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Twitter: Building Relationships and Proving Social Media ROI – Part 2/2
Posted by Mo Elnadi September 9 2011 11:56am
A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media Marketing - (Part 2 of 2)
Deepening relationships
Twitter is like any other social media touch point; it is a many-to-many engagement channel that is all about ‘pull’ marketing. That means discussion, sharing of valuable content, genuine networking, and gradually building long term relationships with existing and potential customers that are based on trust and reputation. This, understandably, takes time and resources.
Only those brands that realise such different dynamics will thrive in this unique and ever-changing ecosystem where customer engagement happens in real-time, not only between a brand and its audience but mainly among those audiences.
In other words, a brand’s ultimate goal on Twitter is not just to talk at or even to its followers, but to facilitate the right engaging environment for those audiences to communicate with each other. To enable them to share tips, get inspired and discuss the brand products and services, which will ultimately shape their purchasing decisions. Users of social media trust the aggregated opinions of others much more than official corporate messages.
Proving Social Media ROI?
In the current recessionary environment, marketers are under constant pressure to justify their spend. Twitter is a crucial tool to build the brand reputation by showing value through public 140-characters messages but it’s important to realise that Twitter is a long-term investment in shaping customer perception about a brand
Real Social Media ROI can only be measured by digging deeper into how the brand online reputation, sentiment and customer advocacy has evolved positively over time, while executing a well-planned overall social media strategy of which Twitter is part. It should be regarded as a piece of the bigger social marketing puzzle.
Twitter vs. Facebook
It is not a case of either/or. Both social media services can play a crucial role for a brand. The trick is to build and adopt a holistic approach that would integrate and harmonise Twitter and Facebook as well as other activities on other social media channels. And, in turn, link this to other online and offline efforts.
Follow: @MoElnadi for more Social Media tips
See Also:
A Marketer’s Guide to Social Pull Marketing - (Part 1 of 2)
Location-based services: A Fad or the Future of #SocialMedia Marketing? (Part 1 of 3)
What is the future of location-based service? Does it really lie in local search or services? (Part 2 of 3)
2 Location-Based Apps That You Can’t Live Without (Part 3 of 3)
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Twitter: Building Brands 140-Characters At A Time – Part 1/2
Posted by Mo Elnadi September 6 2011 12:39pm
A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media Marketing - (Part 1 of 2)
It’s clear that brands are still failing to realise the potential of Twitter. Just 1% of brand mentions by consumers on Twitter represent real dialogue between brands and consumers. That means 99% are pure marketing broadcast monologues which are not taking advantage of the particular opportunities offered by social media.
With a quarter of a billion engaged users worldwide, and growing daily, there is no doubt that Twitter is effective as an instant communication tool, and even influential when it comes to reaching the right audiences for a specific brand. But many brands are still failing to realise the difference between mass-broadcasting messages and the full potential of this real-time communication tool, which allows for two-way communication with their target end users.
Given their classic ‘Push’ Marketing backgrounds, by continuing to operate in a traditional ‘broadcast mode’ or perceiving Twitter as a one-to-many mass media channel, organisations are missing out on opportunities to both gain invaluable customer insight and build stronger social media relationships.
How to get more out of Twitter
For marketers to reap the benefits of this popular social media service, they need to focus on three main strategic activities:
Listening: By knowing what existing and potential customers are saying about their brands and gauging their sentiment, marketers will build a wealth of detailed customer insight that would be invaluable when it comes to defining social media strategies or taking marketing decisions in near real-time. This can be done by using professional monitoring tools, or depending on a brand’s in-house resources and skills, by hiring a professional specialist agency.
Engagement: By getting genuinely involved in relevant discussions on Twitter, a brand will quickly build its reputation and position itself as a thought leader in its specific industry sector. A good start is to be useful to -and generous with- its customers, using techniques such as special offers, and sharing valuable product tips, recommendations and advice to help customers compare products throughout their decision cycles.
Supporting: Twitter is also a great tool to identify those who need help using your products or services, and to see what customers are sharing with others about their overall experiences of your brand including after-sales service satisfaction. Knowing about both negative and positive experiences in a timely manner, then following a professional strategy to deal with such situations is crucial. By getting in touch with those customers, effectively solving their problems and maybe sharing more tips, marketers can easily switch public complaints into a positive word-of-mouth situation for their brands.
Follow @MoElnadi for more #SocialMedia tips
See Also:
Twitter: Building Relationships and Proving Social Media ROI – (Part 2 of 2)
Location-based services: A Fad or the Future of #SocialMedia Marketing? (Part 1 of 3)
What is the future of location-based service? Does it really lie in local search or services? (Part 2 of 3)
2 Location-Based Apps That You Can’t Live Without (Part 3 of 3)
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Why Social Media can’t be blamed for London Riots
Posted by Mo Elnadi August 24 2011 05:05pm
Climaxes, Earthquakes and Social Media in the Dock
To misquote the movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn we’ve seen events in recent weeks that have ‘started out with a climax and worked their way up to an earthquake.’
The climax came during the recent emergency session of Parliament when Prime Minister David Cameron said he believed that ‘the free flow of information’ was a major problem when it comes to dealing with civil disobedience on the scale witnessed in the recent London riots.
Such was his concern that the Government is actively considering the banning of free use of Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools such as BlackBerry’s BBM during such emergency situations. Later this week there is an official meeting with Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry to discuss logistics of just such a proposal.
So social media stands in the dock accused, and in my opinion the power to ban represents a very dangerous step and a clear threat to UK democracy in the digital age. Having the power to stop people from using social networking sites because some irresponsible thugs happened to use those tools to organise looting and criminal activity is like thinking of needing to ban London buses because of a single bus accident!
As someone who contributed to the Jan25 Egyptian revolution through effective use of social media channels, I’ve witnessed first-hand how ineffective such government shut downs could be in tackling the problem at hand; we now have proof that blocking real-time mass communication services at the Government’s discretion is definitely not the best way to tackle the issue. And it’s a slippery slope. In fact, such potential restrictions to freedom of speech threaten to cause lasting damage to British democracy and could even affect the freedom of rights of internet users elsewhere in the world as other governments decide to follow suit.
The fact is that social media tools are just another communication channel -exactly like mobile phones or email- and can be used for both good and evil. For example, during the riots and using the same tools to organise criminal activity, the public was also alerting other citizens and the authorities through hashtags in real time, as to where looting was breaking out, and even built an interactive Google map of the affected areas.
The next day social media was central to kick-starting a series of positive initiatives, organising groups to clean up those neighbourhoods that were impacted by the riots and arranging accommodation for those displaced by the disorder. And, perhaps more importantly, the public was quick to use the same digital channels to help the police distribute pictures of those wanted criminals to the masses through Flickr for identification in order to expedite their prosecution.
Ironically while we still don’t see widespread adoption of social media by many government agencies, following this week’s earthquake in North America, the US Government urged citizens to use social media to contact relatives during the crisis. It seems that the US, for one, has got the hint at least that there’s no faster way to spread the word among the masses than social media channels.
The real causes and solutions to the UK’s problems are much more complex, and its root causes are clearly more cultural than technology related. Pointing fingers at social media is scapegoating at least and simply ludicrous at worst. Better utilisation of existing CCTV and advanced facial recognition technologies could form part of the answer to a needed early warning national security system.
Follow @MoElnadi
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