If you can’t tell, all your marketing is guesswork.
Social media usage may differ among age groups, but everyone from children to seniors has the ability to find and engage your brand online. If your marketing or your social media messaging follows a one-size-fits-all approach, you may be ignoring (or alienating) various audience segments — and you can be sure that one of your competitors will find a way to engage the very users you’re overlooking.
But how do you know who’s finding you online?
One obvious way is to glance at your social media community. Who’s following you on Twitter? Who’s subscribing to your YouTube channel? Who are your Facebook fans? Users of social media channels are publicly volunteering the kind of information you’d normally have to pay a research group to track down for you. In these cases, all you need is a little time and some demographic search tools.
Another way to learn who your customers really are?
To better understand your audience and your customers, you need to ask them a little about themselves. Online survey tools abound, or you can take the old-fashioned route and fire a few key questions at your email list.
Not everyone will respond to these requests, but the ones who do are the ones who are most likely to care about the quality of the information you’re providing to them. They either want you to improve or they want you to succeed. Either way, they’re providing you with extremely valuable information, so treat them well.
And then, once you have a better understanding of who you’re talking to online, you can craft better messages that deliver more relevant information to the people who need it most.
When our client Ecover celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2010, we at Creative Concepts helped them develop a related 30 Under 30 contest to celebrate the innovative ecological ideas from young people across the country. During their celebration, they asked everyone a question:
“Where do you think sustainability will be thirty years from now?”
After all, for a company who designs every aspect of their cleaning products with the environment in mind — from their ingredients to their facilities to their packaging — the future really is their business.
This question may have initially been asked of some of the country’s top eco-bloggers and entrepreneurs, but that’s was just the tip of the iceberg. Who Ecover really wants to hear from is you.
(Yes, you.)
They’ve opened the discussion to everyone, because they believe everyone has a stake in our planet’s future. And Ecover is listening — on Twitter, on Facebook, and on their blog. They want to know what you think about sustainability, and what concerns or suggestions you might have.
Because reaching a business milestone is certainly something to celebrate, but if there’s one lesson Ecover has learned in their thirty years of creating eco-minded cleaning products, it’s that tomorrow is what really counts.
Part of it is the vast number of tools we have at our disposal. Since most of them (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc.) are free, it’s easy to start using each of them… but that makes maintaining your ever-growing web of communications more difficult.
Part of it is the conflict between personal (customers, individuals, community) and business (corporations, marketing, sales). Social media tools are designed to facilitate the exchange of information between consenting parties, but the limitless kinds of information being exchanged further complicate our conversations.
And then there’s the ongoing debate about which social media metrics matter most. Is it the size of your audience, or the quality of your engagement? Is it inciting action or increasing awareness?
Our advice?
Shrink your focus.
First, re-examine your goals and your needs. (Maybe you need a new social media strategy?)
Then, instead of aiming too wide, narrow your attention to a handful of channels — maybe even one — and maximize the impact you can create there (or the feedback you can obtain). Then, once you have a true understanding of how your brand is perceived within that channel, start applying those lessons to other channels, if it makes sense for you.
There’s a presumption that companies have to be involved in social media. And while we here at Creative Concepts are sure that social media can benefit almost any company, charity or brand, we’d never advise anyone to bite off more than they can chew.
So don’t waste an opportunity to connect with your customers by spreading yourself too thin, or your valuable feedback will be reduced to a stream of white noise.
Need some help simplifying your social media efforts? Check out these tips from Mashable.
Before you dive headfirst into your lengthy list of New Year’s resolutions, we here at Creative Concepts would like to offer a word of advice about setting goals for this (or any) new year:
Focus on results, not on numbers.
With 52 weeks ahead of you, it can be tempting to set goals for yourself that involve all kinds of numerical feats, like…
Improving your web traffic
Boosting your search results
Increasing your inbound links, or your number of media mentions
Doubling your number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers
… and so on.
