FreshNetworks Blog

Two-third of marketers in the UK don’t understand social media, according to a survey from McCann Erickson Bristol.

The survey found that almost two-thirds of marketers in the survey felt that they didn’t understand enough about social media to use it effectively in marketing. Despite this, 86% thought that social media was here to stay.

This survey does surprise us at FreshNetworks a little. Over the last year we have we have noticed a real change in the market not only in the UK, but across Europe. There is a growing realisation of the power that social media can have in marketing and the role that it can play. Marketers and brands are becoming more innovative and, to some extent, more demanding of agencies like ours in their use of social media marketing.

It is, perhaps, worth exploring the McCann Erickson survey results in more depth. Of particular interest is the social networks where UK marketers say they have a presence – Facebook is, as we might expect, the most popular, but more than one in every four marketers has a presence in Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube as well. This shows that, even if they report that they are not sure how effectively to use social media in marketing, UK marketers are experimenting. And this is one of the first, and probably one of the most important steps. Social networks and online communities are relatively forgiving environments, and they allow you to experiment with a relatively low cost of entry. And in the current economic climate, innovation and experimentation is what counts.

So perhaps the fact that so many UK marketers feel unsure of how to use social media in marketing is not surprising after all. They are experimenting. Find out what works for them and what doesn’t work. Experimenting with different social networks and online communities, and using these for different purposes. This is a good thing. A great thing in fact. And if they don’t know exactly how they can use social media for marketing, the fact that they are experimenting and trying things is what counts.

Social media is new and the way consumers and marketers use it is still developing. We’re all experimenting. And that’s what makes it exciting.

Some more reading

• Basic Ingredients of Social Media: Video and Photo Sharing plus SATX Social Media Workshop (sociableblog.com)
• Small Business Discovers Social Media (revenews.com)
• Build your own community or go where people are? Do both (freshnetworks.com)
• People are fed up of joining brand pages on Facebook (freshnetworks.com)

Image by FredArmitage via Flickr

For any brand using social media, an important first stage is to find out what people are saying about you online and then monitor these discussions and conversations. You can build on these, engage the people talking about you and learn from what they say.

We’ve looked before at how to react if somebody writes about your brand online. Today’s Required Reading at FreshNetworks looks not at how to respond but the types of conversations themselves. The presentation below, from David Alston of Radian6 looks first at the worries and objections that people can have to using social media, and then moves on to the ten conversations to listen for in social media:

• The complaint
• The compliment
• The problem
• The question or inquiry
• The campaign impact
• The crisis
• The competitor
• The crowd
• The influencer
• The point of need

Search for conversations about your brand today and see which of these conversations you find.

Some more reading

• Understanding the Social Process (crystalware.wordpress.com)
• Monitoring and Measuring Social Media (ducttapemarketing.com)
• The Future of Social Media Monitoring (readwriteweb.com)

For our first post of the new year, I wanted to touch on two questions that often crop up when we talk to clients about their online presence and how they are and could use social media:

1. “If somebody talks about us online, should we respond?”
   
2. “If we respond, what is the best way of doing this?”

This can be a difficult set of questions for brands to answer. If they engage they fear they may open the metaphorical floodgates and end up having to find and then respond to every mention of their brand online. If they don’t engage they fear that they are losing control of the brand. Our approach has typically been to discuss a set of real-life scenarios with them from blogs, social networks and online communities, and then establish when and where it is appropriate to engage as part of their social media strategy – what do they hope to achieve from engaging and so how should they do this.

Of course, this still leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how to act in specific circumstances and what we’ve really wanted is to have a crib sheet for these brands. And it seems that we might now have just that, courtesy of what might at first seem an unlikely source: the US Air Force.

I really like this approach, for four reasons:

1. It recognises that it is not always appropriate to “join the conversation”. Just as you wouldn’t unnecessarily go over and join a conversation about your brand you might hear in a restaurant, it’s not always appropriate online. Assess when you should and shouldn’t talk and then so it in an appropriate way.
2. It emphasise the importance of honesty online. The first instruction when you respond online is to identify who you are and where you’re from. This is really important online.
3. It lets you differentiate between different types of negative posts. Not all negativity is the same and sometimes it doesn’t make sense to respond and sometimes it does.
4. It’s easy to remember and follow. Any process needs to fulfill all your needs but be simple. This has the beauty of simplicity.

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Some more reading

• Brands can learn a lot from the US Air Force
• Friends are not the same as influence
• The best of social media over the holiday season
• Consumers are Increasingly Looking to Social Networks for Advice
• Why Social Works Part IV: Final Notes and Future Directions

For the final in our series of Five things to do in 2009, I thought we’d go back to basics. Today we’re going to look at five ways you can engage your customers in 2009. One of the real benefits for brands of using social media or of building an online community, is that it can build sustainable engagement with your customers. Here are five ways to get this engagement.

