Category Archives: Branding

social media success: not always just about revenue

As a business, if you are looking at your social media presence and only asking how much money it made you…you’re not looking at the big social picture.  If that is really the only thing you care about…you’re only using sales media, not social.  Some might completely disagree with me, mainly folks from the school of believing that anything and every thing you do absolutely has to tie back to revenue.  It’s a hardcore belief, and, those that do lean towards this theory probably don’t care as much about the actual social community.  Fair enough – everyone is entitled to their own theories and strategy, but with social media as it sits right now for businesses, there are several other measures that spell success.

I do agree that your messaging, content and overall social strategy should absolutely tie back to business goals.  After all, your brand’s social media presence is still your brand.  What you do socially should still resonate with your audience as an extension of your brand.  That being said, that doesn’t mean that your social media presence has to directly gain revenue to be “successful.”  Untitled-1

If you run a print ad in a magazine you might be able to track some conversion based off a specific phone number, a QR code with a tag, or a special url, but for the most part you really don’t know how many people saw that ad and said, “Cool, I think I might act on this, but just not right now.”  That’s a lot like how specific messaging and content works in social media.  If you are trying to push an action, for example, your post has a call to action to click on a link and buy something.  A very salesy post (not ideal).  You’re able to see stats on how many clicks it got and also how many sales transpired through the link from the post, but what about the thousands of people that saw the post and did nothing?  Just because they didn’t create a “stat” doesn’t mean the messaging didn’t work.  Who knows, they might have written themselves a reminder on a post-it note to act on it next week and purchase by another means.  You would never have that stat as a result of your social media campaign.

This is why just looking at direct revenue from social media as the only measure of success is incorrect.

Social media is supposed to be social.  Not just for sales.

You can absolutely track the sales that do occur, but just don’t forget to consider all of the other people your content reached and understand that you just don’t know what affect it might have had on them.  Social stats only tell the story of those that decide to act on a piece of content (a like, comment, share, retweet, etc).  I find myself often times seeing something and really liking it, but not necessarily “liking” it.

What if you are a brand that has a social/digital presence but your products are only sold in person; in a store?  How could you possibly measure social success?  Determine what social ROI means for your company first and foremost.  Is it engagement?  Awareness?  Reach?  Referrals to a website?  Revenue generated via social campaigns?  Other?  There are a slew of things that could be defined as having a return on your social media investment.  Prioritize.  Once that’s nailed down, look at ways that you could actually directly impact the behavior of consumers in store, by way of your social presence.  One idea might be to create a special social-media-community-only loyalty program.  Develop a mobile loyalty “card” that literally can be accessed on their phone to scan when they purchase products in the store.  They get a special social media discount on certain products/LTOs.  You get their data from their in-store action.  Everybody is happy.   This is just one idea – you have to get creative.  There is always something that can be done to break through that clutter.  Social can impact how people behave when not in front of their computer or mobile screen.

I am a firm believer that engagement is where the meat of social success lies.  What stories are people creating from your content?  How “viral” did your content go based on your community interacting with it?  What kind of reach did your content have due to shares and retweets?  This is where you can measure how you are doing with what you’re putting out there.  And I do acknowledge that many people reached don’t act and register an engagement stat (I just said it above).  However, I think this is a far better representation of success as related to the purpose of social media than just making money.

Sales messages and posts are not what people are looking for socially.  Users are not spending hours a day on Facebook to buy stuff, or to be told what they might want to buy.  They want to be entertained.  This is why cat photos go viral.   And while a sales media strategy might work here and there, it shouldn’t be your #1 goal.

Entertain your community with great content relevant to why they liked your page in the first place, establish a content strategy that speaks from your brand, and the loyalty will continue to grow.  Build a solid base of fans and followers (that doesn’t necessarily mean a big one, just a solid one) that actually come back for more because of great content, and these people will be more inclined to eventually spend money with you… Revenue will happen; it just might not happen straight from social media.   So, don’t expect it to.

(The opinions are only those of Jeff Werkheiser)

2013: A Year to not be annoying as a social business

This whole social media thing is finally not “new.”  The big social business boom of 2008 was several years ago.  If that was the business world’s freshman year; it has now graduated.  If you are a business that’s been around for a while and just starting or trying to figure social out – you are behind.  The businesses that have been doing it for years have been able to try and fail, try and succeed, and figure out what the goals are for their brand(s) with social media.   Many have gotten it right.  And, many are still looking for a map.

