Companies are busy jumping on the social media bandwagon and with good reason. As a company you need to build a presence on the sites where your customers and prospects are seeking information about your industry, your competition and where user experiences are exchanged. The advice given to companies is to engage with representation from all relevant departments – typically sales, marketing product development, support and executives. Brands are built over a long period of consistent service, sales execution, corporate -voice, -values, -colors and even typeface. How is that consistent experience and brand building effort protected if you let your team across all departments engage in social conversation? Yes, guidelines, training and a strong corporate culture will help, but if you what to be visible on the web you need to be timely and controversial - do you see the conflict?
What are the consequences if the University of Phoenix tweeted with typos, an SAP support guy admitted to a bug in the software that wasn’t officially acknowledged or an Apple Genius referred to a cheaper product on Amazon?
Just like celebrities – your brand can be severely damaged by a few misguides efforts to engage. The social media world is not a free lunch. Be careful out there ;-)
Hi Lars, cool post. I agree there is risk. Which is why there needs to be a defined strategy, an approach, a plan, a team, a methodology, an escalation plan. And "someone " needs to be in charge. The lead. The eyes and the ears. Much like we used to do "media training" for folks who would talk to the press, we have a ton of educating to do with the folks we unleash on the SM charter. There definitely are rule, spoken and unspoken.
ReplyDeleteYes there is a risk. But not being there and "protecting a brand" is like not going to the car race because the car could be damaged.
ReplyDeleteAnd businesses are in the race - or they are out.
In the past brands were created by a marketer and their team and the association with the brand was mainly through advertising.
Today a brand is a created by the market through the reflection of customers and users, through the impression users share with others. Just look at the latest fashion brands: No logos, no "brand message". The brand is made by the market - not by the company.
Just my 2 cent - good provocation :)
Axel
hrrp://xeesm.com/AxelS
I think this can be likened to a chicken & egg thing. Well-established brands utilize social media to enhance their reputation, while lessen known ones use it to leapfrog into the minds of consumers.
ReplyDeleteBranding is after all, about creating a personality to resonate with consumers.
Having said that, as a "traditional" brand/marketer, I still apply to the philosophy that the value of a brand is nurtured over time and its prestige and coolness dependent on tested methods like execution, consistency, colors, design and yes, even typeface (very important, IMO)! ;)
Good point, Lars... Axel, can we really say that branding has dramatically changes with SM ? I am not a marketer, so I am really eager to listen to the specialists :-) Does SM is just another dimension, like logo, sound&image identity, consistency (yes !) ? Hips of brands (clothes, bikes, TV programs...) are the result of imagination of artists and designers, without an inch of customers studies, no ?
ReplyDeleteI think that the brand IS the experience, and part of the experience is in being human, which from time to time might expose normal human foibles. We know that people are behind the brand, social media just makes them accessible and human rather than faceless. Mistakes will happen. But more likely, in the context, it's no bog deal.
ReplyDeleteWalter @adamson
httP;//xeesm.com/walter
Great comment Walter - the brand IS the experience, and part of the experience is in being human. !!!
ReplyDeleteWe all have a perception as a brand. Both personally and company wise. Whether we like it or not. Whether we manage it or not. So I vote for training the company, building social media governance that states policy and action, escalation and reaction.
ReplyDeleteWe know its "when" something happens. It has happened to every big brand in the market - those with tight closed down policies and those with very open. So if we accept that, just like a public relations contact, we can prepare. Let people know who to go to, and move on to really doing successful things with social business.
Wendy
xeesm.com/wendysoucie
Provocative headline. Reciprocating the provocation, I'd like to suggest that absence or lack of social media empowerment will sooner or later destroy the value of many brands and I see greater risk of that than some problems caused by typos (or as seems to be the fashion these days, typo's). I've read a couple of times and I don't know the correct attribution that the ROI of social media is that you will still be in business in 5 years' time. There are risks with social media empowerment, just as there are risks with investment, risks with recruiting, risks from competitions. In those areas we look to risk mitigation, not risk elimination (which is antithetical to still being in business), so we need to start talking to businesses about risk mitigation in social media.
ReplyDelete