Best Practice

Social Media for Business

What do we know about social media?

Making social media work

There’s no denying that social media is now an established digital marketing channel – but in the world of B2B marketing there is confusion about how to really make it add value within the digital mix and a sense amongst B2B marketers that maybe it isn’t for them, yet.

With the help of some useful statistics and the collective knowledge of our social media team, this paper aims to give a brief overview of the growing role of social media, as well as some tips on what to do (and not to do)to make it work for you.

There’s a follow on paper ‘Breaking Down the 3 C’s; Social Media for Business’ which then outlines in more detail Omobono’s framework for planning social media activity, developing and disseminating content. A link to download the second paper can be found at the end of this document.

Talk, listen, don’t shout…

Many businesses are using services like Twitter and Facebook as the digital equivalent of standing on the rooftops after everyone’s gone to bed and yelling at the top of their lungs while people are trying to sleep.

It’s widely acknowledged that social media should not be seen as an outlet to simply broadcast marketing messages; social media is the not a forum for shouting at strangers, it’s a forum for conversation.

Public adoption is increasing by the day, so the likelihood is that your customers, prospects and competitors, are using social media daily. It’s not a forum to be ignored. But, the figures also tell us that social media users don’t want to be bombarded with marketing messages in their personal spaces. In fact, 60% of US Facebook users and 75% of US Twitter users don’t actively follow a brand on the respective networks at all.

This does not necessarily mean that marketing messages on social networks are ignored or missed by potential customers or clients, or even that it’s not worth trying to engage such audiences. Even if the aforementioned 60% carries across the entire Facebook audience, then there is still a potential audience of more than 200 million people who are already following a brand or business. Not to mention the others, who simply haven’t found the right brand to engage with yet.

Our own recent research, into B2B social media usage in financial services , shows that 80% of businesses see value in using social media for B2B marketing, but the research also revealed that only 3% of businesses actually had a social media strategy. So the question seems to be ‘Where do we start?’

Getting started

There’s an 80/20 rule that applies in social media as in so many other areas of business:

20% of the content you publish should directly discuss your business, the other 80%, should simply be engaging in conversation with your followers.

‘Conversation’ is a catch-all term for the practice of posting original content, sharing links to relevant industry and current affairs news, even popular culture, where appropriate. Conversation also means exactly that, conversation. Conversation with your followers brings insight into the types of people who are and may be interested in working with you or become customers. As we know from the Cluetrain manifesto:

“These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies.”

Social media provides the perfect platform to engage your audience by sharing and hinting at the wealth of knowledge your employees and business can bring to the table, but you have to do it in a way that can lead to conversation.

What are we doing here?

As important as it is to start engaging in social media activity, it’s equally important to have a clear idea of what you hope to achieve from a business perspective.

Many brands engaging in social media, without a clear strategy in place, have simply ended up creating a large forum for untended public customer complaints. It’s a fear many companies now have when entering the world of social media. If time and budget constraints don’t allow you to address such concerns, serious thought should be given to whether or not to delay a social media push.

A good example comes from everyone’s favourite corporate scapegoat, Ryanair, whose 78,000+ ‘fans’ mostly use the page to complain about extortionate fees and poor customer service, unlike Ryanair themselves, who haven’t used the page for anything since mid-2009. Know what you want to achieve before you get started, and be prepared to maintain your commitment to social media channels.

It’s tempting to think that the more you can put out the better, and there is power in numbers, but don’t lose sight of the reasons for engaging in social media; conversation, analysis, feedback, CRM, the list goes on… Keep them central to everything you do and remember, it’s quality, not quantity that really counts.

Omobono recently conducted some research into Social Media in the financial services for Legal & General, one question in particular gives real insight into how many executives feel social media could be most valuably used.

Strategy

You need a social media strategy.

You can make it as simple or as detailed as needed, butit should be absolutely clear how it supports the overall business strategy and marketing objectives. It should be overseen by an employee or team familiar with the business plan, the reasons the strategy exists and any industrial regulations that need to be considered.

 

Your social media strategy should outline the reasons for using social media, the networks that are to be utilised and, most importantly, set out an approach to content creation. (‘Content’ is the catch-all word for everything published within social media, meaning videos, photos, tweets, status updates, blogs and responses to subsequent

Your strategy needs to cover the approach to different social networks, the desired tone of voice and suggested approach to various topics.

You should also consider ‘no-go’ areas –unpopular public topics and competitors, or any other topics you don’t know how to, wish not to, or are not able to, discuss publicly.

A good example comes from Aviva, the leading insurance and financial services provider, who have created a public forum to build brand awareness. They operate in a highly regulated industry, one in which many people haven’t dared to venture into the world of social media, so they have been clear up front about their role in the conversation and have published guidelines for customers’ use of their network.

