FreshNetworks Blog

McDonald’s is the world’s largest and fastest growing food service organisation. It is also a brand that attracts a lot of discussion and debate online. Not all of it positive.

This presentation from Heather Oldani, their Director of PR, is a great overview of how McDonald’s is using social media and online communities. From Twitter and Facebook to their own online communities. It’s an interesting insight into how a brand like McDonald’s is using social media – what they set out to achieve and what actually happened. But the presentation is Required Reading this week at FreshNetworks for the five key learnings that Oldani outlines from McDonald’s experiences:

1. Don’t ask “Should we engage using social media?”; ask how you should engage
2. Get your strategy right before you start using social media – know what you’re trying to achieve
3. Collaborate across the business – social media impacts on a range of different teams and job roles and often leads to these teams having to work together in different and new ways
4. Be flexible and try new things
5. Be open and responsive to feedback – listen to what people say (positive or negative) and respond or engage if appropriate

For us, the most important of these is number 2 – getting a clear strategy before you start to use social media is critical for any brand. If you don’t know why you’re doing it, consumers won’t either.

image via shutterstock

For a while I have found myself extolling the virtues of being a Social Media Pragmatist, rather than a Social Media Purist.

There are many “social media rules” to follow. But as an entrepreneur, and an engineer at heart, I’ve always felt the purtianical dictats must not fall foul of a basic rule of business:

Time and resources are limited. Focus them only on the things that will bring you the greatest return

So I was delighted to read this excellent post by Jason Fells today: Why Social Media Purists Won’t Last. And I enjoyed his calls to action:

“Make your company blog drive search results to the keywords you want to win. Present calls to action that lead your Facebook fans to buy your product. Entice Twitter followers to subscribe to your e-mail newsletter where you can present similar calls to action for purchase.”

Taking his conclusion one step further, I suspect there will be a backlash in 2010 against the Social Media Purists. Sadly the backlash will probably tar Social Media in general. And that’s why I say:

Long live the Social Media Pragmatist.

Image by H. Lloyd via Flickr

One of the most important mantra’s of successful sales people is to ‘Earn The Right’; get some diary time, or hold a short telephone conversation with a new prospect or stakeholder, you must first ‘Earn The Right’ for their valuable time.

To get the attention of the stakeholder when you are selling social media, one technique is to inform what his peers or competitors may be doing. If his competitors may be gaining advantage from the use of social media then why wouldn’t he want to urgently explore this with you?

You may only have ten seconds in an initial contact with the stakeholder, and therefore your key message regarding their competitor (or other compelling justifications – I’ll cover these in future posts) must be snappy, relevant, and vital. For this reason, it is sometimes called the ‘elevator pitch’, i.e. you are in the lift (elevator in US!) with the stakeholder, and you only have a few seconds until he leaves at the next floor, what will you say to get his attention? Be concise and high level. Carefully rehearse the message beforehand. And then rehearse again, and again!

For example, I was watching breakfast television this morning, and Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chief Marketing Officer Kodak was interviewed, explaining how social media has re-shaped their business. He said that social media can excite, evangelise, educate, and engage their customers, and makes a real difference to their changing brand. Their brand was previously deemed old and out-dated, and now, with the help of social media, they have re-vitalised the company.

This is a great story. I know of at least five brands that would compete directly with this brand and I will contact them later today with my elevator pitch! Let’s see if it is effective and earns the right for a further dialog with them.

Read all our posts on Selling social media here.

Some more reading

• Kodak’s Social Media Tips (viralblog.com)
• Why Kodak Thinks You Should Use Social Media (kylelacy.com)
• Twitter at C Level (marketingpilgrim.com)

Earlier this year we posted a series of examples of online communities in the TV industry. We looked at the way ‘old’ and ‘new’ media combine, how television broadcasters and production companies are working with online media. The examples we chose were all of ways in which online communities can be used to provide an additional set of experiences for a viewer, often after a programme has aired. From Channel Four’s Sexperience online community which supported the Sex Education Show to HGTV‘s  Rate My Space online community for people to share home improvement photos and tips.

