The Rules of Engagement

For the uninitiated, navigating the un-chartered waters of social media marketing can be anything but smooth sailing.  Of course, there are those who intentionally cruise into the territorial waters of others to secure a sale.

Just last year, a new LinkedIn contact did not take more than a week before inviting me to sign up for a seminar being organised by the company for which she works...like I was interested? That’s an example of a company that used my LinkedIn page as an avenue to send an unsolicited sales message. Do I hear “SPAM” anyone?

Then around mid-March, I learned of a product that I wanted to purchase but did not recognise it at any retail outlets I usually frequent.  When I sent a direct message on Facebook, a curt, vague response was given as to where I could find the product.  So, I had to let them know they could not want my business with that reply.  It so happened the person who saw the query, had created the Facebook page, but was now living overseas and could not supply the information needed – hence the original response.  However, my terse comment prompted a more congenial reply with an explanation and a contact number for my follow-up. 

Much better customer service that! Is not the purpose of social media engagement for a commercial entity, the generation of positive word-of-mouth among customers? Lest we forget, the United Breaks Guitars case study that became an instructional video (Barker et al. 2013) is an enlightening example of how easy it is to damage a company’s reputation when a post highlighting a negative reaction goes viral. In the case of Dave Carroll, within 24 hours his essentially homemade video went viral with more than 50,000 views. What was it? A song on how United Airlines damaged his guitar and never compensated him for it ).

So, from a business perspective, what is required to engage in social media marketing. 

(i) Listening to the conversations in the particular social media channel is critical. There is need to know what customers are saying about your organisation, your business sector. 
(ii) Then, to enter the conversation, recommended actions include showing appreciation for mentioning the product and inviting further contact with the entity (Barker et al. 2013).
(iii) Finally is content creation and beginning the conversation across channels where customers are found (Barker et al. 2013).

On monitoring sites in Barbados, companies seem to go straight to posting content without analysing the audience. This seems a recipe for disaster. 

To be successful with social media campaigns think PARC, which means being: 

•  P – participatory, interaction is key. Reply to questions, thank customers for posts. 
•  A – authentic by responding honestly and sincerely with a dash of personality. Humour and anecdotes can be very engaging.
• R – resourceful, which means giving advice such as how-to-videos and articles on related matters. This Barbadian-born chef, living in London, got it right in an effort to redefine Caribbean cuisine on Instagram with more than 90,000 followers and 52.4K likes and more than 10,000 comments. Quite a delicious page for fans of fine food, creatively presented.
• C – credible, as seen in terms of either knowledge or expertise, or trustworthiness of the brand (Barker et al. 2013).

Ultimately, the goal of any social media strategy is to build trust in the brand. Create interest in the brand and generate positive word-of-mouth that lead to sales or support depending on the nature of the entity engaged in social media marketing. 


REFERENCES
Barker, M., Barker, D., Borman, N. and Neher, K. (2013) Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach. International Edition. Boston: South-Western Cengage Learning.

From Anonymity to …

Ok, so the writing bug’s got me again. Now I’ve started to blog, I look forward to documenting my thoughts. Hmmm…Durham Social Media Strategies module, you’ve created a proverbial monster.

What’s interesting is that introverted people seem to be very attracted to social media and some of the success stories for bloggers seem to be people who are “shy”. Ditto, so there is hope for me yet.

There is Lauren Luke, a make-up artist, who began giving tips to young women on how to get glam looks. Her YouTube Channel has more than 135 million views. She confessed to being shy. She went on to launch a cosmetic line among other achievements. She’s a great success story.  

So what’s the attraction to social media for the “introverts”? Is it that it is so much easier to create some persona so different from your regular self – rather like a Jekyll and Hyde? 

At the other extreme take the example of “Goth Model” Autumn Meadows (Paulson 2013). It’s jaw-dropping the ease with which a 14-year-old can create an online persona unknown to her parents. How could a young teen even think of transforming into an “Autumn”, to lose her identity – and then use that raunchy image to become “famous”?

Is it the old marketing mantra that “sex sells” with glossy images of sexily-dressed women (they don’t need to be clad in an “itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny” swimsuit anymore to have sex appeal) that perpetuates this thinking? 

Or is it the popular entertainment industry that promotes the same notion. So, in order to be “popular” this teen creates an identity as a model and she knows the kind of images to post consistent with that persona. How many parents would even think that their 14-year-old can create sex appeal? But Jessica Hunter (Autumn’s real name) did! 

It also shows why online predators prey on young people, who are looking for someone to build their egos.  This child (for she is a child) was not popular among her peers but through Autumn, she becomes “famous”. Again, it calls into question the “wannabe” appeal of popular culture. 

So clearly, there is a dark side to social media and for young people/children, parents must be particularly vigilant. Fortunately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has provided a Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety that is a useful starting point for parents as it identifies the characteristics of a child involved in risky online behavior such as locking himself/herself away in their room, not allowing parents to see what’s on their screen, receiving gifts or phone calls from strangers and being secretive about them, being withdrawn.  Imagine how much more scope there is now with the advent of smartphone technology as parents will need to find tools to monitor their children’s activities. Luckily there are apps available (Tom’sGuide) and of course there is the age-old wisdom of keeping the lines of communication open with your child so s/he is aware of the dangers and don’t look for love in all the wrong places. 

To Commit Digital Suicide…Or Not?

