your listening consistent. Once you have decided on your listening criteria, filter all incoming information through the same framework: entry point – discovery – analysis – interpretation. Try to see what is valuable for your audiences and what has received no traction at all.

Take it with a pinch of salt. Only 10% of all people online feel engaged enough to produce content. What might appear to be a major PR crisis could in fact be a very isolated, albeit passionate, group of unsatisfied customers.

Following the listening drill can be a mind-opening exercise for many brand managers. Effective long-term social media strategy, however, requires a bit more than a gut feeling, and for that a specialised social media audit should be a starting point for any brand that is looking to succeed online.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julian Saunders is managing partner of The Joined Up Company

[email protected]