Luckily for you, if you are new to social business, there are a gagillion blogs and articles and “best practices” out there to learn from.  I still completely think that first hand experience with social media is the way to learn, but if you want to dive into a bunch of articles and claim you know it all…go for it.   You’re not alone.

Now back to this whole 2013 thing…Happy New Year!  I promise that wasn’t sarcastic.  Seriously, happy newest of years.  It’s a new beginning.  A start over for some.  And in the world of social media for business- the year to not be annoying.

It’s been long enough now.  Brands should know the following things below to avoid being annoying in 2013.  And I don’t just mean a little nuisance, but the ‘you will get “unliked” or “hidden” at a rapid rate in 2013 if you keep doing these things.’  People are generally not idiots.  People don’t feel the need to tell a retail brand what they’re doing for their Saturday any longer.  The same things that might have worked in 2010 or 2011 won’t work now.  So, to the community managers and social strategists out there….avoid these things:

1) Trying to sneak the word “LIKE” into your post with a goal of your fans subliminally seeing it and thinking, “Hey, I like this sentence.  I will click “like” so the brand feels good about themselves, and because they capitalized the word LIKE, they are clever and I’ve never seen that before.  Amazing.”

2) Hashtagging until the cows come home.  I don’t know when the cows are coming home, but it’s not anytime soon apparently.  The cows needs Google Maps.  If you are using a hashtag, or maybe two, use it with purpose – as part of a strategy or theme.  Just throwing in 7 hashtags in hopes that a trending tag will pick it up looks like your keyboard puked all over your tweet.

3) Auto-posting your tweets directly to Facebook, especially when they include Twitter-only functionality like @ mentions and hashtags.  This one should’ve died off in 2010 but I still see it.  And when I do I give off an evil laugh.

4) Asking your fans things that they could care less about talking about with your brand, in hopes of getting some quick engagement.  Engagement just to get engagement is pointless engagement.  That means you’re just in it for the numbers with no weight or meaning behind them.  Random questions worked really well a few years ago.  But I’ve seen first hand from my experience as well as with many other big brands – people are just getting plain bored with this type of content.  Social media and content is evolving and getting bigger and better than ever.  You’re not surfing around on Facebook to tell a paper towel brand what your New Year’s resolutions are (no offense to any paper towel brand).  ”What are you guys up to today?”  This opened-ended, off-brand question still gets engagement if you have tons of fans, as some people are simply destined to jump at an opportunity to partake, but it’s so annoying.   And if you have tons and tons of fans you probably aren’t even responding to most of the comments, so if you say “relationship building” you can just go hang out somewhere with those cows.

5) Trying to run a Facebook contest on your wall.  This hasn’t been allowed now, in very straight-forward writing, for over a year now.  Although it really has never been allowed – it was just cracked on hardcore just over a year ago.  Smaller brands still get away with it.  Others get warnings, and the really bad rule-breakers get their pages shut down, apparently.  As a community manager, just know better.  There is a right way to do these things.

There are more, but these are what stick out in my mind as something I keep seeing brands doing that I would classify as annoying.  Something to look for in 2013.  Again, Happy New Year!

-Jeff

 

All thoughts and opinions above are mine and mine only.

should your brand be social?

The answer to this question has been forever changing over the last several years.  Brands are fickle.  Some hop on social media right away and ride it out for a while and then get darn right sick of it.  Some think they aren’t seeing any ROI so they peace out.  Some have no idea what ROI means with social media so they pretty much have no strategy, fail, and peace out.  Some partake in social media simply because they think that’s what you are supposed to do in 2012.  Other brands love social media and are locked in for sticking it out.  The latter are typically the brands that know what they’re doing, or, have a community manager that knows what they’re doing.

So, should your brand be social?

This is kind of a trick question because I believe that any brand can utilize social media to their benefit in some way, shape, or form.  So, the answer is yes.

There are a few things brands need to remember when building out a social strategy to make sure this works for their brand:

  • What platform(s) make the most sense? Brands don’t need to be on 14 different social media channels simply because they think that makes them look cooler or more “with it” or whatever their reasoning might be.  Different platforms have different fan-bases, tools, resources, conversations, and methods for connecting with fans.  Some are all visual, some are information-based, some do several different things.  Take a look at the socialsphere and determine that for your brand, with who you are trying to talk to and connect with, what are the best ways to do this?
  • What is your goal for social media? Over the last few years the main version of ROI has always been “how much revenue are you producing through your social channels?”  Not anymore.  That is still definitely a component to some social ROI strategies, but it’s not the only one by any means.  Maybe you are really going after connecting with new demographics and fan-bases, or you just want to build brand awareness.  Or, the engagement piece driven through conversations is #1 on your list.  Figure out by prioritizing – what are your goals?  Revenue?  Engagement?  Brand awareness?  Put your pieces in order and build out from there.
  • What kind of content will you be putting out there? Have an idea in place for what kind of awesome stuff you want your fans to see.  And make sure these aren’t the same across all social platforms.  Again, different platforms have different fans, conversations and uses – don’t be lazy and auto post from one account to all of your accounts.  That is the opposite of social media.  That is robot media.  Do you have great photos to put out there?  Funny videos making your brand and products look more human?  Will you do some contests or sweepstakes?  Embrace your community and you’ll gradually find out what they like as you go.
  • Know your voice. This is an element that perfects over time.  You don’t just kick off a new social media presence and have an amazing voice that everyone loves, however, you can know certain elements.  Short and sweet?  Witty but friendly?  Robotic and sales-pitchy (hope not!)? Helpful and approachable?  Quick to respond?  And probably the most important: human.  You’ll get a feel for how to respond, how to deal with negative posts, and how to put new content out there as you go.  Voice can be tricky, but finding it and sticking to it is huge.  Fans will come to expect the voice you land on, they’ll get to know it, and this will become and extension of your brand and public relations arm.

These four items above are  key components and very important when building out a social strategy, however, they are the tip of the iceberg.  Social community management and strategy can get very, very deep.  Anything beyond what I say above needs to be discussed over beers, however.

engagement vs fan count, the Facebook brand page dilemma

For the last few years, brands have had the opportunity to showcase themselves on Facebook by way of a page.  The businesses with any amount of foresight jumped aboard, some waited a bit but eventually joined the party, and amazingly enough – there are still some companies that haven’t yet made the social leap.  The brands that have been in the Facebook game for more than two years have seen several different versions of business pages and should be seasoned veterans by now.

Everyone had to start over to some extent when Timeline hit the scene a few months ago, on February 29.  And when I say start over I am referring to the new layout and aesthetics, the new functionality like highlighting and pinning posts, the admin panel, and the ability for brand pages to respond to fans through private messages.  However, the original ole’ concepts and theories remain strong, based on your brand’s Facebook strategy.

There has been the argument that timeline hopes to cause fans to spend more time on the actual brand page, thus, increasing engagement.  But, this original thought has proved to not necessarily be the case.  In many brands’ experiences it has actually been the opposite.  On the flip side, there has been data showing that it has in fact increased page engagement.  So, who the hell knows?  Let’s give it some more time…especially if Mashable is going to put these two conflicting articles out only a month apart.

Anyway, what’s the big dilemma?  If you manage a brand page you know what I’m talking about.  It’s the age old (not really very old at all) argument of engagement with fans versus the number of fans that you have.  What’s the right way to go?

The correct answer: both.  Totally depends on your business, what your strategy is, and why you are doing it.  Maybe you want to build the crap out of your fan base right now so that you can roll out a huge engagement plan in 6 months.  Being completely honest, growing a large fan base organically is hard.  Great content definitely helps, but sometimes you need a boost.  And, like Major League Baseball over the last twenty years, if everyone’s doing it you kind of have to play along, too, if you want to stay in the competition.  That was a steroids joke.  It’s really not that different.  It’s all cheating.  The difference, buying Facebook fans is legal and is now to some extent the norm.  Steroids land you in an empty house hanging out with Jose Canseco.

There was a bomb dropped on Facebook a few weeks ago when General Motors announced they’re pulling $10 Million of Facebook advertising due to ineffectiveness.  That’s a perfect example of Facebook paid products being part of an overall strategy for an end goal as it affects their business.  They weren’t seeing results in that end goal from the Facebook ads; people buying more cars.  They knew what they were doing and didn’t see it working.  Pull the plug.

Some brands get bashed for spending a lot of money on fans, but you know what?  If they’re spending a lot of money then they probably know what they are doing, or at least their agency does.  They more than likely have an “after we buy all the fans” plan.  If they don’t and really are just buying fans strictly for a big number, well, then, that is just kind of silly.  That is not technically a strategy.  That is just doing it to look good.  But you know what else?  Even just looking good with a huge number could be considered a strategy.  Brand awareness.

I am personally not a huge fan of ruthlessly acquiring fans, as I think the actual number should not be the goal.  A big number is great, but it doesn’t matter if those fans don’t engage with your content and connect with your brand.  That is the whole point of being on Facebook, to connect people with your brand, socially; humanizing your brand by way of completely new kinds of interactions and content.  There are brands on Facebook that literally don’t spend any money and have a very solid fan base with very engaging fans.  More power to them.

