John Prescott on Twitter

I think that this is a great thing. The product capabilities of social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube have opened more than just a new functionality-driven approach to customer communication. Over time, such media have shown us that customers have longed for that personal route and that feeling of belonging, so it’s actually a shift in mind-set we’re seeing.

I’m a member of Virgin Wines, and every time I receive an order I throw the cardboard box in the recycling pile out back. Last time (which was just before Christmas) I happened to notice on the side of the box, the following message; “Did your driver do a good job today?”

Virgin Wines Social Feedback on Delivery Boxes

Isn’t that great? I think this is a bit of a mind-shift from the punative tone of similar messages seen on the back of professional vehicles. What struck me here is that, this is a personal request for feedback on an individual, that is motivated seemingly by desire to reward and encourage good performance.

I’d like to think that brands like Virgin Wines are seeing how well received is the social element in their interaction with customers and are thus embracing this mindset; this friendly and human tone of voice, throughout all of their communications.

A Cardboard Box Can Be A Social Medium!

My point then… customers really want to interact with you. Customers are human beings just like your employees. Customers might not have cared so much about who you are, until you showed them they could.

With the Virgin Wines example, I was immediately warmed to the thought that they care about my experience, they value my feedback, and they also value their staff by rewarding good performance. I want to continue to be a customer of a business like that. I’ll admit that I intended to send an email, but got distracted by what awaited me in my inbox. If they’d given me the option to tweet @virginwines then I definitely would have; and would have said something like “the man brought fine wines to my house. I am in love with him”.

Instances of brands embracing the social mindset are occurring more often in Europe, but it’s been happening for a while in the U.S. Coca Cola famously offered two of their biggest fans a job, after (said fans) Dusty and Michael created a kick-ass facebook fan page some time in 2008. Rather than contact Facebook and demand these guys handover the page to them (which Facebook will allow you to do), Coca-Cola obviously thought who better to run their fan page, than such die-hard, genuine fans? If you haven’t come across this story before; its a great social media case study, and you can find a thorough review on Econsultancy.com by Patricio Robles.

Now 'Offical' Fan Page

Brands aren’t just becomming more social-minded in the way that they involve consumers though. We’re also seeing brands communicate a human approach by telling us about the people that work for them. I’m thinking in particular of the charming and amusing “Intel Star” TV ads.

I took this video from their official “channelintel” on Youtube, where they state “Rather than focusing on a new product, the 2009 “Sponsors of Tomorrow” ad campaign celebrates what makes Intel different; culture, personality, heroes…”

That Intel are taking the trouble to endear to us the people that make the things that other companies stick into the machines we use to connect online, is a great testement to the brands embracing a social mindset. Even the less consumer facing brands!

What Does This Mean To Me?

I’m aware that all of the examples above reference brands that are hugely well known and have the sort of marketing budgets the rest of us dream of. Because of this, I think we can have more faith in the benefit of adopting a social mindset in approaching your customer communications. Huge brands like Virgin, Intel and Coca-Cola do not do things lightly. When your revenue is into millions and billions of dollars, you do not invest in a campaign direction without research and analysis. If these brands recognise a customer desire to connect and act on it; we won’t go far wrong to follow their example.

What Practical Lessons Can We Put Into Practise Here?

1. Be Consistent: Decide your social media brand identity and register it in as many places as you can. Use the same brand name, brand icon and profile precis throughout. You will probably benefit from having one detailed profile and a brief profile version, depending on the media tone of voice and character space available.

2. Be Everywhere: Register your social media profile in as many places as possible, starting with the most suitable for your audience and focusing your time in the same way. Even if you never intend to communicate via e.g. Bebo, you can at least protect your brand and make yourself available in the event a potential customer wants to interact with you there.

3. Be One Brand With One Voice: Instead of referencing “our Twitter account”, or “Our Linkedin account” think of your brand as everywhere online, and the social media platform is just the lens through which a customer may prefer to see you. Instead think “come find us on Linkedin”, “come join our fans on Facebook”.

4. Listen And Learn: Save the one-way “me, me, me” messaging for the spammers. Use the functionalities of social media that faciliate two-way communication. Monitor post interactions on Facebook, check your @mentions on Twitter; and most importantly try to respond and acknowledge those who participate.

5. Let Go Of Your Brand: I’m not saying you have to ‘do a Coca-Cola’, however it’s important to know that the people that buy your product have every right to mention your product and feed back about your product. It’s how you handle that feedback and what you can learn from it that is invaluable.