And while each of these occurrences would be a boost to both your business and your brand’s reputation, they’re also merely the measurable by-product of a more important goal: doing your job well.
As 2011 approaches, you already have some personal and business goals in mind that you’d like to work toward. But what about your social media goals? (You do have social media goals, right?)
First, identify the obvious problems that are hampering your social media efforts:
While recounting the top stories around the web can be instructive, inspirational or (oops) cautionary, don’t forget to look back through your own year of social media ups and downs. Ask yourself:
Where did we succeed at the individual and the campaign level?
Where did we exceed (or fall short of) expectations? Do we know why?
What did we learn?
Who did we meet?
What lessons can we apply to future endeavors?
Identifying the year’s high and low points, understanding what worked and what didn’t, and taking a wide view of your successes and failures can be critical in improving your results in the coming year. (Plus, in this era of nonstop media input, if you don’t occasionally take a moment to reflect on what just happened, you may not have another chance anytime soon!)
Here at Creative Concepts, 2010 has been an exciting and surprising year! In this year, we began working with the US division of Ecover, which has blossomed in ways the original RFP never foresaw. We continued our fruitful partnerships with longtime clients like Bigelow Tea and Ouidad, delved into the world of HD video, found several new and talented employees, and rebuilt our website — all while navigating new services like FourSquare and the ever-changing Facebook.
Thanks to our clients, our employees, our friends and families, and everyone who helped to make Creative Concepts successful in 2010. We couldn’t have done it without you! Here’s to a deep appreciation of everything we learned and had the pleasure of sharing during this past year, and an even more spectacular 2011.
For better or worse, the public has a short memory, and yesterday’s furious anger is tomorrow’s footnote. This means companies large and small can survive bad PR as long as they can ride the occasional wave up and down.
For example, considering how much negative publicity was generated in the mainstream media when NPR fired Juan Williams, you might have thought NPR would be destined for funding crises and possible financial collapse. Instead, as recent pledge drive numbers have shown, NPR’s donation numbers remained remarkably consistent despite all the media rhetoric.
So, if negative PR can’t sink a company… what can it do?
Ironically, bad PR’s biggest boon just might be providing useful feedback for the companies in question.
In the case of NPR, one of the lessons they learned was that the bulk of their angry commentary was coming from people who weren’t regular donors in the first place. As Paul Farhi in The Washington Post reports:
Several station managers say the angriest responses have been from people who appeared not to be regular contributors, based on their cross-referencing caller and e-mailers’ names with databases of donors.
If that’s the case, NPR might downplay similar criticisms in the future since such commentary is most likely to come from far outside their core supportive audience. Or, they could further investigate the issues at hand (freedom of speech, racial profiling, discriminatory practices) with the intention of appealing to that very same outsider audience. Or, they might even fan the same flames that caused such an uproar in the first place, as a way to differentiate the actions of their brand from their competitors.
However NPR or any other company chooses to react to a sudden swirl of negative publicity, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: although social media may help messages spread faster than ever, its continual flood of information also helps good and bad PR disappear from the public’s memory faster than ever.
When you’re the top specialty tea company in the United States, you reach a lot of tea lovers. Our client Bigelow Tea is using social media — from Bigelow Tea’s Facebook (and, yes, MySpace) pages to their YouTube channel, Bigelow loves to share their tea knowledge with the world. (After 65 years in busiess, they know a thing or two about tea.)
But how often do their customers have a chance to share what they know with each other? Normally, it’s not easy. Fortunately, we at Creative Concepts are helping Bigelow Tea bridge that gap.
Last month, the Bigelow Tea Twitter account asked its followers if they had any tea tips worth sharing. The results were instructive, and they formed the basis of a helpful blog post that allowed Bigelow’s fans to learn from one another.
This isn’t Bigelow’s first foray into customer connectivity. Earlier this year, they hosted their first Bigelow Tea Social in New York City, where bloggers and foodies alike came together to talk tea (and get their fill of free samples). How was that live event conceived of and managed? Why, on Bigelow’s blog and Twitter account, of course!