It should all stem from content, first and foremost.

Using paid acquisition Facebook products to gain new fans is fine and can be part of a very successful social strategy and/or campaign, but it shouldn’t be the strategy.  Disclaimer: unless you fall into the category I mention above and truly are out to just be #1.

To sum it up, engagement is huge and should really be the end goal, and fan acquisition can play a vital role in following through with part of a social strategy or campaign.  So, both sides of the argument can be the correct answer – it depends on your business, and what you are doing with your presence on Facebook (voice, content, strategy and beyond).

Everyone has a different social strategy, and everyone has an argument.  That’s the fun – at this point there really isn’t a “right” or “wrong” answer, only right and wrong ways to go about doing it.   But even those could be argued.  Ah, this is a blast.

****Note: I wrote this in about 15 minutes.  I write what comes to mind and hit “post.”  This could be WAY longer if I wanted to get into TAT scores, engagement rates (depending on which analytics tool you are using), all the other non-acquisition-driving Facebook paid products that are now available, and probably a slew of other things that would be relevant to what I wrote about above.  But, I am tired and don’t want to dive that deep today.  My kid got me up at 5:15 AM.  Done.

some social brands doing it well, in my opinion

Social media as we know it is still very young.  And by “as we know it,” I am referring to the daily connections with our favorite brands, companies and organizations.  Personal use of the socialsphere is also still pretty young, hovering around a decade or so if you are looking at Friendster and Myspace.  And if there was anything “social” before 2002, I’m sorry, I missed it.  Social media as it now sits, has taken over our online worlds.  Sure you can still find out if your younger cousin Toby got his wisdom teeth out, but you can also communicate directly with your favorite beer, sports team, or celebrity.

You might not always get a response, which is unfortunate, but you can feel like you are part of their daily operations or lives.  And, believe it or not there is a human behind the brand’s voice.  (I know from first hand experience as I am one of those humans.)  Hopefully the company or brand you follow knows how to use that voice to their advantage and to connect with fans.  Even the ones that sound like a robot still have a human somewhere in the process, as hard as that  may be to believe.

But I digress.

I follow a ton of brands across the social web.  I want to point out some of my favorites (keeping this list to Facebook and Twitter).  In my mind, these brands are doing a great job of being human, reaching their fans, keeping the content interesting and fresh, and making you want more.  Here’s my current short list, in no particular order….

 

Skittles

  • (Facebook) Hilarious, ridiculous one-liners that you read and immediately just say “WTF?”  But then you laugh, sometimes out loud.  Their voice is consistent and doesn’t waiver much if at all.  Very witty and entertaining.  I love that the vast majority of their content has nothing to do with their product, proving the point that just selling, promoting, and marketing by way of social media is not a winning strategy.  Being interesting wins. (facebook.com/skittles)

 

ESPN

  • (Twitter) An extremely human voice that sounds like your friend you are watching the game with, smashing beers with.  It’s a very witty line-up of tweets that work sports into the heart of the content.  They don’t stray away from their lifeblood, but they do find a way to make that straightforward content interesting, different.  It doesn’t just sound like news. (twtter.com/espn)

 

Keystone Light

  • (Facebook) Keith Stone and his always smoothness has taken to Facebook and it’s fantastic.  This lower budget and/or college beer definitely knows who they are targeting and they do it well.  Their posts are geared towards dude who like to drink a ton of beer.  They’re witty, in the same voice as their TV commercials and on brand.  I love when brands know what they are and go for it. (facebook.com/keystonelight)

 

Foursquare

  • (Facebook) This one is interesting because it is another prominent social platform, with a presence on another prominent social platform.  That in itself isn’t that odd, but to do it well is another thing.  Foursquare doesn’t really go for humor but they talk about their new pins, locations, tips, specials, new partnerships and what not.  It’s interesting.  Lucky for them their business is interesting, so the content follows suit.  They do talk about themselves a lot but it doesn’t come off annoying.  At least not to me. (facebook.com/foursquare)

 

Red Bull

  • (Twitter) Not only is this one of the coolest brands around right now, and they have one of the best overall marketing campaigns in the country, but they are very human on Twitter.  They aren’t necessarily funny or overly interesting, but they are human.  Go look at their Twitter feed – they respond to pretty much everybody who tweets at them.  Not a big deal for a smaller company, but this is impressive for a brand presence like Red Bull who has over 600K followers on Twitter.  (twitter.com/redbull)

 