So there we are. None of this is remotely unfamiliar is it? In fact you may have been reminded in the anecdotes here about your favourite local caf, or the corner shop from your childhood. I think it is human nature that we crave recognition and we want to be valued as an individual customer and not a sales statistic. Social media websites have the functionality to enable brands that would other wise be very distant, to feel more local and approachable. From this; we’ve been reminded of what we already knew.

A social mindset is nothing new. What’s (fairly) new is that online technology faciliates a local and social approach not previously possible for national and international business. And your customers will love it!

1. Be discoverable
From Facebook to YouNoodle, many social media/networking websites offer you the chance to have your content surfaced to the search engines. DO take advantage of this opportunity. Firstly this is valuable from an SEO perspective as these sites and your presence on these sites can be spidered by search bots. Such reference to your brand and links back to your site from high-volume high-credibility sites, helps improve your own PageRank. Second reason to tick that box, is that if anyone searches for your brand, they will be able to see not only your own website, but also your presence on the social media websites you have chosen. Provided you are consistent in referencing your brand (more on this in a second) this helps add validity to your organisation and faith in your brand as the user is confronted with a back-up reference to your brand from additional trusted sites. Incidentally, if your own website appears below your Facebook/Linkedin/Crunchbase profile – come see us and we’ll sort that out for you!

2. Be consistent
Your brand is your intellectual property and should be treated as such. Larger organisations tend to have entire rulebooks dedicated to their various brand identities, corporate fonts, logos and other marks. Every brand, (no matter what size) should have some basic rules in place regarding company name, logo(s) and profile. As an example – our company name is theMediaFlow (all one word, with the emphasis on Media and Flow by the use of a capital ‘M’ and ‘F’) if you search for “themediaflow” using Google, you will find a number of results on page one, including our own site, our Linkedin profile, our CrunchBase profile and various news stories about us. In nearly every case the result references “theMediaFlow”. If a result references “themediaflow” this appears to be an inconsistency, and it would be natural for a reader to place less trust in such a listing. Your social media profile is your chance to reinforce your exact brand identity, image and message in a consistent, professional and controlled way.

3. Be your own biggest fan
Unless you’re McDonalds or CocaCola (in which case, “Hi, we’d love to manage your SEM. Skype me!”) you probably can’t afford to advertise on every billboard in town and in the Corry Street ad breaks. Until that time, social media is your space to promote your business and talk about how wonderful you are, what you do and who you do it for. Do not be ashamed to big yourselves up. Never feel silly writing in the third person; and DO remember to be consistent. We find it helps to use the same profile précis as a starting point for each of our professional network profiles.

4. Be yourself
You can’t win every single deal and you can’t please every single customer 100% of the time. Each organisation has its own cultural ethos and identity. It’s what makes an organisation most distinct from competitors. Ask anyone who has just chosen a supplier what clinched the deal for them, and oftentimes they will state that “the organisation was a good fit”;” the people really understood our business,” “we got a really positive vibe from the team” etc. It is therefore important to allow some sense of your organisational values and culture to permeate your social media communications.

You will find that the technical/functional differences between networks contribute to a certain tone of voice, i.e. Twitter’s 140 character limit promotes familiarity and less formality than say a Linkedin profile; therefore trying to have the same rigid tone of voice across all your social media may seem insincere.

Please note: I’m not advocating that every brand should do their own social media communications, but a good third party social media professional should be able to communicate with your audience as an extended member of your team. They should be able to speak of “we” and “our” goals and missions; and be able to understand your business objectives, core customers and values.

We hope you found this post interesting and useful. Please do add any other pertinent points that you think we have missed that are important for growing your social media brand.

Park Lane Champagne, the UK’s leading importer of branded and personalised champagne, have selected new consultancy theMediaFlow to assist in the development and promotion of their new e-commerce online presence at www.parklanechampagne.co.uk.

theMediaFlow are assisting Park Lane Champagne with all SEO for their new web site and for ongoing SEO and audience growth strategy; including an upcoming social media campaign surrounding the TechCrunch Europa Awards, for which Park Lane Champagne is again the preferred champagne partner.

