May 3, 2010

Conductors, Architects and Influencer's

We are all members of the social communities we engage with, whether they are communities of friends, industry peers or the brands we love. Some of us are also the architects and conductors creating and building these communities.

For those of you working with brands day to day it's your job to create the bridges between the company and it's customers, stakeholders and social audience. You're the key influence opening up gateways to traffic on both sides. In a way you're the key to the quality of engagement both sides have, you make the introductions and you influence the nature of the conversations and the stories shared as the conductor.

This notion of Bridge Building is one I play with constantly in my thinking. How can I make it as easy and entertaining as possible for these dynamic groups to share, engage and talk to each other in the social space, on and offline.

It takes so much more than understanding the tools and popular networks to inspire change and build long term meaningful relationships. Especially knowing that what works today is probably not the formula for tomorrow.

Our position must be to find and friend those influencer's and compel them to promote the desired change among those around them.

Working in the social space with digital media, I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on what you consider your position to be and what your role is in defining how these relationships develop...

May 1, 2010

Why? becomes your measure of success.

As with any marketing or business strategy it's important to have some direction. An objective your strategy is working to achieve.

And it's the same for your social media strategy. The first thing I ask people that want to start a twitter account for their business is WHY?

It's not good enough to say "because everyone else is" or "because that seems to be the thing to do these days". It's not about everyone else, it's about your business. Why do you want to socialise your business? What do you aim to achieve by becoming more social?

Some reasons might be

to become 'top of mind' for people living in our area when thinking about...
to increase sales
to create more buzz around our shop, more excitement
to build a community that can help you discover new business opportunities
to teach people, to educate them in how to use our products in new and interesting ways...
we want to reach out to people wider than our local community
we want to develop some international relations

Once you have answered the WHY question that then becomes your unit of measurement as well. Your ROI is evaluated by how well you have achieved your objective.

Understanding the WHY question also gives your staff direction and focus for content creation, message style and flavor and a guide to the nature of the conversations you want to encourage or participate in. It's easy to be all things to all people but often that strategy fails to achieve a measurable outcome thats consistent with your mission.

Why is your business becoming more social? Lets discuss...

March 9, 2010

Event summary: Social Media in Retail

As you can see from the video below, our second event, ‘Social Media in Retail’, took place last night. The event was hosted by @JustinFlitter of FlitterMedia who gave a great overview of why retailers should do more than simply use Social Media to promote the latest in-store offers. As Justin said, “Social Media is not just a heat and eat meal, it takes lots of ingredients.” We all agreed with this notion. Justin went on to emphasise the need to add value, rather than simply replicate standard marketing via Social Media, what Justin called “spam announcements.”

Justin then introduced Gianpaolo Grazioli, owner of Queen Street gelato shop and café, ‘Giapo’. Gianpaolo talked about “being relevant to the world around you” and offering something that your customers can be fans of. He also talked at length about how brands need to think socially, referring to how your product or service needs to be easy to talk about. We now operate in a pretty open society, a trend that is exagerrated further by Social Media. Gianpaolo highlighted this by saying that we need to be open about our brand communications and, ultimately, listen more (or perhaps better?) to consumers.

Many retailers have a relatively large workforce and setting out a Social Media plan that makes sense and is easy to implement is often a tricky process. Ultimately, as both speakers alluded to, it’s about empowering the staff who are most passionate about their job. That passion will always translate to more positive customer experiences, which will in turn drive revenue, which is the ultimate goal at the end of the day.