Cheerios

  • (Facebook) First and foremost, I’ve loved Cheerios since I have been alive.  My son loves Cheerios.  So, with a biased approach I loved this brand already.  But, their Facebook presence isn’t half bad.  They use fans’ photos as part of their cover image which immediately brings the brand to a human level, they have interesting tips for healthy living and speak directly to people like me that just plain love Cheerios.  (facebook.com/cheerios)

 

The Today Show

  • (Facebook) Making news reach beyond news is a strength of social media.  While this concept isn’t earth shattering, I think the Today Show does a good job with their Facebook timeline.  The stories we see every morning become interactive discussions, and they pull in trending topics from Twitter as newsworthy discussions on air.   I know that many other news entities do the same thing.  Fine.  This is my list.  (facebook.com/today)

 

Lowe’s

  • (Twitter) Doing a house project and need help?  Lowe’s on Twitter is there for you.  They even lead their profile description with “Got a complaint, compliment, or question?  Let us know!”  This is customer service done right using a social tool that is so perfect for it.  There responses are very human, and helpful.  A great way to connect with customers. (twitter.com/lowes)

 

Creative Recreation

  • (Facebook) I’ve been rockin’ a pair of hybrid boat shoes from CR for the last 8 years.  Yeah, they definitely don’t look like new, but I still love them.  This is a cool brand that has grown a ton in the last decade and has a cool social presence to go with it.  Good content is the key to any good social channel, and their vivid imagery, sweet products, and conversational posts seem to connect well with their fans.  (facebook.com/creativerecreation)

managing brand social media is a lot more than responding to tweets

Quite often I am asked what it’s like to be on Facebook all day.  Or Twitter.  Or whatever else social platform you want to enter in here ________________.  Anyway, I usually just laugh and say something like, “it’s work.”  The truth is, managing social media for a successful business is a beast of a job nowadays, especially if you are doing it right and growing, expanding, innovating…and staying on top of the community.  The funny thing is, to a person that really knows very little about social media, I am just playing on a website that their 14 year old kid sits on for hours a day with that smart phone they shouldn’t have yet.

In reality, managing a social presence across many different platforms and channels for a business, is like running a business in itself.  You need customers (fans and followers) and you need to provide a product or service (great content).   In return you get paid (engagement).  If you are really lucky you turn that into profit (actual revenue by web traffic to your site or sales direct from the platform).  Simple equation, right?

What a lot of people don’t understand is that it is MUCH more than just monitoring Facebook and Twitter.  If that was the case, then social manager jobs in big cities wouldn’t ask for 3-5 years experience managing a social presence for a business and brand(s).  At this point, not much beyond 5 years can really be required, since such a large number of businesses hadn’t even adopted social media yet in 2007.  Well, most of the platforms that we all know and love didn’t even exist yet.  We still don’t have “experts” in social media yet.  We are close, but not quite there yet.  Yet!

Believe it or not, but a lot of thought goes into individual posts, social campaigns, and content.  The most important is the latter.  Without great content you won’t have engagement.  Without engagement…why are you on social media?  Just to sit there and be a brand?  If you think you need a Facebook page or Twitter handle just to have one, because that’s what businesses do now, then you’re missing the point.  You need a plan.  You need goals.

This might seem like I’m complaining about people thinking that managing social media is easy or elementary, as I manage social media for a brand.  However, I am more so just defending other social media managers, and hoping to educate people a little bit more about what it is that we do.

I will expand on this sooner than later, as I’d love to pick some of my favorites from around the socialsphere from brands I like, campaigns that were awesome, etc.  Look for it.

LeBron. The digital brand

Today LeBron James hired an ad agency to help him better connect with fans and take advantage of the ever-evolving world of social media.  This is a good thing, considering his brand page is already violating a key guideline of the Facebook cover image.  Yep, right across the middle in huge font sits “lebronjames.com.”  Just check out the Facebook page guidelines, Section III, B, ii – right there, boom: “Covers may not include contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section.”  With over 10 Million fans, one might want to check on that.

Sports.

Back to the point of this blog.  LeBron the brand.

Today he signed with creative ad agency, SapientNitro, to take care of his digital presence.

In my opinion, this is genius.  He, or at least his management company, understands that he is in fact a living, breathing brand.  They also understand the power of his online presence and social engagement.   He is perhaps the most recognizable athlete in the world.  He genuinely wants to connect with his fans, and he wants to be innovative in the way those connections happen.

I’m very interested to see what comes from this partnership, and I am expecting a lot of awesomeness.

I’ve always looked at LeBron as one of the smarter business athletes and this just reinforces that notion.