BestBuy has been using social media channels to connect, create awareness and collaborate with their customers or prospects, below is the video from Best Buy CMO on “How BestBuy Marketing Is Moving To Digital” from traditional channels and how they are using and planning to use digital media technologies for customer engagement.
This is another good sign of how big brands are realizing the potential of online media platforms, social conversations on digital platforms and most importantly the customer engagement factor (as said in Video, companies are talking with customers not talking at customers) is being recognized as a part of any brand business.
Social media boosts your brand trust among your consumers, okay, I am NOT the first to say this but do you really think consumers trust your brand online communications (blogs, micro-blogs and community sites etc) easily, because there is a difference between how people and how brands perceive social media?.
I was intrigued by a recent conversation with a friend on why do people have low trust factor on brands online communications? and what it takes to build such trust? after I found a Forrester research report released in December-2008 that highlights few people trust the data in your brand online communication channels like corporate blogs and social network profiles pages despite growing adoption of social media.
Below are the trust factors used by people in decreasing preference:
As you can see from above report data - corporate blogs and social networking profiles of a company or brands are the least trusted sources of information for consumers - while this trending is changing as more people are adopting social media platforms as not only their personal life streaming channels but also as knowledge/information sharing medium.
So why people don’t trust brand online communications easily? .
Building online trust is one of the challenging tasks for marketing and communication folks at organizations as they tend to push marketing messages on product or service or brand through online channels. Thanks to growing online participation behavior of consumers - brands cannot fake what they are to new users or prospects. It is known fact that people are increasingly becoming averse to marketing messages, forced selling or spamming with ads and claims of “the best” by every brand.
McDonald’s is using an interactive bill board advertisement with a giant LED screen as an entertaining experience where people can take pictures of holding dumbbells, umbrella, airing balloons, blowing out birthday cake candles and many other amusing things. This smart entertaining experience initiative from McDonald is attracing lot of attention and spreading viral among locals & tourists visiting London.
I work as software consultant and social media guy - always love to learn some useful things to make my life colorful - An optimist known as amnigos alias Y.A.S.E - hey few people also call me Vijay Rayapati.If you got some work for me or just wanna talk then send an email. BTW-I love to read, code, blog, tweet, explore social media, teach and play with children.