1. Be active about asking your customers for their opinion

Too often firms don’t ask customers what they think. They may give ways for them to contact the brand, tell them their opinions or call them with compliments or complaints. But this is all very passive. Brands need to be actively asking their customers what they think. You need to go to them, not the other way round. For the customer, being asked what they think makes them feel special, part of our organisation and valued. A simple task such as calling your ten top clients in the first week in January will give you new insights into what you are doing right (and wrong) and will make ten more loyal customers. You then need to think about how you do this long term and on a much larger basis.

2. Make it easy for customers to complain

There are many ways that customers can raise their complaints about you and your products. They can tell you directly, post their thoughts on their blog, write to a newspaper, talk to all their friends…the options are endless. As a brand you should be able to feel in control of these complaints. Nobody likes to hear that their customers are unhappy, but it is much better for them to do this in a space where you have right or reply and you can even learn from these complaints. If you don’t provide a way for people to complain they will still do it, except you won’t know where and won’t be able to respond.

3. When you ask your customers something, make sure you respond

There’s nothing worse than being asked for your opinion and then not hearing what people think about it or if they are going to do anything having heard it. When you ask customers questions, or ask them to complain you must respond. Closing the feedback loop will make them feel valued and make them realise that you are actually listening to what they are saying. This will encourage them to continue to engage with you and, by knowing what and how you think, it will make their contributions more focused and productive from your perspective.

4. Deal with customers in public

Only some of your customers are going to want to talk to you and give you their opinions, and an even smaller proportion are going to want to complain. But all of your customers will want to know that you are an organisation that listens and responds. They want to know that if they were to have an idea or some feedback, that you would take it on board; and if they were to have a complaint that you would deal with it. There is a huge benefit to engaging with your customers openly and in public. If they can see you resolving a customers problem they will have greater respect for you as a business that cares about it’s customers. If they see you giving feedback they will know that you’re an organisation that listens to and focuses on the needs of its customers. Respond, and respond publicly; this is where an online community can really pay dividends.

5. Realise that engagement is not a campaign

Unlike other activities, engaging your customers cannot be run as a campaign. It is not about creating a number of advocates for a product launch or about having a conversation with some of your customers for two months. Engagement needs to be ongoing; sustained and sustainable. Once you start to listen to and close the feedback with your customers you must keep doing this. Of course, the benefits you get will be vast and wide-ranging, so most brands won’t want to stop engaging!

Read all of our Five Things to Do in 2009 posts

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Some more reading

• Criticism Is Good
• Big questions for social media strategy
• Success Beckons the Social Media-Driven Enterprise
• Five things your brand should ask about social media in 2009

I’ve been asked to address an international market research conference in October this year on the future of the industry. The conference is the ESOMAR Panel Research conference and I’ll be talking about how online research communities are changing both the client experience and the dynamics of the market research industry. My thesis is that online communities are not totally replacing more traditional market research panels, but offer new ways of doing new things. At times the two can work together quite successfully.

Below are my initial thoughts in preparation for the conference. If you’re interested in finding out more about the conference or going, then look at the ESOMAR website here. If you have any thoughts on the below then let me know.

Changing the dynamics of the research industry

Research is about engaging in a conversation with a brand, but to date traditional research panels have not enabled this. They let you ask questions but not listen, get responses from individuals but not an understanding of why, and they are transactional rather than really engaging respondents.

Online communities provide a real step-change in research. They allow you to truly engage with your customers and build a research community that becomes an extension of your internal team. Rather than contacting participants through a research agency on a periodic basis, you can engage them directly and ongoing. The agency acts as the glue between you and the community.

Online communities will fundamentally change the way agencies work. They will:

1. allow participants to take part when it suits them not us
2. need agencies to work differently with respondents – collaborating on the research and letting them drive the agenda
3. require agencies to work differently with clients – the brand is much more highly involved in the research and the agency just the glue with the community

Online communities in detail and in practice

Online research communities are different to panels. They do different things and have different advantages. Compared with research panels, online communities:

• get faster responses – the 24/7 nature of the communities mean that they are always available as a resource. Responses typically get a week to get on a panel, whereas results can emerge in less than 24 hours from a community

• ensure more brand contact – the communities are branded and participants feel that they engaging in a direct conversation with the brand rather than answering the questions of a research agency. Feedback through the community adds to the positive and involved feelings towards the brand

• reduce surveying costs – panels rely on incentives to get responses to questionnaires when you ask them. A community grows and develops, with members taking part in activities and conversations at all times. The stickiness created, the ongoing community management and the brand engagement mean that incentivisation is not needed and you no longer needed to pay each respondent each time they complete a survey

• provide a richer quality of response – a panel will typically offer a restricted amount of time for input – the length of the questionnaire. An online community allows people to contribute when they want and as much as they want. The quantity and depth of responses is greater. People give reasoned responses and are encouraged to come back regularly to add more.

Some more reading

• Hosted tool helps companies study online opinions about products, services
• Companies that Track Discussions in Forums and Communities
• Incentives In Online Social Communities
• Don’t Treat Web 2.0 Like Web 1.0
• Social media is not a focus group
• The Art of Conversation – It’s About Listening Not Marketing