As I continue to convince the C-Suite at client companies to trust in social media, I find that it’s an easier sell when the company is struggling to fight a negative image online.
This makes sense. Like people, brands are always concerned about fixing problems after those problems occur, not beforehand. (The school of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is also why preventative health care and preventative car maintenance often seem like luxuries, rather than logical necessities.)
Yes, the Old Spice ads are funny. And yes, Isaiah Mustafah (the new face of Old Spice) deserves all the accolades currently coming his way.
But we wouldn’t be talking about Old Spice at all if they didn’t have an image problem in the first place.
Old Spice has been perpetually seen as “your father’s deodorant” (or “your grandfather’s deodorant,” or however far back you’d like to go). It’s never been considered contemporary, and that anachronism was part of its charm. But it’s hard to sell “traditional” to a plugged-in, post-modern audience. So Old Spice revitalized their image.
Will seeing Old Spice as crisp, clean, adventurous and unstoppably witty help sell more sticks of deodorant? If so, then all this rebranding — and their investment in social media — will have paid off. And it’s hard to argue against the idea, since simply running in place is almost never a brand’s wisest option.
But this also raises a question of intention.
Because if the social media campaigns that garner the most attention are those that update outmoded brand images, repair PR problems and revitalize aging assets, maybe companies should be striving to generate their own “bad image” crises.
Because then they’re guaranteed to garner attention for engineering their own “new and improved” turnaround.
If you’re just beginning to use social media, Twitter and Facebook may seem very similar.
And while it’s true that both services…
Are built around publicly shared “status updates”
Enable users to “follow” or “friend” each other
Can be simultaneously updated through third party services like HootSuite
… you’ll soon realize that the audience for each service has very different goals and expectations.
Broadly speaking, Twitter is good for…
Connecting with peers and industry professionals
“Water cooler” discussions of breaking news & pop culture
Real-time information-sharing, research, Q&As, etc.
Technology-focused and business-driven discussions
One-way broadcasts, with occasional commentary
… while Facebook is good for…
Connecting with people you already know “in real life”
Threaded discusssions (where all comments are collected)
Personal opinions
Photo albums
Videos
Twitter, while offering less robust features than Facebook, is also (paradoxically) considered to be the more professional and business-oriented platform. Meanwhile, Facebook (like MySpace before it) is the more visually-driven sharing platform among friends, family and acquaintances.
This means that the users of each service have different expectations for their experience on each platform. And if you’re piloting a brand across both channels, you need to be aware of those differences. (Dan Zarella writes frequently, and well, about how to do this.)
For example, in December of 2009, we at Creative Concepts were helping The Children’s Aid Society promote their annual Miracle on Madison fundraiser. Most of the news about that particular event — celebrity sightings, fashion updates and high-end sales — differed from the vast majority of The Children’s Aid Society’s traditional topics (children’s health, education, foster care and family services).
We quickly learned that the charity’s followers on Twitter remained open to the Miracle on Madison messaging, but their fans on Facebook chilled to the idea. While they may be interested in the actual work being done by The Children’s Aid Society, that must seem at odds with more “commercial” updates about a high society Manhattan fundraising event.
So they made their voices heard – some abandoned The Children’s Aid Society Facebook page.
When we noticed a drop in Facebook numbers that coincided with an increase in Miracle messaging, we followed our instincts and dialed down the Miracle mentions on Facebook. And when their fans’ behavior subsequently returned to normal, we chalked that up as a lesson learned — and one we believe is worth sharing:
Facebook is not Twitter is not MySpace is not a blog. You may have one message, but you have multiple audiences.
Listen, and then adjust your pitch.
Want to hear our various voices? Follow us on Twitter and Facebook!
As we’ve helped our clients build and manage their social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and more, we’ve learned a very valuable lesson:
You can’t force people to care about you.
Plenty of services will sell you Facebook friends and Twitter followers, which is the modern equivalent of buying a list of email addresses: it’s spammy. We’d never advise that our clients do that because it’s invasive (and, often, it’s a waste of money).
There’s also the tactic of “batch following” other users — or, in layman’s terms, manually choosing to “follow” (or “subscribe to the updates of”) dozens or hundreds of Twitter users at a time, in the blind hope that those people will choose to follow you back in return.
The problem is, very few people do. It takes such little effort to follow someone on Twitter that doing so is no longer seen as an expression of interest in that person, but a self-interested request for attention on the part of the follower. (In other words: “Hey, I see you. Now look at me.”)
