Don't be deluded by the thought that by simply having a facebook and twitter page your organisation will suddenly be transformed overnight. Implementing social strategy internally and externally into your business requires a plan.
Don't be deluded by the thought that by simply having a facebook and twitter page your organisation will suddenly be transformed overnight. Implementing social strategy internally and externally into your business requires a plan.\n\nHello, I’m Kristen Vang - and this is the Creating a Socially Aware Business workshop. \nJust a bit of quick housekeeping. This workshop lasts 2 hours. That’s a really f’ing long time for one person to speak - and trust me, I’m not all that interesting. So please, get involved, interject, ENGAGE. \n\nBecause, if you don’t do so voluntarily, I’m going to have to single you out one by one, make you stand up and ask you questions directly - and that’s just awkward for everyone involved.\n
Let’s open this up with a question - \nWhat is the best social media campaign or initiative you’ve seen lately and why? What did you like about it?\n
Ok, now let’s flip that around. \nWhat’s a not so stellar social media campaign you’ve seen lately? What didn’t really work for you?\n
I think we can all agree there’s a massive spread in the quality of social initiatives in the market. So how do some brands get it so right, while other seemingly clued in brands get it so very wrong?\n\nBeing that Western Australia lags ever so slightly behind the rest of the world in social media marketing, we have this fantastic opportunity to learn from everyone else’s mistakes. \nSo, to answer the question of how best to implement and practice social media within an organisation, we’re going to look at where others that have gone before you have gone wrong (which I am referring to as SOCIALLY AWKWARD) and how you folks might do things differently to be more socially aware.\n\nSo you’ve got your company facebook page all set up. Now what? Do you just wait for the engagement hungry fans to flock to you? Do you make them like your page for the chance to win an iPad? Nevermind the fact that that’s clearly in breach of Facebook’s promotion guidelines. If you’re a socially awkward organisation, you start\n
Building your social media empire. Let me explain what I mean.\n
This is the conversation prism. It is a constantly evolving representation of the social media universe created by Brian Solis and Jess3. Each of the colored petals represents a subset of social media and then within that petal are a bunch tiny little icons representing the relevant platforms. Take the location-based subset. For those of you in the front row, it’s the redcurrant colored petal at about 8 o’clock. For everyone else, I’ll go ahead in zoom right in.\n
That one single petal includes: Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, whrrl, fire eagle, trip it, Check In, Dopplr and Google Latitude. That’s 10 platforms and there are 29 similar petals on the prism, so let’s estimate that according to this diagram, there are around 300 social platforms to choose from. This isn’t the game of Risk, folks, your brand doesn’t need to represented on every petal on the prism.\nYou should instead...\n
Think of establishing social media platforms like investing in real estate. \n\n
Think of establishing social media platforms like investing in real estate. \n\n
Think of establishing social media platforms like investing in real estate. \n\n
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Watering cans\n\n
The highly sought after limited edition purebred Tuscan cow\n\n
An orange tabby \n\n
A giant panda. Every good farm needs one of those. \nNow, we laugh at this, but Farmville brings in over 1 million dollars PER DAY in revenue from selling these virtual goods. Pixels, essentially. \nSo what are you waiting for?! There is money to be made - get our there and sell come shit!\n
Quite like the Freo markets on a Sunday afternoon, you need to get customers’ attention by SHOUTING your sales cries. \nAnd don’t forget to include your phone number in each and every update, so the excited customers know where to reach you!\n
The aware brand focuses on relationship over sales with the knowledge that with relationships comes advocacy and repeat purchase.\n\n
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The aware business gets buy-in from above as it’s instrumental to being successful in your initiatives.\n\n
According to a study conducted by the Marketing Leadership Council, 69% of exemplars - businesses whose social media efforts have delivered tangible business results - have strong or very strong executive support, compared to only 36% of brands with average results.\n
[QUESTION] Time to share some wisdom, what have you done to get an initiative across the line and approved?\n\n
I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen some competitions that make some pretty outrageous demands of entrants and it’s pretty awkward - things like\nwrite a song\nchoreograph an accompanying dance with 4 friends\nrecord your performance\nedit your video\nsynthesize your voice so it sounds like a t-pain song \nlike the fan page to upload the video\nadd a 25 word description \nand tag your 4 friends \nI wouldn’t enter that competition. Although free frozen yogurt for a year is incredibly enticing, you need to remember the 90-9-1 principle\n
The 90-9-1 principle illustrates the participation inequality of the Internet in that only 1% of people create content, 9% contribute to or edit that content and 90% of people simple observe content - affectionately referred to as “lurkers. Now whether you subscribe to this theory, or prefer \n\n
Forrester’s Social Technographics, the message is the same - the majority of internet users aren’t content creators. \n\n
That’s not to say that brands shouldn’t run high involvement competitions, it just means that you need to be realistic about the level of participation that these types of initiatives generate. \n\n
The KitKat Chunk3 competition for example, requires entrants to\nhave a unique skill that is neither dumb nor dangerous\nperform said skill\nhave someone record it\nedit it down to 3 minutes\nupload it to YouTube\nagree to the competition terms & conditions, which may entail undergoing:\na health check\na police check\nstunt training\nThe competition has been open for over a month and closes in two weeks. There are currently 27 entries. I’m not saying this is is a failure, it’s just important that expectations are managed and upper management understands that in cases like this that it’s the quality of the interaction of the quantity. \n
Many businesses set up their social presences, turn on auto-pilot and awkwardly forget them. This is often achieved by \n\n
Giving your facebook a nasty RSS feel by pushing all blog posts to it\nPublishing all your tweets to facebook as status updates\n
And in some cases posting things that illustrate that you’re attempting to automate things but either have no clue what you’re doing or are incredibly intoxicated\n\n
Aware businesses recognise that social media communities each have their own culture, etiquette and norms and are respectful of them.\nIn short, you don’t talk the same way on Facebook that you do on Twitter and you generally don’t post the same videos on YouTube that you put on Vimeo.\n
And last, but certainly not least. It’s really quite awkward when brand representatives lose their shit.\n\n
One of the most cited examples of this was last year’s Nestle / Greenpeace snafu where the Nestle page administrator came under fire and allowed his emotions to get involved. \nHe responded like a human. \nAlthough it’s hard to totally fault him for it, the way it comes across under the banner of brand representation, it’s just not appropriate.\n
Aware brands would obviously never find themselves in such a situation, and if they did, they would handle it with stoicism and grace. \n\n
Vodafone Australia, for example, gets a lot of guff on it’s facebook page due to its substandard coverage. However, the \n
Let’s do a quick recap. The awkward business:\ntries to build a social media empire\ntalks about itself too much\nignores the activists\nspruiks its goods incessantly\ndoesn’t worry about getting internal buy in\nasks too much of fans\nover automates its pages\nloses its cool\n
Whereas the aware business:\nIs choosy about its social presences\nShuts up and listens\nIs good and if not good is prepared and in either case is present\nFocuses on relationships over sales\nGets internal buy in\nIs realistic about participation\nTreats social networks differently\nKeeps it together\n