Summary
¦ Social media enables multi-way dialogue.
¦ CIB has appointed a social media executive.
¦ Specifiers will soon tweet a request or query rather than search the internet.
¦ Social media requires support from traditional marketing channels.
Social media is certainly the new buzz phrase. It’s an umbrella term used to describe online activity that involves a level of social interaction, the most well-known including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which all enable users to share videos and photos and have a multi-way dialogue.
For those who think social media is just for kids, think again, as there are some startling statistics. For example, if Facebook were a country it would be the third most populated in the world. Five hundred billion minutes are spent on Facebook every month, whilst two billion YouTube videos are viewed and 27 million tweets are posted every day!
The mass shift in behaviour has meant that many companies are now looking at social media as an additional means of promoting themselves and talking to their customers or prospects. In fact, demand from some of our clients (we represent a large number of building materials suppliers in the UK construction market) has led us to recruit a dedicated social media executive.
Taking Facebook as an example, no-one can have failed to notice the number of TV or radio adverts that now direct people to a company’s Facebook address, as marketers use this as a new call to action. Many brands are taking advantage of the facility to have a corporate page – the leading product is Coca Cola with over 20 million people ‘liking’ its page.
Facebook is a ready-made vehicle that allows a company to communicate in a timely, informal manner – which invites feedback and interaction. Whereas injecting a personality into a corporate website is often a risky strategy, Facebook allows a company to do this, and also push their employees more to the fore – posting comment, photographs and videos to promote a company’s personality in a more genuine way.
Content can be posted onto Facebook as a natural extension to a marketing campaign. For example, bring a product launch to life by posting a short film of the product developer talking through their concept, as this provides an opportunity to show the passion behind the marketing blurb and demonstrate the insightful nature of a company’s R&D. The major advantage of Facebook is that the production values differ from that of traditional corporate videos, meaning content can be developed quickly and at relatively low cost without being detrimental to the brand.
Many companies are also integrating Facebook into their customer services, responding to technical queries or stockist enquiries. It’s also a great means of gauging and responding to opinion.
Twitter also presents a new channel by which customers can feed back, ask questions, compliment and (publicly) complain – which means companies need to be listening and responding. Twitter also offers a means of disseminating snippets of news and signposting followers to subjects of interest or company initiatives – giving a perception of pace and authority.
Much of the activity to date is in the consumer market – consumers are far more likely to have an emotional attachment to a retail brand and so there is much more engagement.
However, the business-to-business (B2B) market is steadily following suit and the specifiers or procurement managers of the future won’t know a life without social media. Therefore, in the same way as the internet transformed the way our customers sourced information and contacted us, social media is predicted to do the same. For example, there will undoubtedly come a time when instead of just ‘googling’ for specific information, it will be standard for an architect or buyer to also tweet a request or a query and await a response. If your company isn’t using the tools to pick this up, it could eventually end up losing out.
Strategic approach
That said, introducing social media into your marketing activity shouldn’t be a “me-too” reaction – it still requires a strategic approach.
Before taking the plunge think about your goals, consider which types of media best suit your objectives and define responsibilities – from whether you use an external agency, down to who will take charge of responding to direct messages and posts. Develop a social media policy (NB: it can be dangerous to just let employees loose!), devise a content strategy, agree monitoring and metrics and, finally, ensure it is fully integrated into your overall marketing activity – social media shouldn’t be used in isolation and, particularly in a B2B environment, it will require a lot of support from the more traditional channels.
Social media is becoming an integral part of marketing communications. However, as with any channel it won’t always be the answer and it still requires a planned approach in order to achieve a return.