This is explains some of the lopsided “follower ratios” you’ll see on some brands’ Twitter accounts. In many cases, a company has chosen to follow thousands of users, but only a few dozen users have found that brand worth following in return.
Keep that up and you’ll start thinking your brand really is boring, when your problem is actually in the execution.
Don’t Beg. Be Interesting.
At Creative Concepts, we encourage our clients to build their online following organically, by reaching out to:
Existing customers
Potential customers
Industry peers
Industry journalists (bloggers, podcasters, newspapers, magazines, etc.)
Anyone with a problem that our client can solve
For example, in the dead of winter (or, worse, in the dog days of all this summer air conditioning), Twitter is alive with the sound of head colds. Users can’t help but complain about stuffy noses, dripping sinuses and general misery. They’re also frequently in search of a remedy — and that’s been a great opportunity for (our client) Bigelow Tea to suggest lemon or mint teas that might help ease someone’s sore throat.
We find proactive engagement to be a far more valuable way to grow our clients’ web communities. Not everyone responds, but those who do are more likely to continue that active engagement, and to spread the word among their own audiences.
And since social media empowers your brand to find its own audience, wouldn’t you rather have an audience that actually pays attention to what you’re saying?
As eMarketer recently reported, when it comes to online retail sites, “usability” is a customer’s most important concern.
Yes, your customers enjoy “bells & whistles” like online customer service or access to social networks, but if they can’t figure out what your product costs — or how to buy it — they won’t come back.
Usability is all about clarity + expectations. Your customers expect a certain experience when they walk through your digital doors. How well you live up to those expectations determines how good they’ll feel about their experience with you — and, how likely they are to return.
But what do your customers expect from your social media channels?
What Problems Is Your Social Media Solving — and How?
If you use social media for customer service…
How quickly should customers expect an answer to their questions?
Should they expect you to “hear” them, even if they don’t contact you directly?
Is your social outreach a lead-in to phone-based or email-based customer support, or should customers expect to have their problems solved entirely within the framework of Twitter or Facebook?
If you use social media for marketing and promotions…
How often should customers expect updates from you about new deals?
How easily can customers convert those updates to actions (like sales)?
Can your customers control the frequency of your updates?
Are these updates different from your emails, blog posts, snail mail, etc?
Can your customers ask questions about your messages, or are your channels only aimed one-way? (If so, where can a customer go for interactive assistance?)
If you use social media to foster a personal community within your brand’s culture…
Do your customers know who’s speaking on the company’s behalf?
What topics or questions are “fair game” or “off-limits,” and why?
Will customer comments be moderated?
What constitutes “acceptable behavior” in your digital community?
Should customers expect to be sold to while they’re engaging with the community?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions now, that’s okay. You can still implement a social media strategy, and then amend it as you learn from your customers’ feedback.
But let your customers know that you’re learning from them and adapting to their input. Not only is that a crucial aspect of social media transparency, but it helps your customers know where they stand, what might change, and why.
Just as your own employees need a social media policy to govern their internal (and their public-facing) social media conduct, your customers deserve to know what’s expected of them — and what they should expect from you.
A few years ago, we helped our client, Bigelow Tea, produce a video showing viewers how to naturally decaffeinate an ordinary teabag. (Why would someone do this? Because sometimes a cafe doesn’t have your favorite flavor in a decaf version, so wouldn’t it be great to reduce that caffeine level all by yourself?)
There was just one problem: the metrics Bigelow cited in that video were outdated. Newer studies had clarified the expected levels of caffeine after natural decaffeination, and they differed from the numbers in the video.
Fortunately, one astute viewer noticed this discrepancy and brought it to Bigelow’s attention.
Even better? Bigelow listened.
Initially, they hoped they could fix those numbers with updated graphics, but there was no way around the numbers Cindi Bigelow herself was saying aloud throughout the how-to section.
So, in the end, they opted to have Creative Concepts (that’s us) reshoot the whole video and replace it across all video outlets. Cindi even tracked two of the most recent studies the night before the video was filmed, just to ensure that the numbers were still in line.
In Bigelow’s view, sharing accurate information is far more important than cutting corners. They pride themselves on providing their customers with insights and information they can count on, and when those facts and figures are in dispute, they take their corrections very seriously.
How committed to clarity is your company? (And are they listening to their customers to make sure their messages are being heard… and heard correctly?)