Most interesting is their admission that;

“This page has been created for a wide audience and although we’re an insurance company, that isn’t intended to be the focus here. Please do share your opinions, though bear in mind that we’re part of a heavily regulated industry so can’t comment on issues like market speculation.”

Aviva are making people and conversation the focus of their social media campaign, rather than overtly their actual brand or their services. It is an interesting approach that lifts some of the weight off a social media manager in a heavily legislated industry, allowing them to find the best balance of content for a social audience. Their campaign has so far earned them almost 500,000 visitors to their YouTube channel and more than 43,000 Facebook ‘Likes’, proving that social media can work in both heavily regulated industries and in areas unpopular with consumers.

On the outside looking in

Not all engagement with social networks has to be from within the ‘walls’ of the formal community or about directly engaging a collection of followers. Facebook Connect allows users to engage with and share content across the web using their existing Facebook profile. Likewise, Twitter is a stream of social engagement as much as it’s a way to read things. In many ways, the internet itself is the social media, social networks are simply a way of sharing the content; a delivery platform. With this in mind, companies can create campaigns, competitions and content which have nothing to do with social media. However, when the content is engaging, sharing is encouraged. Sharing tools from Facebook, Twitter and Google can easily be implemented into all company web pages, meaning that engaging content can allow visitors to do the hard work for you.

Share and Share alike

Traditional PR and marketing campaigns are now bolstered by social media activity. Whether you plan it or not, a brand lacking a social media presence will still be discussed on social networks and promotional activity appearing online will already be being shared amongst social media users. Articles written about your company by almost any online news source now have the potential for immediate sharing via popular social networks.

We’re not picking on them deliberately, but take this negative article about Ryanair, which at the time of writing, has been shared 65 times across Twitter and Facebook. This figure doesn’t include re-shares (where a user will take content from someone they follow and re-publish within a social network) which cannot be tracked at the original source. This one article could easily have been shared hundreds of times, despite having no link to any social outlets controlled by Ryanair.

Whilst this is obviously a negative example of the potential power of social media, it also highlights the many possible benefits of embracing social activity for promotion. A simple positive or engaging message that is picked up by a few users can become ‘viral’ in no time as it spreads across various networks. And of course it goes some way towards demonstrating the aforementioned potential dangers of ignoring social media.

This is not an invitation to sign up with a host of networks, create meaningless marketing content and send it out to the world, hoping people will choose to spread your messages for you. It’s a call to consider the reason users would choose to share your content on their own and to create engaging content users might actively seek out, which promotes the brand or company by prompting conversation.

A good example of such a campaign at work comes from Cisco. Their campaign ‘Cisco Superfan’ has seen their number of Facebook fans skyrocket to more than 146,000 people and also helped to generate 222,000 visits to their YouTube channel. This success has been achieved by a company operating in a field that many may consider of limited appeal to social network users.

In the same situation, many businesses would elect not to engage in social media for fear of not being able to project their corporate image in a social space. Instead, Cisco have bucked the trend and have created a visual and very effective campaign, aimed directly at the business customer, which encourages them to share content on behalf of the organization. For Cisco, the benefits are clear; all of the shared content pushes their branding and image, whilst perpetuating a likeable, human image for a large company.

Another interesting example of the potential power of social media comes from Cisco’s CTO, Padmasree Warrior who has more than 1,389,000 Twitter followers, further demonstrating the interest of social media users in a predominately business-focused sector.

The 3 C’s

Omobono, being the visual bunch that we are, produced the graphic on the following page, outlining how we see the relationship between businesses and their customers and the role we feel social media can play for business brands. This is the approach we both practice and preach, and it boils down to what we call ‘The 3 C’s’: Content (Curate others or create your own), Conversation (Engaging, not controlling) and Connection (Because we know that relationships drive business).

In conclusion

Social media is a forum for conversation, not for broadcast. Imagine your social feeds as the conversation between you and your customer on a first date. If it’s all ‘me, me, me!’ you won’t get a second date; if your last ten tweets don’t interest you, you’re doing something wrong.

Know what you’re doing, and why. Develop a written strategy about what you will (and will not) address on social media platforms, who will be in charge of updating platforms, how regularly and with what content. Once you’ve made these decisions, stick with the programme, what’s the point of a social media strategy if you don’t adhere to it?

Create content which is worth sharing – and share it gladly. If you borrow content, credit the owner. If you stick to this approach, you, and your content, will go far.

However, if you take just five things away from this paper, we’d suggest you go for these:

1. Converse, don’t shout

2. It’s not all about you; follow the 80/20 rule

3. Decide why you want to use social media, then…

4. Stick to the strategy you devise

5. Create content and share content, but most of all, create content that people will want to share

Our follow-up white paper on the subject of social media for business, Breaking down the 3 C’s; Social media for business, can be downloaded here.