It is viewed with relish and contempt in equal measure, but
ultimately social media is simply another new technology that
business is slowly learning to understand.
There are enough successful examples to know it's worth
considering - and enough doom-mongering platitudes around to know
ignoring it is probably not the best track to take at this
stage.
This week's
Media140 conference showcased some companies that are doing
interesting things with the technology - even some whose entire
business model is starting to rely on it.
Here are some do's, don'ts and some good ideas gleaned from the
speakers.
How to crowdsource
At Media140, the talk centred on sourcing ideas for advertising
campaigns, but the opportunities are endless.
Crowdsourcing simply means asking people that you might not
otherwise be able to reach for opinions, ideas, or help through
some form of social media. It has possible internal applications
for asking an entire, geographically dispersed company
something.
It gives employees the opportunity to give their opinion on
something they might not otherwise get the chance to. And
externally, it could provide crucial information on what customers
think of you - if you target and approach them correctly and in a
"human" way.
The challenges could involve issues around intellectual
property. If you are asking for ideas that are actually worth
money, doing it such a public way could backfire. And once the
exercise is up and running, there will almost certainly be issues
around managing the information or ideas you receive.
A recent crowdsourcing exercise for a marketing campaign for
Unilever got 1,200 decent responses - it's then someone's job to
pick the best.
Social media is certainly low in financial cost, but you must be
aware of the time costs, which can be relatively high if you are
really going to do it well. Plus, you have got to make sure you
think carefully about whether this technology is going to work for
a particular task or brief.
Crowdsourcing may transform the "brainstorming" part of your
project, but it won't change the fact that once you have a great
idea, you are going to need the same skills and investment to put
it into practice.
What kind of brief works? One example floated at Media140 was
car manufacturer BMW, which wanted a customer relationship
management (CRM) system for managing a database of customers that
the company wants to engage with in the long term.
Just because applications of social media have so far related to
marketing, advertising or sales, doesn't mean there aren't hundreds
of possibilities in other parts of the business. The important
thing is to keep it simple, at least at first, and be clear about
what you want to do.
Do's
- Be honest. Especially about mistakes. People will see through
you anyway, so don't misinform. Dell is a good example to follow
here - when it got things wrong, it owned up, changed the way it
did things and is now often upheld as an example of good
practice.
- Only contribute when you have something to say. Don't go wading
into conversations or harassing people - you wouldn't do it in the
real world, so don't do it on
Twitter or an internal network. Many of the rules of engaging
in real-world conversation apply to online conversations.
- Target people properly. Make sure you are providing relevant
information to the right people. You have to work out what will
benefit the people you want to engage with.
Don'ts
- Don't try to be something you're not. One delegate at Media140
asked how you should approach social media if you're already hugely
unpopular - a bank, perhaps, or a certain brand of politician.
- Lloyd Davis, founder of
Tuttle, said
there's no faking it. "You have to change who you are, not just the
perception of who you are."
- Dont forget to find some way to measure your success. You need
to justify what you are doing - to do this, you need to be crystal
clear about what you're trying to achieve.
- Don't patronise (or try to rip off) customers or even
employees. Social media provides a way for these people to talk to
each other, and as such, puts a bit more power in their hands.
- Don't expect overnight success, unless you happen to be Oprah
Winfrey. It takes time to build up trust, and it has to be done
subtly.
- Don't undervalue the skills it takes to get this right, or the
benefits the company could achieve from getting it right. Some
companies are hiring third parties to engage for them, but there's
potentially a role for in-house skills in managing this kind of
engagement
- Don't forget that social networks weren't invented for
companies - they were invented for people, and it is individuals
who have flocked to and embraced them. The challenge for business
is to work out where it fits.
Control
Some companies love to control things, but if your company is
one of these, it's time to relax a little. Your employees and your
customers have always been able to say negative things about you -
but now they can do it on the internet, and perhaps they'll have a
few more people listening. There is of course a danger than
employees will misrepresent your brand online, but there's a danger
that they'll do this every day anyway. Word of mouth is not a new
concept.
There are different ways to approach this particular challenge.
Drinks company Innocent and online clothing retailer Asos.com both
spoke at Media140 and outlined different approaches.
James Hart, e-commerce director at Asos.com, encourages staff to
add the brand name to their usernames and talk about what they are
doing at work on their Twitter or Facebook pages, instead of just
talking to their friends. He said,
"We have 55 people on Twitter. I trust them and I see what they
say because I follow them. We like to be where our customers are,
and we adapt to the environment. I'm not really sure what to do
with the official account. People search for Asos so we need
something, but we dont really push products at them. I just want to
talk to and learn from them."
In comparison, Ted Hunt, digital communications manager at
Innocent, said his company has the one official account. Innocent
isn't strict over internet communication - it doesnt delete
comments on its blog, unless they have swearing in them. Negative
comments stay up, and the company encourages interaction. But Hunt
says it is simply easier to manage one Twitter account than lots of
them.
"We keep it as a single Innocent drinks account. Otherwise it
fragments too much and it is hard to control the message. It is
easier to get a message out in one go. But we don't moderate
strictly. In two years we have removed six comments on our blogs.
Negative comments stay up. We take down swearing because children
come to the website."
A company can take whichever approach feels most suitable, but
the key thing to remember is that you are not going to catch
everything in your net. There are plenty of companies around if you
do want to monitor what's being said about a particular business,
but ultimately trust is likely to get you further than draconian
rules and spying.
Commitment
You cannot just turn up on Twitter and tick off "social media"
on the to-do list. It requires a bit of work and effort before
tangible results are seen. Social media may not seem like the most
important priority in a recession, but taking the time to
understand it and know the basics could be a good idea.
Take Dominos Pizza, it was landed in deep PR-trouble after two
employees uploaded a video onto YouTube showing them doing horrible
things with people's food. It got 600,000 views and the damage to
the company's reputation could have been untold. Dominos took 48
hours to respond - which was criticised at the time for being too
long - but when it did, it was effective.
Its response video has now had one million views, beating the
first one, but what was important was that it chose the same medium
to communicate with people instead of releasing a dry press
release.
If a business knows the basics, understands a bit about how this
technology works, it will be in a better position to respond
effectively if an employee or disgruntled customer manages to get
it in trouble. Some level of commitment is required by all.
For those who really want to get it right, training employees in
what's appropriate and what can work is a good first step. John
Beasley, head of brand at Red Bull, which is relying increasingly
on social media for its marketing, said at Media140 that long-term
commitment is the only thing that will get it to work. The first
thing the company did was create a presence online using MySpace,
Facebook and Twitter.
He says, "But we had to develop that though and use content. We
found consumers wanted short bits of content that needed to be
refreshed constantly. We also created lots of different points for
consumers to discover us through."
Listen
Corporate arrogance is not what people are after. If there are
complaints, it is good practice to acknowledge them. And if you
manage to solve the problems people talk about, you will be hailed
as a hero (it might be by only one person, but that's better than
none).
One example aired at Media140 was Comcast. TheUS internet
service provider responded to a tweet from Techcrunch editor
Michael Arrington complaining about the company, and sorted out the
issues he was having. The result was free positive publicity in a
blog post that went out to Arrington's three million readers.
There are several examples of companies or brands feeding any
update on Twitter that mentions their name on to their website.
This provides one place on the company site that comments can be
listened to. There are also different tools for tracking and
listening, including Delicious and Tweetmeme.