Charlene Li, author of Groundswell, has a new presentation. I’m so happy to see her here.
She begins with the world-famous Comcast technician asleep on his customer’s couch and how that comes up on Google.
Technologies are enablers but social media is about relationships. “You’re not even listening.” She shows a great video of a man and a girl in a restaurant. He’s an old time marketer. She’s an uninterested consumer. It’s a commercial for Microsoft Interactive Solutions.
How do you create a social strategy to enable relationships
Companies often have relationships with their customers that are
Transactional
Occasional
Impersonal
Short-term
They want passion, constant, intimate and loyal relationships.
How to get there?
Know your audience
Know your goal
Make an action plan
Then use the tools, tactics, and techniques
The audience:
Bottom of the ladder=not active
Then watchers (YouTube watchers, blog readers)
Sharers(join social networks, share photos and tag content)
Commenters (create content, review products, comment on blogs
Producers (create content on a regular basis) Once you cross that line, it’s a labor of love
Collaborators (curate and moderate content, edit wikis, lead discussions)
Learn by listening: do a Google search about you or your company
Respond quickly-use Google Blog Search or Technorati
Charlene quickly gives the examples: Southwest maintenance mechanic who blogs, Novartis communities,
Oracle’s experiment with taking feedback from customers on their home page, and, of course, @comcastcares.
She talks about Ben & Jerry’s free cone day on Facebook, and Skittles’ involvement in social media.
Skittles is on Twitter.
Markets are now about engagement, conversation, and relationships. Those relationships often involve helping. Quickbooks gives business advice on its site. The community helps. You can use the groundswell to take on some of the responsibility
Now she’s on to @LionelatDell, and how he handles Dell’s laptop issues.View this photo
She talks about Dell’s comments and how they handled it. And all @lionelatdell said was, “We know our laptops are exploding and we are looking into it.” But everyone as thrilled that Dell even participated in the conversation.
Can you find the Lionel in your organization and empower them to do the right thing? Because they will know what to do if they are already engaged in social media. Dell has been unsuccessful in Second Life, for example. And so has WalMart. But they’ve kept comoing at it. The only thing they’ve done successfully in social media is their sustainability blog.
Getting started:
Listen first
Set your goal – what do you want to do with the relationship? Learn, support, get ideas,
Start small and repare for things not to work.
Measuring Social Media
Use your goals to determine your metrics
Use same metrics as you use for your other marketing goals
Learn to measure the lifetime value of your customer
What can you measure?
#of Customer feedback – impact of faster customer insight
#of comments – brand loyalty
#of referrals – faster higher sales
# of issues addressed – customer satisfaction
# of implemented ideas – Faster develop,emt
Net promoter score: how likely are you to recommend this to someone you know?
This is a higher order metric
Here’s another:
Lifetime value of a customer
(Cost of acquisition, cost of retention, lifetime revenue, referral value)
It’s not necessarily about how many sales are generated, although Dell can trace $500,000 of incremental sales in six months just from its Twitter activity.
Who needs to buy into the plan, who will own the community, what’s the right level of engagement?
You will be out of control in a social media relationship. Just like in a real relationship. Control is an illusion. Social media pulls this right into your face. It’s exciting, engaging, and makes you feel slightly queasy. Get out the Maalox.
