FreshNetworks Blog

Universal McCann have just published Wave5 of their Social Media Tracker. It provides a great snapshot of social media usage from around the world. The overall report is useful for brands and social media agencies alike and provides particular insight to people planning multi-national soial media strategies.

Among other things, they asked internet users if and why they join brand communities (see diagram below). And found that those who had joined brand communities were 71% were more likely to make a purchase as a result.

This backs up what we have found with clients in a range of industries and shows the power that online communities can bring to brands.

Why people join brand online communities (McCann)

The report is well worth a read and is Required Reading from FreshNetworks this week. You can find a full version to download here.

Guest blog post by Matthew Schwartz, editor of Follow the Lead, a blog on b-to-b search engine ZoomInfo

As the use of social media grows within B2B businesses, there is increased demand for companies to hire in-house social media resource. In fact, the phrase “social media director” has even started to creep into the conversation, especially in the US.

A search on indeed.com for “social media director” returns more than 7,100 results from companies, ranging from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants to Fairmont & Hotels Resorts.

Unlike in the States, it’s still early days here in UK for B2B businesses when it comes to resourcing social media in-house. However, developing and then implementing a well-researched social media strategy will show your customers that you mean business.

In order to stay viable, B2B companies need to start thinking about how to integrate social media into their workforce. For many B2B organisations, this will mean creating an entirely new position.

Here are 3 tips to get the ball rolling:

1. B2B managers need to find candidates who have spent adequate time in both sales and marketing positions and can present a clear understanding of how he or she will help to impact the bottom line using social channels. Being able to demonstrate ROI is of vital importance to any social media strategy and should be a key concern of any social media manager in a firm.
2. With apologies to ex-NFL head coach Herman Edwards, you have to play to “win the game.” Companies will need to create a budget item for “social media resource” and offer competitive rates. Depending on the size of the company, the sector and, most importantly, the use of social media channels among the audience being targeted, companies may need to employ “tiers” of social media jobs/programmers akin to other disciplines.
3. Social media staff shouldn’t sit in an isolated office – they must be integrated into the whole sales system. Akin to sales reps, your social media resource must be close to the customer and should develop a social media strategy depending on where the  customer sits within the sales cycle.

2010 has seen a marked increase in luxury brands using social media and innovating with it. This is one of the findings in the latest L2 Luxury Digital IQ Index – research led by Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern. The report shows how luxury brands have really pushed their use of social media in 2010, realizing that the benefits for them come from not just having a social media presence but also from engaging people in social media and online communities.

The report takes an analytical approach to the use of social media in an attempt to quantify the digital competence of 72 leading global luxury brands. The ranking highlights some interesting observations – watch and jewelery brands on a whole perform relatively poorly, and a lack of investment in digital has seen brands such as Prada and Dior punch below their weight in the use of social media across their business.

But across luxury brands, the report highlights the innovation and successful use of social media that is happening. It showcases examples that are ahead-of-the-game and examples, not just to other luxury brands but to all brands using social media. Four notable such examples are below.

1. Coach

The leather goods brand is ranked first globally for it’s Digital IQ, notably for its social media enabled shopping and for its blogger collaboration. It has built a social media strategy that is directly linked to sales, and not just to building fans and Likes for the sake of it. This is evident in its use of all social platforms – making clear and contextual links to product from every post of Facebook so that if you are reading about an item you can easily click through to buy online.

In the summer of 2010 they ran a blogger outreach programme, the Poppy Project, which saw them engage 468 blogs to spread a trail of poppies across the web that were part of a competition for people to win gift cards for Coach products.

A great example of using social media to engage, but also to push people directly to sales, rather than just using social media for the sake of it and being unable to measure the rewards.

2. Louis Vuitton

Ranked joint-second overall for their Digital IQ, Louis Vuitton has integrated more innovative use of social media outreach into its overall digital campaigns. Of particular note is the use of video and an emerging trend among video bloggers – the haul video. In these videos, bloggers show on camera items they have just purchased on a shopping trip and discuss each item. This has become something of a craze online and one that Louis Vuitton has engaged to get exposure from these influencers for its products and for the brand.

A haul video created by JuicyStar07 about contents of a Louis Vuitton Speedy bag has had more than one million views online, putting the Louis Vuitton brand in front of other people and allowing consumers to showcase Louis Vuitton products.

3. Oscar de la Renta

Ranked joint-eleventh for their Digital IQ, Oscar de la Renta is a great example of how using social media can help to engage people on a lifestyle level, rather than just with your brand or your product. This can be a successful approach to social media when you are looking to engage (and engage with) a specific target audience that can be defined by their lifestyle. Oscar de la Renta achieve this primarily through their @OscarPRGirl Twitter account, which spent the summer tweeting about yoga, music and summering in the Hamptons. Rather than talking about their brand or products they are targeting people with a certain lifestyle and adding value to them.

