Social Media Strategies and Technologies

Social Web provides  many channels  to engage with your online consumers, one of the questions that most often asked by people was What is the right channel for my brand to engage with online consumers?, in my personal opinion building and managing a community for your brand/product is like the heart of your organization Social Media efforts because you are walking the talk of  your company by showing commitment and genuine interest in your customers.

Image Credit

I prefer defining community as a conversations hubspot for a dialogue on brand/product/service among it’s consumers/customers/users  and company, this can be powered by any technology tool,  so building a community for your brand or product is no easy task because it requires:

• Identifying your brand/product evangelists on web and engaging with them.

• Get the real people who are interested in or use your product, being an influx of your consumer voice.

• Sharing the relevant content to provide  value and helping your consumers on problems they face.

• Need for focus on collaboration and collective action to form an interactive, self-sustained and ripple effect community that loves to help each other while your company act as a catalyst.

• Let the community to be the HUB of your product/brand for product support, market research, new feature/product ideation, customer service and feedback management etc.

Well, the benefits of having a community or any specific social channel are numerous but the question is what it takes to build a engaging community for my brand/product?, do we need to hire a community manager if so what qualities to look for?, what are the measurement metrics?, how to calculate ROI? and how to successfully manage my online community? etc, before I could put my perspective, I must say that ReadWriteWeb has done a great job of mining lot of data on communities management, insights from social media experts, and practical information from successful community managers as “RWW’s Guide to Online Community Management“, which can be a handy reference for companies/brand managers to get answers to their questions starting from “Do we need to have an online engagement or community?” to “How to build successful community and engagement channel?” [I am glad that RWW Lead Blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick sent me a review copy of this report, you can buy the full report for $299 and also you can download the sample report for many useful insights].

Image Credit
Do I need an online community or engagement channel [Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook page etc] ?

The best answer I have for question  is a quote from Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO - “People relate to people, not companies” ,  Social media provides you an opportunity to humanize your brand and engage your employees with consumers at personal level, which can provide substantial results in long-term like decreased customer support costs, customer feedback management,  good PR and marketing channel to engage with your target market are a few to name here.  If social media marketing  can work for Taxes company,  don’t you think it works for you?.

Do I need to hire online community manager or social media expert?

Medium is the message, before you use it or wanna try?,  it’s better to understand it  so having some one [social media consultant or online community manager or social media enthusiast in your company etc] who understands the new medium [social media platforms] is a must have for your brand to create a successful engagement model with your consumers, this is applicable for large established enterprises to startups who want to use social media. As Forrester CEO quoted, “Social media is like sex, it is fun to read  and talk about but you cannot really comprehend unless you do it”.

An excerpt from RWW report says “In many ways, the community manager is the evangelist or the company’s products and the voice of the customer internal discussions. It’s critical to react to online discussions with skill, consistency, and aptitude; The role is hard to understand from the outside but impossible to miss once a startup is in execution mode”.

In what kind of companies Social Media works better?

Social Media is for every company that genuinely want to engage with their customers, it doesn’t matter whether you are Fortune brand or Local restaurant. As Sandy Carter, Marketing Head at IBM quoted, “I think the primary difference here is not in big or small company. But the difference is in how close you are to your customers”.

What are the ROI from online engagement efforts?.

Social media ROI is the most controversial topic as there are lot of debates among social media  elite on whether we can effectively measure the value of a human interaction and conversations, while it is true we still  need to focus on using measurement metrics because they will give you insights into the outcome from your social media efforts on whatever is measurable  to better engage with your target audience and refine your social media strategy. I personally believe in as someone said, “If it can’t be measured then it cannot be managed“.

• Personal interactions add more value than broadcast email message.It is a best channel to get early and quick feedback on your new product/service from users but many benefits are intangible.

• There are hard number studies available, from Cisco’s 2004 finding  that “43% of visits to online support forums are in lieu of opening up a support case through standard methods” through Dell’s tale of $1 million in sales through Twitter last year [from RWW report].

• Community managers need to use measure metrics to figure out the tangible benefits while existing analytics tools, Social Media Brand Monitoring Tools can be used for this, also I suggest you should read Social Media Metrics Superlist: Measurement, ROI, & Key Statistics.

• Community management can be another form of networking, delivering the same kinds of value that conference attendance, presentations and related activities deliver[[from RWW report]].

What are the successful social media marketing tactics or strategy to use?

Think beyond specific social media technology tools, plan with a strategy,  choose right tools & measurement metrics.

• First things first, listening to your consumers and target audience on web is the most essential and crucial part because it not only gives you a picture of what people are discussing about your [or competitor] brand/product  but also helps to formulate a strategy on how you can engage with them effectively.

• Don’t start with selling in mind - While every business action need to be tied to the bottom line (P&L sheet), already people are too bored with marketing messages, don’t you?.  So instead focus on value creation to your consumers like offering tips/guidelines related to your product’s,  helping customers who are in need, engaging with your audience on your company news to discuss their opinion, appreciate your brand evangelists, encourage for regular feedback,  share and discuss your product/brand/industry related information  and last but most important create a community feeling among your audience.

• Have a clear goals and targets plan - What are your expectations from running a community or being on any social media channel?, are you looking at generating exposure to your brand/business or want to use it as customer support channel? or looking for leads? or Just want to track your brand online reputation? etc.Having clear goals and targets will help you to choose the right social media tools and understand what data you need to track?.

• Use measurement metrics and Track your efforts- as said above use tools to track not only what people are doing on your community site but also what people are discussing across social web, benchmark new results (online reputation, improved SEO from the content you create, happy customers, prospects/leads) against your expectations.If somebody says, we cannot measure tell them about how dell made 1 million USD sales on Twitter last year.

• Never run it like a traditional marketing campaign - Social media marketing is a long-term commitment to  engage with your consumers, you cannot put a time span to end it so if you build a community for your users/customers then also think about the exit strategy, how your company will engage with them in future?, don’t build a community and then become dumb, negative word of mouth can create far more effect than you can think of. Instead even if you are focusing on running a short-span social media campaign then integrate it with your main website/community/social spot  for people to be still part of your brand after particular campaign period.
• Monitor your brand on social web - Grrr, I repeat this point again. You must always track what people are discussing about your brand, peep into conversations related to your product/service and  monitor your brand online reputation.I don’t need to mention about Domino’s Effect and Amazon Glitch incidents here again:).

Social Media is a fad, I don’t give a shit, you assholes!!

Thanks, I read that some one told just few decades back, there is no reason why anybody will buy Computer for home so I don’t know what is fad and what is not, all I have for your company is the ROI  for not using Social Media is Risk Of Ignorance and Impact Of Relations, somebody will get a slice of your bread if you don’t want it.

What are your thoughts on brands engaging with consumers using online channels? - would love to hear your perspective :).

[Disclaimer: Reference to RWW Online Community Management Guide in this post is not a paid review or affiliate link but information that I felt worth sharing with you folks].