Posts
Patrick Mayoh
Back to my geeky mood again! I have been reflecting about the impact of social media in our westernized societies, well not just the west but globally. I was thinking especially about the ways in which a business, say a start-up could fully reap the benefits of utilising those emerging means of communication to benefit a business/organization. Over the past two weeks my attention was caught by this article from MC Kinsey about a book by Stanford Marketing Profession Jennifer Aaker and marketing guru Andy Smith entitled “the dragon fly effect” on engaging customers or the general public through social media.
Interestingly, a couple of weeks ago I read about this research results from communications agency The Group, about twitter use by FTSE 100. According to findings almost half of those companies use twitter to engage with their publics and this is up from about 50% last year. If you add these figures to the 25% rise in Facebook use and 39% for YouTube, you start to get the big picture.
I believe your organization can benefit from social media use in the five following ways:
· There are a critical barometer of your company’s image and performance
· They will help you engage with customers in new ways
· It is probably one of the cheapest marketing strategies to implement
· They can bring organizational members closer
1) Another Barometer
Traditional ways of assessing whether people like or dislike your organization or are even aware or unaware of it is to monitor the press, the TV and Internet posts and articles. Embarking on social media use is also a critical and more refined way of doing the more of the same. As a starting point creating a Facebook or Twitter page will be a good way to know if your customers/fans have a good perception about your company and its activities in general. Although you cannot specifically tell if your company is liked from the number of Facebook or twitter followers you have, I think this is still a good starting point especially if you are a new start-up and you are still not getting enough coverage from mainstream media.
2) Engaging with Customers
Engaging with your customers goes beyond having numerous Facebook or Twitter fans. The big question is how your organizations use those followers to for example:
· Create new products/services
· Improve customer service
· Acquire new customers
· Expand to new markets
70% of executives interviewed by MC Kinsey in a global survey in 2007 have admitted to the fact that their organizations create more value for customers through web-based technologies. There are currently about more than 70 million bloggers (like myself) posting reviews about products and services according to MC Kinsey Quarterly (2010).
A couple of months ago Facebook freely marshalled 300,000 users to translate its website into 70 languages. The translation of the French version took just about....well a day. Procter and Gamble have set in place a social network of mums trying and reporting of their experience of using specific products for their babies. Like it or not the possibilities and opportunities are endless for your organization and it is time your PR team sat and thought about that.
3) It is very cheap to start with
Honestly the cost of setting a Facebook, twitter, Beebo or YouTube account is basically free. You will not have to convince your manager to spend more money. But you will have to highlight the specific objective of using such means of communication within your organization. The possibilities are endless especially for a new marketing campaign. Instead of paying a ridiculous amount of money to advertise your new insurance service on TV why not consider the possibility of using YouTube at a definitely lesser cost, virtually all companies have video messages of some sort ranging from interview preparation for university leavers to new products and services, so why should you not think likewise for your business?
4) What about starting a blog for your organization
Up to now we have just briefly looked at the external applications of Web 2.0 technologies. However corporate blogging is just another way to get people together within your company. It is all about creating a sense of community within your company, whereby people use your blog as a forum or a way to exchange perspective with your colleagues in a newer way. Therefore it could a good idea to set up one for your business and get your organization’s members to regroup for the benefit of your organization.
References
Steve Dinesen (February 2011) Almost half of FTSE 100 firms now use Twitter CITY AM 8 February 2011
Jacques Begin, Michael Chui and James Manyika (2010) Clouds, Big Data and smart assets: ten tech-enabled business trends to watch MC Kinsey Quarterly
