It’s Time to Make the Commitment to Social Media
by Marcia Fortley, Public Relations and Marketing Manager, The Anderson Group
It’s time to stop the excuses. You’ve either heard them or said them. “We are so busy, who has time? No one here knows what to do. We are uncomfortable that people might say bad things about us. That Facebook [insert any other social media application you want] thing doesn’t apply to our industry—our customers don’t use it. I need to know what our results will be before I let my staff take time for that.”
Whether you said it or thought it, if you are not incorporating social media into your marketing communications mix, or at least planning for it, you may be setting yourself up to play serious catch up (or worse).
Brand messages are now competing with consumer opinion. The power has shifted from the company to the consumer. Consumers want personalization, peer-to-peer communication and two-way participation. Make no mistake, if someone is engaging and having conversations with your customers, they have the advantage. Also, don’t worry about what people might be saying about your company; worry that you don’t know what they are saying about your company.
The Reality of It All
If you still need some convincing that this social media stuff isn’t going away, check out some of these staggering statistics*:
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
- The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55- to 65-year-old females
- More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blogs, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations; only 14% trust advertisements
- Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate positive ROI; 90% of people who TiVo TV programs fast forward through the commercials
- 80% of Twitter usage is on a mobile device, which means people update anywhere and anytime—imagine what that can mean for bad customer experiences….or good
- Generation Y and Z consider email passé; in 2009, Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to incoming freshman
- The second largest search engine is YouTube
- Wikipedia has over 13 million articles; studies show it is more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica
- If you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour
- There are over 200,000,000 blogs; 54% of those bloggers post content or tweet daily, and 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands
- 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
- By 2010, Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers—96% of them have joined a social network
- Years to reach 50 million users: radio-38 years; TV-13 years; Internet-4 years; iPod-3 years; Facebook-added 100 million users in less than 9 months; iPhone-application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months
- In the near future, we will no longer search for products and services; they will find us via social media
- Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators and content providers than traditional advertisers
Okay, deep breath. You can start small. Determining which social media will work for your company and your industry, and resonate with your customers, will take some education, research, lurking and planning. But, knowing what is out there, and how to use it effectively, will help you cultivate relationships and loyalty with your customers that will directly define your company’s reputation.
Rules of Engagement
Committing to social media is an important step forward for your company. However, there are rules of engagement that are important for you to review, incorporate and follow.
- Always present yourself as a thought-leader, not just as a company looking to push a new product or get an advertising message out
- Always be transparent and authentic; identify who you are and what you do
- You must be willing to make it work with time and commitment of resources
- Things can go wrong; you must be willing to accept criticism
- Everyone in your organization must be onboard, from the top down
Another important decision is who on your staff will be dedicated to executing social media initiatives. It should become part of their job responsibilities. Perhaps initially, you will need to outsource some of the strategy and planning, programming and setup, etc., but all communications with customers must come from within your organization. Remember, it’s part of the social media “rules of engagement”—be authentic and transparent at all times.
Where Do You Begin?
It can be overwhelming when you realize all your options—blogs, microblogs, social networks, chat rooms, podcasts, vodcasts, etc. You can begin to assess your situation by asking a series of questions that can help you focus on your goals and determine a solution that achieves those goals.
1. What goals are you trying to achieve through social engagement? Brand loyalty? Gather customer ideas? Increase attendance at an event? Build a customer community? Increase Web traffic?
2. What social media tools will best help you achieve these goals? Blog? Twitter? Facebook? Podcast? RSS Feeds?
3. Determine how much time, money and in-house staff you have to put toward social media efforts. At least one person must have accountability.
4. What social media tools are your staff most excited about? There may be many options to achieving a goal. If your staff is excited about one and not the other, go for the one that creates excitement!
5. What do your audiences say? Yes, you CAN ask them. Are your customers on Facebook? What blogs do they read? Do they use iPhone applications?
6. How will you measure ROI? Increased comments and dialogues? Number of fans? Increased positive chatter in the blogosphere? Increased Web site traffic?
7. How will you determine whether to continue putting time, money and energy toward a social media tool? It can take over a year to fully realize the potential of a social media initiative. A good rule of thumb is:
- Week 1 to 13: you will build awareness and show steady growth
- Weeks 14 to 39: you will gain search traction and generate inbound links (someone posts you on his or her blog or Facebook page, then people can click on that link and come back to your site)
- Weeks 40 to 52: you reach the top 10 in search results for targeted queries, and your traffic becomes self-sustaining
- Weeks 53+: you have daily visits three to four times per week, and you may start to consider spinoff sites
One thing is clear: there is no clear-cut answer to the right solution for social media. All situations are different. You can, however, evaluate your goals and determine the best course of action based on your level of commitment. But whatever your level of commitment, it’s clear that it’s time to make the commitment to social media.
*Source: Socialnomics Social Media Blog, August 11, 2009
Email comments to mfortley@theandersongrp.com.
