Creating the buzz

What is it?

It is not about broadcasting. It is about engaging with your audience. It is an opportunity for “creating a buzz” about your brand. It's a fundamental, revolutionary change in online behaviour, expectations and the customer experience. Major impact on consumer /B2B decision making and behaviour. Major opportunities, but also threats, for your business.

Implications for business? -there's now a new career called “buzz builders.”

Key things to remember about Social Media.

• When you are going to book a hotel invariably you look not just its website but also read Trip Advisor. Consumers now rely more on consumer to consumer marketing – reviews. Kellco gives reviews on electric goods, cameras etc.

• Don't ignore your customers. “United breaks Guitars” was made by a country and western band whose complaint to United Airlines was ignored. Their song/video about it has had more than 4 million hits on Youtube and United Airlines share price dropped substantially as a result.

Social media redefines websites. Engaging through Facebook might be a better medium. Skittles (the sweet) website is absolute garbage but it is measured by the engagement with over 4 million Skittles lovers who expound the virtues of the product.

Wispa was brought back via a campaign on Facebook. Interactivity, rather than broadcasting message.

Coca Cola have generated Facebook activity through running a competition where the winner would visit all 206 countries in the world where coke is sold and collect video clips of why people there were made happy by drinking coke. These would then be posted on Youtube.

Mashable.com – serious social media website.

Café Gandolph 716 fans. Facebook site gives a warm feeling. Mixture of standard product but also comments from customers about menu. Low cost way of engaging with your audience and making the brand alive.

Cairngorm Brewing Company based in Aviemore. They are at an early stage of thinking about their social media. The business opportunities are to
• Build brand awareness and loyalty.
• Increase sales and visits to brewing.
• Build online network.

They use social media to monitor and respond to what is being said about your product. Between 1/1/2009 and 31/3/10 there were 71 mentions of Cairngorm Brewery according to monitoring Social Radar.

Lots of enthusiasts were talking about Cairngorm Brewery – opportunities to further engage with their audience to further promote the brand.

So what?

Impact – customer experience, mindset, product development, sales and marketing, business intelligence, reputation management (Cairngorm Brewery).
Trip Advisor – how to react to negative comments.

Best way to think about social media is in the middle of you or your website, around the edges your customers are already uniting in social media.

Three simple questions
Who are our customers?
Where do they hang out in social media?
How can we best engage with and energise them?

Things to remember
• You can learn how the individual vehicles but it is more difficult to change our mindset. social media is online democracy – the end of read only internet.
• It is a power shift from supplier to the customer. This is the new reality.
• Declining effectiveness of traditional approaches. Does anyone listen to sales/brand messages anymore?

Kids these days do not read newspapers and watch less and less television.

Traditional advertising is to broadcast the message “Buy our stuff” but nobody is listening anymore. Social media is about dialogue and not broadcasting. It is about listening to your customers.

Performance Measures – the 4I's
Involvement – network community numbers. Frequency.
Interaction – engagement, – read post, comment, reviews, recommend.
Intimacy

Social media redefines the concept of a website and we need to think of new business models based on openness, sharing and using our network to create a buzz about our brand.

IMPACT, PERFORMANCE AND SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Does social media produce end results?

Monitors customer satisfaction and makes it easier for actionable insights to be delivered.

Starbucks are a great example of use of social media. Reputational video on YouTube responded to a posting also using YouTube that said that Starbucks wasn't using fair trade coffee. The response by Starbucks CEO got millions of views.

We need to think differently as business to achieve business success. Peer group tend to be more trusted than big brands websites or advertising.

Social Media Monitoring Tools have been developed to check out all the activity across Facebook, Twitter, Flickr. These have search and relevance filters that categories. E.g. Trackur which is free, social Radar.

Social media is open to abuse from competitors.

Advice – do not try and abuse the network because the network is very good at picking you up at this. It can identify PR company activity opposed to the real community engaging.

User generated review will become more important. There will undoubtedly be negative comments. Without negatives the positives don't look good.

You need a monitor and response policy. Rely on users to support you.

GETTING THERE

• Get Involved – Google Alerts, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook
-the more you get involved, the more you learn
• Learn more. See opportunities
• Develop a strategy
Few have co-ordinated social media strategy. This needs a clear strategy including a plan for implementation. Find out where your customers hang out. Establish how to measure success. Are you ready to engage?

1. Start with vision or media statement – we want greater brand awareness through using social media.
2. Key Performance Indicators – targets – friends, viewers.
3. Customer Groups – who are they and how do you engage.
4. Channels – Facebook/Linekedin/ Twitter
5. Organisation people and resource issues. This establishes the foundation. Do you have the mindset and who is going to do this for you with commitment?