And while tea is obviously a communal drink to begin with, Bigelow Tea isn’t the only company finding new ways to bring their customers together. Our client Ecover celebrated their 30th anniversary of creating ecological cleaning products with a live event that united green bloggers, media-makers and innovators, all of whom swapped stories and tips until the party ended. How did we at Creative Concepts help Ecover organize this event? With a Facebook contest hosted on Ecover’s blog!
Social media: bringing companies and customers together — with the emphasis on together.
While the world debates the meaning and the merits of Julian Assange, Wikileaks and our expected right to privacy, we at Creative Concepts can’t help but wonder… how interested would Assange be in sifting through your emails?
One of the basic tenets of social media is the call for transparency. As the theory goes, the more openly you engage with your customers, the less ambiguity there is in your actions and the less “dirt” there is for others to dig up, should they choose to do so. (For a deeper examination of the business approach to transparency, check out the book Tactical Transparency by our friends Shel Holtz and John C. Havens.)
But despite the public push toward openness, that doesn’t mean companies and brands don’t still have their secrets. Tactical transparency doesn’t preclude tactical advantages. And, as Christopher Penn reminds us, some companies are built on secrets.
The question, therefore, is this:
Are your public actions drastically different from your private motives?
People tend to be most vocally concerned about privacy when they’re worried that the image they’ve publicly projected would be somehow damaged or destroyed “if certain information got out.” In the case of military positions or diplomatic strategy, that concern can be understandable. But in the case of brand management?
Perhaps the Assange affair is a timely opportunity for you to reconsider your brand’s public image and its private intentions, and to make sure that they’re harmoniously reconciled.
The world has enough secrets. Does your company have too many to hide?
This is about more than lulling potential customers into a false state of security so you can take financial advantage of them later (although that’s obviously reprehensible). This is about making sure that what you want and how you’re getting there isn’t in conflict with who you are.
And just who are we? Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook to learn more!
Ecover’s 30th Anniversary party in NYC. Photo by Kate Eisemann
Despite the impressive track record that comes with being a 30 year-old international brand, our client Ecover is still facing one big hurdle when it comes to increasing audience awareness in the United States:
They weren’t here first.
While Ecover was establishing their brand of ecological cleaning products in Europe before they ever crossed the pond, competitors like Method and Seventh Generation were becoming the common names that people in the US tend to think of as “clean and green.” And although Ecover has effective partnerships with retailers like Whole Foods, they’re still seeking new ways to connect with potential customers who might not even know that they exist (yet).
So, yes, Ecover is on Twitter. And yes, Ecover is on Facebook. And yes, Ecover has a blog.
But when Ecover celebrated their 30th Anniversary in November, they saw an opportunity to connect with those bloggers, tweeters and Facebook fans in a whole new way: in person.
We at Creative Concepts helped Ecover create a “30 Under 30″ contest to celebrate the contributions of America’s young eco-innovators. The contest’s winner, Ryan Arnold, was announced live in New York City on November 10th at Ecover’s 30th Anniversary party, held live in the Environment showroom in Manhattan. Ecover also partnered with EcoStilletto, who organized a green blogger panel during the event which focused on the future of sustainability.
The result?
Increased brand awareness, compelling conversation and positive post-event coverage on blogs and Twitter alike. Plus, Ecover CEO Mick Bremans got to meet dozens of young eco-minded entrepreneurs and media makers who are passionate about the future of sustainability which was a great opportunity for him and the finalists!
This kind of personal connection can be started online, and we certainly expect it to continue online long after the event is over. But no matter how electrified your Facebook community is, nothing replaces the power of face-to-face communications to build tangible relationships.
Are you building relationships that bridge the gap between the online and offline worlds?
Need help building those bridges? Join us on Twitter or Facebook!