These communities all have one thing in common – they provided an additional set of experiences for a viewer that enhance or extend their experience with the programme. They are for people who enjoy the programme and who want to engage more or find out more.

Things have changed in just a few months – the latest use of online communities for TV programmes is very different. They are now being used to add a social dimension to the actual viewing experience. Using online community tools to enhance a viewer’s experience while they are watching the actual show. We’ve written before about how two live shows in the UK have been experimenting with this use of social media tools: Live TV and real-time chat: X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing. But a new example from the UK shows how this use of online communities to enhance TV programmes is not restricted to live programmes.

Come Dine with Me is a popular cooking competition show on Channel Four in the UK. The concept is simple but addictive: four contestants host a dinner party for the other contestants on four subsequent evenings. Each host is rated by the other contestants and the person with the highest score wins. It’s a show that has always attracted a lot of discussions online as a quick Twitter search shows. Channel Four has now capitalised on this by hosting its own discussions on its site whilst the show is on air.

The Come Dine With Me ‘Play Along’ community shows how you can harness the conversations that are going on already and also enhance the viewer experience. The discussions in Twitter had always been of three kinds:

1. People giving their own ratings of what is happening on the show – saying the score they would have given for a particular dinner party
2. People commenting on the food or the ambiance at the parties
3. People talking about the contestants – who they like and why, and who they are less keen on

The Channel Four online community now allows people to do this in real time and on their site whilst the show is on air. They allow you to score each contestant against a set of criteria (and see the average score given by your fellow community members). They allow you to chat about what’s happening on screen and the host of the chat prompts you to discuss what is happening right now.

This is a great example of online communities really adding value to a viewers experiences in three ways:

1. They allow you to interact with other viewers who are sharing the same experience and who are interested in the same things
2. They are add a new dimension to the programme – letting you take part in the contest to
3. They have the benefit of being hosted by the same people who are broadcasting (or producing) the programme – you feel like you have inside access to information

The way we watch television is changing. Online communities are changing it. They add a new, social dimension to actual viewing experience. In time more and more programmes will be accompanied by online discussions and debates in this way. It will become the norm for many people to sit in front of two screens rather than just one.

image courtesy of shutterstock

In the past few days I have been discussing social media with a pharmaceutical company.

The pharma industry is necessarily highly-regulated and risk-averse. It caters very well with the ‘traditional’ use of the internet, i.e. when corporate messages are broadcast from a main website.

These traditional corporate websites issue strictly controlled and watertight messages that have been approved by internal managers and legal experts, such that there is absolutely no possibility of brand damage or, heaven forbid, any litigious patients taking action.

And yet, patients and health care professionals (i.e. the pharmaceutical industry’s customers) are increasingly seeking answers to their health care questions online.

One recent survey by Pew Research Center found that 61 percent of American adults — and 83 percent of internet users — look for their health information online.

Therefore if the traditional corporate pharma website don’t provide the answers, customers can (and do) go elsewhere. e.g. WebMD and NHS Choices

Meanwhile, and rather belatedly, this week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hosts a public hearing to discuss the use of the internet and social media tools — including blogs, podcasts, and social networks — to share information about the FDA-regulated products, including prescription medicines and medical devices.

Pharma is moving in the right direction. But progress is painstakingly slow, and meanwhile the client’s customer has many other (new) outlets for online information. 

The social media  sales lesson here is… know the customer’s customer. 

When I talk with my pharma client (as with all my clients), it is with their customer in mind.  In the long run it is their customer that calls the shots. So I ensure that I can speak to the stakeholder with some authority about their customer – bringing new insight into their customers as often as possible. Given that customers use of social media is rocketing, this inevitably places social media on the company’s agenda.