Even if you’re not a non-profit, there’s still at least one core value in Ad Age’s article that applies to your business:
Make sure your program has a way to prove to this group that their involvement made a difference. Sixty-four percent of young adults say they would get involved with a marketer’s program if they believed the involvement was large enough to make a difference.
That’s great news for non-profits, but how does this need for actionable results translate to a for-profit business?
Actually, for the consumer, the payoff is the same. But one message feels better than the other.
Help Me Help You
For a charity to succeed in social media, its messaging must convince recipients that their actions will have a demonstrable positive effect on the cause at hand — which, by association, improves the recipient’s own life.
For a business to succeed in social media, its messaging must convince recipients that their actions will have a demonstrable positive effect directly on their own lives.
So, in both cases, the message’s recipient ultimately has to make a choice, which can directly (or indirectly) improve her own life.
The difference?
Charities seek to motivate individuals to help others. That’s a positive feeling we can all appreciate.
Meanwhile, businesses encourage individuals to help themselves. That feeling is sometimes harder to justify.
Doing Business Without the Guilt?
Whom do your products help?
How is someone’s life improved by purchasing your services?
Are you saving someone time? Are you helping someone get better at what they love?
Is your company investing in the future through education, ecology or other social good?
These are the kinds of proactive messages that can help people feel better about business — yours, in particular — and may help mitigate the guilt reflex associated with purchases.
Remember: social media is people. And when you help people feel better about themselves, you’ve erased one more barrier between you and them.
One goal most companies have while growing their social media presence is to empower “brand evangelists,” who freely sing the praises of the company’s products & services.
Mack’s example cites the case of Bruce’s Yams, whose Twitter presence is powered by yam-loving Amber (aka MissDestructo), a fan of their product who pitched them on the opportunity to preach their virtues online. Wisely, Bruce’s Yams said yes.
Who wouldn’t want to see that kind of passion put to good use?
But Bruce’s Yams isn’t the only company with fiercely loyal fans. Odds are, your brand has its fair share of passionistas too. And when you thank them for their patronage and invite them further into your company’s culture, you enable them to share in your company’s success.
5 Ways to Reward Your Customers as Brand Evangelists
Share links to the people who talk about you. Not to what they said, mind you; to what they’re doing. Show that you care about your customers’ lives beyond the traditional customer-provider relationship, and you’ll help foster a relationship that personalizes both of you.
Free samples — early, often, repeatedly and unannounced. Notice that someone said something positive about you online? Instead of thanking them publicly, send them a thank-you note, a coupon code or a free sample, and an invitation to beta test your next product or app.
Donate to the charity of their choice. Everyone has a pet cause, and if you added up all the causes your own customers care about, you’d likely find a few overlapping concerns: health, education, the environment, etc. Invite your customers to pitch you on the charities they’re passionate about, and donate funds or resources to the ones you can’t stop thinking about either.
Send “thank you” notes instead of “cease and desist” orders. Don’t get us wrong; copyrights and trademarks are certainly worth defending. But there’s a difference between detractors who use your logo, mascot or other intellectual property to disparage your brand and the people who use those same assets to celebrate their love of what you do. Make sure your PR and legal team can tell the difference. Encouraging your fans to share (or even mash-up) your brand’s identity can create public goodwill, as well as new touchpoints for future customer awareness and interaction.
Leak important information to your “valued insiders.” Your biggest fans will trumpet your latest achievements far more loudly than any impartial news organization would — and they’ll help you build advance buzz in the process, all for the privilege of being granted a peek behind the corporate curtain.
Yes, “official” promotional plans will always have their place. But in these days of “peer reviews” and word of mouth marketing, your brand needs to do whatever it can to help your customers help you help them.
On the web, video works wonders. It’s fast-paced, personable, entertaining and informative. And since production time is always a factor, it helps to have a solid plan in place to make sure you stay on track and under budget.
But if there’s one thing we’ve learned here at Creative Concepts, it’s that our best-laid video production plans often need to be scrapped once the camera starts rolling.
Here are three examples of the ways we’ve adapted our original video ideas to suit a client’s newfound needs — or to accommodate the limits of reality.
“What Do YOU Know About the Children’s Aid Society?”
That was the question we expected to ask people on the streets of New York. And their answer?
Well… as it turned out, not much.