4. Jimmy Choo

FreshNetworks client, and ranked 17th globally for their Digital IQ, Jimmy Choo are noted in the report as an overachiever – using social media to compete with search as a source of traffic and conversions – and as an innovator in social media that punches above its weight. The Catch-a-Choo campaign on Foursquare was highlighted as what the future of innovation in social media should look like – notably by taking social media offline and really engaging people in the product.

Also, Jimmy Choo is noted in the report for its ongoing engagement in social media. It is the third most successful global luxury brand at using Facebook not just to attract Likes, but to channel people to the ecommerce site, and so to lead to sales. This makes the report rank Jimmy Choo as an ‘overachiever’, where social media is competing with tradition search as a traffic driver and a driver of online sales.

A few weeks ago we held a senior executive round table event in order to debate the future role of social media in financial services.

One of the key topics that we discussed was the rise of niche online communities and how this will impact financial services brands in the future.

The current situation

Over the last few years there has been a rise in financial services communities that are on the long tail. In other words, there has been an increase in online communities that focus on a very specific audience rather than appealing to a wide range of clients and consumers.

Several banks have chosen to focus their social media strategy on one section of their customer target base. Royal Bank of Scotland, one of our clients, has developed a niche online community called Keep Britain Biking to appeal to  motorcyclists in order to encourage customer interaction with their Devitt insurance brand. Barclays bank is using a niche community called 100 voices to appeal directly to students with the promise of a community that contains information “written by students, for students”.

Young & Free Alberta, an online community powered by Servus Credit Union,  also utilises the “youth” niche community idea.The site aims to give 17 to 25 year olds  a head start with their finances by providing them with useful, relevant information about their financial requirements.

Not only is the site aimed at a specific demographic; it  is also aimed at  a specific region – Alberta, Canada. And with  ‘Young and Free’ initiatives in Alabama, Mississippi, Ontario, South Carolina, St Louis, Tennessee and Texas, all powered by local banks, these niche communities clearly aim to capture people at a time when they are selecting their first bank account. By building up a relationship with a young target audience, the Young and Free communities are engaging with customers in the early stages of their financial planning with the hope of then building up a life-long commitment to their bank or institution.

The Young and Free Alberta community uses blogs, forums, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to encourage discussion. It also contains lots of relevant information and activities – like inviting people to an open-air movie -to attract its key audience.

The site also contains an “ask the experts” section to answer the financial concerns and queries of their target market in a timely and appropriate manner. The community manager has videos, blogs, comments and a very visible presence on the site, perhaps as way of further positioning the bank as a voice of authority.

What does the future hold?

Considering the rise of the niche community in financial services, indications for the future direction of social media in this area could include:

• An increase in targeting specific groups based on demographic. Social media could be used to uncover and engage more with micro communities, based on key demographic segmentation, that are enthusiastic, passionate and keen to become customers.

• An increase in targeting specific regions or areas. Social media could be used more to target regional rather than global areas. Local branches of banks and other financial services institutions could use niche communities, based on location, to attract new customers by appealing to people near to, or in, their own physical space or location.

• A decrease in corporate communities. As communities become less “corporate” in feel the will move away from using the direct branding, look and feel of the institution they represent. Instead the branding, tone and style of the community will be dictated by the needs and requirements of the people they wish to target rather than the bank or institution itself.

• Niche communities will become more social. They will utilise more user generated content and will form the hub of all social activity, from blogging, to Facebook, to Foursquare, as well as whatever other new tools arrive on the social media landscape. Niche communities will form the permanent base for social media activity – a space which can grow and develop in line with both market changes and new developments in social media technologies.

Our next blog post will look at how social media is helping to develop customer driven markets and what this means for the future role of social media in financial services.

Today I was giving a talk on social media marketing and the role of the social media agency at the University of Cambridge. I took a few moments at the end of my lecture to reflect on how the students in the session could use social media themselves as part of their job-hunt. On how employees can use social media to find out more about applicants for roles – with many frequently-cited examples of inappropriate things on Facebook damaging candidates and employees. But more importantly how you can use social media to help explore, research, learn and prepare for applications and interviews.

In the short presentation below we talked through four steps that the students, and indeed any job-hunters, can take to use social media to support them in their research, applications and interviews for roles. These steps, starting with the simplest, must-do, are:

1. Take control of your personal brand online – realise you have one and make sure you have a professional brand alongside your more personal one. Assume that any employer will look for you online and consider what they will find.
2. Use the tools available to research employers – blogs and online communities run by brands provide a brilliant insight into the business and what they are doing. Using social media to research potential employers will furnish you with more insight and material than standard recruitment materials will.
3. Find to people to talk from target employers to (and talk to them) – find people on Twitter, in online communities or on networks such as LinkedIn that work for employers or in the industry and engage them, ask them questions and their opinions.
4. Experiment with social media yourself – the best way to start to engage and to control your personal brand online is to experiment with social media yourself. This does not have to be just about your job-hunt. Maybe start a blog about your hockey team or your holidays. Use social media and experiment with blogs, Twitter and other tools. Only then will you really realise the potential it has.