Keith McArthur, president, social media, Rogers Communication held an afternoon session and shared his social media expertise with #cmasocial attendees.
When testing the social media waters, it’s important to have a solid plan.
note: not a valid plan
Here are 5 social media goals:
Alfredo Tan, senior director, Facebook gave us some insight before group problem-solving exercises. Check out his top tips to capitalize on the potential of this leading social media tool.
Guiding principles for brands
Tips for Facebook success:
Bruce Philp, author, Consumer Republic, was brought to #cmasocial today by Maritz Canada Inc.
Philp offered 3 key points to help us understand marketing:
Marketing is a listening job
Everything we do in marketing needs to be a two-way conversation. As social media becomes more popular, every exchange we have with our customers is going to be observably two-way. Make sure you’re memorable (in a good way)
e.g. United Airlines lost 10% of market capitalization because of a broken guitar
"United Breaks Guitars"
Brands are a narrative
Brands have become constantly unfolding stories. People understand what they’re seeing & hearing, make assumptions about you as a character and judge you. Your brand has become a story. Own it. Your job is to make sure the story gets told in a relevant way
- e.g. Toyota was able to come back from the “Runaway Prius” incident because of their strong brand narrative.
"Runaway Prius"
Things are constantly changing. There are still 5 distinct groups in any adoption process. They adopt in a certain order & are predictable. Remember: people who adopt later aren’t stupid, they’re different. There’s always room for growth.
e.g. cell phones were once regarded as a business tool for stock brokers & real estate agents
The evolution of the cell phone
Marketing is an important job.
Our third panel, moderated by Matt Hartley of the Financial Post featured:
Lots of great topics were covered, & it’s hard to pick just one to cover…but I had to.
Something was really obvious in the panel on the real impact of social media on business: It’s all about reviews & being interactive – always.
80% of people who buy anything look at a customer review online first. Although everybody knows this, very few companies actually allow customer reviews on their sites. Newsflash: it doesn’t matter if you have them on your site or not, people can still find them.
It comes down perceived value & ROI. When a consumer comes to your site & you don’t have the baseline functionality of reviews, you’re seen as “withholding”. The interactive experience you strive to create on social media needs to continue on you website. Don’t write cheques with social media that your website can’t cash
Our second panel, moderated by James Carrol, director, digital marketing & communications, World Vision Canada, featured:
The guys kept their gloves on, proving their own point that PR & Marketing are best friends in this brave new world.
Who owns social media?
According to Dave Jones, social media crosses everything in a company: marketing, advertising, PR, customer service, research & insights. What’s important is putting yourself in context – what are the customers saying and what are employees saying internally?
“social only works if it resonates with the people who receive the message” – David Bradfield
Make sure your community manager/social media owner understands your brand
In many cases, the PR wants to own social media. PR pros love to control the message and engage in reputation management…but if social is really social, isn’t customer service a big piece of it?
When hiring someone to do social (or choosing who in your organization should do it), you need people who are dedicated to doing it right & can look at it cross-functionally.
Ownership of social media should go to whoever can do it best. They need to be good at conversation, content, customer service, tone & connecting – Dave Jones
Stay local:
It’s more valuable for customers to engage with their local Starbucks, for example, rather than their global brand. Dave Jones gave a great example of Gatorade. Although the product is the same across all regions, they don’t market to each region in the same way. In the US, the focus is basketball & football; in the UK, soccer; in Canada, hockey.
Our panel for Psychology of the Social Shopper, moderated by Michael Leblanc, vice-president of marketing, The Shopping Channel, featured:
The panel covered a plethora of timely topics, including privacy, trolls and, everyone’s favourite, social media ROI.
Up-and-coming: Location-based services
Amy Sullivan from Delvinia talked about the contradictory attitudes consumers have towards location-based services (like FourSquare). While 79% enjoy the benefits of these services (like perks when you’re the mayor), nearly the same amount (72%) are concerned about privacy. Another 62% uncomfortable being located by their phone. Sullivan wondered if some basic information about these apps could change these perceptions, since 44% were unaware you can turn the ‘tracking’ off at the app level
Be a brand advocate:
Scott Beffort explained that young people are more likely to be influenced by a recommendation from a brand they trust than one from friend/family. This is a huge opportunity for brands. Consumers realize that it’s a bigger gamble for brands to recommend a product/service than it is for their friends to do so & acknowledge this when making decisions.
Remember:
Although ROI from social media isn’t exactly measurable, your current customer is a huge influence on your future customer. As customers tweet, post on Facebook & blog about their experiences with you, others are listening and making decisions.
What do YOU think the next big thing in social is?
Our first speaker was Vida Killian, Category Manager, Starbucks Coffee Canada.
She provided valuable insight into Starbucks’ social media strategy and shared both successes and failures.
One of Starbucks’ biggest ways to get customer input is through My Starbucks Idea (MSI)
Through MSI, Starbucks asks customers to submit and rank ideas, allowing the community to be the judge. Ideas with lots of points get considered more seriously, although ideas with less points sometimes get through. One such idea was a suggestion that all baristas learn to sign “hello”, “goodbye” and “thank you” in ASL.
Starbucks' biggest fan, Chloe Fusco
Some ideas you might recognized that were actually the result of crowd-sourcing are the birthday brew, getting a free tall beverage with the purchase of a bag of beans and the ever-wonderful splash sticks.
Killian stressed that it’s important to create an online experience that reflects your ideal brand experience. For Starbucks, this means proving the “barista experience” online. The Starbucks blog is quite active, with moderators aiming to post 2-4 times per week.
Killian’s top 5 tips for social media:
So…is social media good for business? ABSOLUTELY.
Good morning, everyone!
Welcome to The Science of Art and Social Business, brought to you by the Canadian Marketing Association.
Today, thought leaders in marketing, psychology and social media will impart their wisdom on us, the marketing masses.
They’ll be saying brilliant things, but don’t worry if you can’t write them down fast enough – Maritz Canada Inc.‘s got you covered.
I’m Stephanie Fusco, your Twitter Concierge and faithful live-blogger. Throughout the day, I’ll be posting cheat notes for everything you need to know from the conference.
Follow along as I live-tweet from @cdnmarketing, chime in on the #cmasocial hashtag and don’t forget to comment on the blog. Did you forget your business cards like I did? Don’t worry! Click here to find a full list of people using the #cmasocial hashtag today.
Has your smartphone, laptop or tablet run out of juice? Come visit me at the Twitter Concierge “juice bar” and I’ll babysit your Berry as it charges up. Please bring your charger along!
Cheers!