Overall comments: The presentation Barry Tallis of Jive gave this morning felt more directed to companies who already have or are deciding on adding a social media component to their current digital marketing strategy. While we already have a strong understanding of the space from the agency side, there were some great reminders for why and how to make social media an important part of business.
Key Takeaways:
- If for nothing else, getting into the social media game will let you gain insights about your consumers. Whether you’re a beginner or a veteran, being an active listener and observer will give you an opportunity to learn what’s on your consumers’ minds. They’re already talking about your brand in other digital formats whether you’re a part of the conversation or not, so listen. They want to be heard.
- For a digital community to succeed, support should be part of everyone’s job. This means support should be cross-functional and not just a responsibility of the PR department. By pulling across disciplines and up the ladder to the executive level, the community has a better chance to take off and gain traction with consumers. They want to see that a brand is serious about building relationships with them. They also trust they’ll get more genuine and thorough responses than just what the PR or marketing folks say.
- Reward and recognize participants for their contributions to the community. Folks from National Instruments talked about how they rewarded their top contributor (15,000 posts) with the title “the Knight of NI” (play on Monty Python reference). Seems like such a small thing, but for participants who pride themselves on the social value they add to a community, a change in title beats a $25 gift card for Amazon any day.
- Start with a critical mass of content before marketing your community. It’s awkward to drive consumers to a big beautiful online community without some type of catalyst or conversation starter. Pull content from articles, other communities’ hot topics and even your website itself and keep it fresh. It helps provide direction to consumers of what to do when they arrive. You just have to give them a little starting nudge.
- Figure out what’s in it for the consumer FIRST before diving into designing for your own goals and objectives. Consumers can sniff out ulterior motives (say, just driving sales of more product when really what they want is customer service for a problem). With a consumer-focused approach, you’ll give consumers more reasons to give the community a chance.
- Once you have your community up and running, integrate the content with your existing web presence. Pull some of the conversations onto the company homepage to draw people in. Promote the community through your other digital touch points. Make it easier for members and lurkers to access the community via mobile and email alerts. Syndicate comments from the blog to the forum and vice versa. This gets the groundswell going.