Although nearly everyone we spoke with had heard ofThe Children’s Aid Society, most of them weren’t quite sure what the charity actually does. Despite operating in NYC for over 150 years, we quickly realized the organization was still “under the radar” for most New Yorkers.
When we recognized this disconnect between public impact and public image, we adapted our video’s premise and used our “man-on-the-street” style Q&As to educate the the viewers about the charity’s multitude of programs.
The First Rule of Live Event Planning: Something ALWAYS Goes Wrong
Ruth Ridgeway is a veteran event planner in the New York City market. As such, she’s unflappable in the face of any challenge — including having her entire event crew videotaped during one of their signature two-day location transformations.
But when the wrong furniture gets delivered and there’s no time to revise her designs, Ruth switches from “management mode” to “problem-solving dynamo” in seconds — and our video capitalizes on her shrewdly-solved conundrum.
Have A Cup of Tea with (Windblown) Wally at Fenway Park
Even when everything goes right, there’s still no way to control the weather.
As proud sponsors of the Boston Red Sox, Bigelow Tea was thrilled to have a chance to shoot a quirky video with Wally the Green Monster. The idea was to have Cindi Bigelow herself teach Wally how to make a cup of tea. But the weather refused to cooperate, forcing Cindi and Wally to race through the process before their props blew clear across the field.
The lesson?
No matter what happens, find a way to make the most of every unexpected, inconvenient and downright blustery situation.
Your sales and marketing team are trained to convince, not to listen.
Your customer service reps are equipped to solve problems, not to build relationships.
And the people who write the best ad copy in the world may not be able to converse their way out of a paper bag.
A successful social media conversationalist must be able to do all of the above, plus…
Listen attentively to incoming feedback
Engage in a welcoming, personal manner
Identify root causes of dissatisfaction
Sense opportunities to expound and explain
Recognize the differences between irritation and anger, or “like” and “love”
Excite non-employees about your brand
Cultivate both short-term satisfaction and long-term relationships
Social media requires adaptability, innovation, intuition and autonomy. It rewards personality. It’s best operated by an individual who can think on her feet. And it can cause these individuals to be perceived by the public as the representation of your brand’s entire culture.
Given all that, it’s no wonder some companies have reservations about unleashing their employees on social media channels. (And yes, sometimes those concerns are justified, as this list of 10 Ways Social Media Can Get You Fired suggests.)
Which is why it’s also worth mentioning some of the telltale signs that someone may not be an ideal choice to represent your brand through social media, including…
Poor time management
Poor grammar or spelling skills
A compulsive personality
Easily distracted
Drama queens
Office gossips
Liars, exaggerators and embellishers
Chronic excuse-makers
Employees who are already disenchanted with your company’s culture
Granted, if the above list describes everybody in your office, your problems run deeper than simply finding the best voice for your brand. (In that case, you may want to first rebuild your corporate culture from the ground up, and then empower your employees to celebrate their improvements.)
Because you can always teach your employees to use social media, but you can’t always teach them the most important skill of all:
Amber Naslund recently touched on a big disconnect in social media: the gap between the employees who oversee a company’s web channels and the employees who actually have the power to improve a customer’s experience.
Her points lead to a valid question: are you using social media to evaluate your customers, or to engage them?
Evaluating means you’re doing things like…
Monitoring what’s being said about your brand
Reporting those brand perceptions to your company’s decision-makers
Predicting the likely impact (good or bad) of those perceptions
Measuring those perceptions over time, against evolving feedback
Changing your messaging strategies accordingly
Engaging means you’re also doing things like:
Contacting happy customers to thank them for their business
Contacting unhappy customers to help solve their problems
Rewarding your best customers with perks and benefits
Soliciting feedback and suggestions from your customers (or detractors)
Implementing those suggestions to improve customers’ experiences
The problem is, the employees who are often best-trained or best-equipped to monitor your brand online are not always similarly trained (or even allowed) to contact a customer directly, much less to implement incoming feedback in a meaningful way.
Of course, not every company wants their public-facing employees to be able to make changes to company policy on the fly. The key is to find the right balance between your information-gathering structure and your ability to respond directly to a customer’s needs without creating more complications in the process.
Because there’s technically no wrong way to use social media tools, but there are ways to use them more efficiently. And if your end goals involve improving your customers’ overall experience, you need to ensure that your monitoring tools and your critical thinkers are working together to make positive changes in real time.
Wondering how you might do that? Contact us; making your messaging more effective is our specialty.
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