Building businesses in emerging media
As the social Web continues to grow in importance to consumers - sharing photos, blogging, joining Facebook - the question for businesses is no longer “if” but “when?” Business managers are recognising that successfully engaging customers, suppliers, new recruits and business partners increasingly depends on the collective conversation that now defines their brands.
As complex - or, perhaps, fickle - as the social Web may appear, there are, in fact, a handful of basic tenets that separate success from failure, these terms being defined, of course, in a business context. Did a new customer buy from us? Did the prospective employee accept our offer? Why or why not? Getting your social media programme right is part of what leads to success in terms of measures like these.
It isn’t surprising, therefore, to see what doesn’t work on the social Web: Blogger Jeff Jarvis points to very simple, yet significant, errors that too many companies make: Using an “institutional voice”, or trying to control the conversation, or talking on the social channels in the same way as would be done in a brochure. If customers feel the need to verify the claims made in an ad on TV by seeking the advice of friends before making a purchase, would they believe that same claim if it was posted on a Facebook business page? The simple answer is no, they wouldn’t.
Instead, success on the social Web is achieved through genuine participation. Brands like US-based Comcast and India’s Kingfisher are using channels like Twitter to reach and engage customers by using the language and speaking style that these customers are themselves using. Simple. Open. Honest. Take a look at Kingfisher's growing Twitter presence - @FlyKingfisher - and see how simple and accessible the speaking style is. Comcast’s Frank Eliason has turned Twitter into a support channel and critics like Bob Garfield have taken note, easing-up on prior critical positions taken with regard to the firm.
Need to hire someone? LinkedIn is important, but the use of social media extends well beyond it. Brands like Freescale, previously a division of Motorola, are using tools like YouTube to show prospective employees what life at Freescale is like. These videos say as much about the Freescale workplace as they do about Freescale’s awareness of media channels that younger engineers like to use, making Freescale doubly attractive to the people it really wants to hire.
Business to business, the social Web is at work as well. Dell’s use of Twitter for its small business customers - @DellSmBizOffers - and Shell Global Solutions’ use of podcasting in its executive thoughtleadership series affirm the applicability of social media across a range of business applications.
Common to all these examples of successful applications of social media is trust. Trust is a core component of nearly all successful transactions: You promise to deliver, and based on your general reputation and prior trackrecord, our customer, business partner or potential employee trusts that you will do more or less the same thing in this transaction as you did in the past. Unlike the standard disclaimers in financial markets, on the social Web, past results are, in fact, an indicator of future performance.
Dave Evans is author, Social Media Marketing.