Speaking about the selection of theMediaFlow, Alastair Harrison the founder and principal of Park Lane Champagne said today “the move into e-commerce is a new and logical development for the company, largely driven by consumer demand. The internet is clearly a fabulous market place and our site offers Park Lane a shop window to the World – and we have taken orders from several continents already. It was immediately clear that we required professional assistance in the on-going development and promotion of our site and theMediaFlow proved to be the perfect partner. I visited several companies and what singled out theMediaFlow was the prospect of working with a company that understood our needs, that would deliver personal service from a real understanding of our business and where our custom would be appreciated and valued. SEO is a crucial part of theMediaFlow’s holistic approach to helping clients grow audience and revenues, including social media and revenue diversification strategy. theMediaFlow understand our brand, our product and our audience potential and have the capabilities to assist us in leveraging our messages in a number of both traditional and creative ways.”

Notes:

Established in 1994, Park Lane Champagne is the UK’s leading importer of branded and personalised champagne. The company has historically operated in the B2B arena where the demand for companies to have their own brand champagne was considerable. Personalised champagne is hugely popular in the B2C environment and is now available from Park Lane in quantities from 1 bottle, making champagne the perfect gift for every occasion and celebration.

Founded May 1st 2009 by two ex-Yahoo! UK commercial partnership specialists, Nichola Stott and Stephen Adds; theMediaFlow is an online revenue growth consultancy. theMediaFlow provide strategic consultation services, revenue solutions and commercial partnerships, design and build for revenue generation, product/solution integration, Search Engine Optimisation (for increased presence in search engines), monthly management and look and feel optimisation, social media marketing and training for brand growth and audience extension.

For more information contact Nichola Stott, Director, theMediaFlow Ltd.
tel: +44(0)7932052374, email:nichola.stott@themediaflow.com twitter:http://twitter.com/nicholastott web:www.themediaflow.com

1.  Set an objective

Set an objective for your social media strategy to help you focus your efforts efficiently. You can go the ‘whole mnemonic hog’ with a detailed SMART objective. (Your objective should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Realistic in a given Time,) or keep things a little more relaxed. As long as you have a specific, realistic goal and an awareness of the tracking tools and measurements of success that are out there, you have the right framework. An example social media objective could be… “promote customer awareness and engagement with my brand by attracting a couple of hundred fans to my Facebook page in a month.”

2. Work the 80/20 rule

You know the 80/20 rule? You get 80% of your revenue from 20% of your clients? Well it’s true for audience as well. It’s extremely important with the huge volume of social media sites, products, tools and applications; that you focus the majority of your efforts where you have the biggest potential return on your (time) investment. Unless social media marketing is your full time job, you need to go where the greatest audience is. Facebook reached 22.7 million visitors in the UK in February (Comscore), which is over two thirds of the UK online population. Twitter grew 1689% year on year in the UK to almost 2 million users in March (NNR). It goes without saying that you do need to consider your audience demographic when compiling the short-list of sites for your social media campaign.

3. Create a consistent social media brand

Use and abuse all the customisation features and profile fields that you possibly can, to customise the look and feel of your profile page and deliver your message. It’s important to make sure that you use the same photograph (or logo), same strap-line and profile data, and the same company name and format conventions to represent your brand. If you don’t make and keep your profiles consistent, professional and recognisable you run the risk of being taken for an imposter profile (sometimes great for a laugh,) however users will be less likely to tune into and take notice of your message if they’re not 100% convinced as to your authenticity.

4. Integrate your social media

So you’re Digging and Tweeting and cultivating yourself an entourage big enough to push Paris out of the VIP area. Great. What about your company website? If you are generating awareness and interest in your brand and leading traffic back to your website, are users offered the same message and tone of voice as your social media? If your company website content is a little dry and lacking in social features this may put people off. Such mismatch in content positioning and tone of voice may come off as a little insincere. Additionally, for potential customers coming to your company website from search engines or type-ins, you may miss the opportunity to connect and interact if you fail to reference and promote your social media outlets. There are plenty of well designed, social media icons available freely on the web that you can use to easily drop onto the relevant space on your site, such as this lovely set from web design agency FHOKE. http://www.fhoke.com/blog/2009/05/07/a-set-of-14-free-social-icons/

Right... that’s the easy bit. Now comes the most important part, which is all up to you! Make sure that you have some great content, advice, giveaways and information to share with your friends, followers and fans or they may not stick around for too long.

theMediaFlow blog is written by Nichola Stott, who you can follow on Twitter @NicholaStott.