The Social Media Strategy module has certainly been quite an informative experience. Traditionally, my perspective of social media was restricted to viewing it as an entertainment channel rather than a form of business interaction. It was great for viewing favourite videos on YouTube and as a bit of a sporadic/lurker (Brandzæg and Heim 2011) on Facebook, who tended to simply wish friends happy birthday and like others’ posts, the perspective of it as a social medium rather than a business tool persisted. No wonder, then, that updating of the organisation’s corporate Facebook page was infrequent – limited to messages for major holidays or important seasons, and greetings to new persons who like the page for the first time. Guilty as charged! 

In contrast, now, an effort is made to update the page daily or every couple of days to keep followers interested and informed – as that’s a key goal of social media marketing. I’m trying to embrace change. Yes indeed. 

An interesting observation arising from this course is that there is greater critical appreciation when visiting social media sites.  It takes effort to spend time to respond to a customer’s query.  Just as a friend needs a listening ear, in a time of need, today’s consumer wants to be engaged by YOU, the business; otherwise, you are nonexistent.  Business leaders need to be aware that the Millennials are the future customer base and it is critical to reach out to them with transparency and directness (Dutta 2013).

Via social media, an organization can connect to customers/influencers beyond the national boundaries of its nation. Considering that online word-of-mouth is now a significant influence on customers, reaching beyond geographical boundaries is not necessarily resulting in the same level of wastage as former mass media campaigns as persons living outside of Barbados, for instance, can recommend services/products to relatives living on the island as a result of engaging with a business via social media.

So the question is: are businesses that view social media as a fad or a waste of time, committing digital suicide? 


REFERENCES
Dutta, S. (2010) What's Your Social Media Strategy? Harvard Business Review 88(11) pp. 127-30.

Brandzæg, P. and Heim, J. (2011) A Typology Of Social Networking Sites Users. International Journal of Web Based Communities 7(1) pp. 28-51.

Is Your Business Connected?

"Not having a presence on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn can damage your business" so says Making Money, March 2016 Vol. 21 #3.

This is such an ironic statement given the approach of my organisation, in which an IT specialist recently reminded staff not to use social media on company time. This means the Marketing department’s staff should not be updating the corporate Facebook or Twitter accounts during working hours.  Yet, it is a growing aspect of marketing tasks.  Making Money (www.what-franchise.com) quotes Warren Knight, who authored Think #Digital First: “Technology has disrupted many of the traditional ways businesses conduct their sales and marketing strategy.” He further posits that the nature of doing business has changed permanently as a result of technology.  

Like any other tool in the marketing tool box, social media is an important means of connecting to customers. Dutta (2010) revealed that at that time only of a third (19) of the world’s top 50 CEOs were on Facebook and fewer were on LinkedIn, two of the most popular social media sites, after all the FB community totals one billion – only China and India have larger populations.

Quite an eye-opener!  

Dutta also noted that having a social media presence as a business leader is important for three reasons, namely: (1) personal brand building, (2) engaging rapidly with all publics and stakeholders and (3) as a source of management/marketing information. Unlike the Baby Boomers, the generation of Millennials is more cynical about marketing messages and they are strongly influenced by peer-to-peer recommendations (De Pelsmacher et al. 2010). Indeed, one of the novel notions arising from this Social Media Strategy module, is the concept of social media’s connection to community, socialization and word-of-mouth marketing (Barker et al. 2013).

REFERENCES

(March 2016) "Are You On Trend?" Making Money 21(3) pp. 106-107

Barker, M., Barker, D., Borman, N. and Neher, K. (2013) Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach. International Edition. Boston: South-Western Cengage Learning.

De Pelsmacker, P., Geuens, M., Van den Bergh, J. (2010) Marketing Communications: A European Perspective. 4^th Edition. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Dutta, S. (2010) What's Your Social Media Strategy? Harvard Business Review 88(11) pp. 127-30.

Out Of Touch

So, I'm a relic from the Dark Ages, it seems. My 6-year mobile was quite smart at the time although I only twice went online with it. It’s fallen a few times and hardly has a crack. So why would I move on to a Smartphone?  After all, I just use SMS text messaging for mostly personal contacts and not daily either. I still email but rarely for personal use....daily for work as that's the main means of communication both internally and to monitor customer queries.  I use Facebook for work and I check it daily, sometimes twice a day and depending on what I have to respond to that could be a couple of hours.  My personal Facebook pages, I check if I see a private message and perhaps I post once a week just to let people know I'm still on the planet.  I rarely read what others post now (I was quite addicted for the first year of personal use!) ... too busy with life otherwise, these days.  I got a Twitter and the Google+ accounts for this Social Media Strategy module. I've tweeted some. One was work related, which received several likes; that was very cool. I've never used Skype, but I opened an account now, also as a result of this module. I check LinkedIn only when I see a request to connect or some interesting post - and that's not often, but I go on once a week to keep it active.  

That does not sound like a blogger, does it? That does not even sound like a resident of the 21^st century!  My mobile is never on me.  I see people of all ages ... teenagers, the youth, middle-aged and the elderly also armed with a mobile – and yes it’s like an extended appendage.  They never let it go. People complain I don’t answer my phone. Not surprising, I don’t keep it on me.  But that’s a family trait...which I won’t expound on here.

The Wired Society

Would I let 900 million people read my diary asks Nardi et al. (2004)?  Only if I’m using it as practice for a writing career at some point in my life and I like to write. More than once over the last couple of decades, a good role model for a post-retirement writing career was the late Dame Barbara Cartland.

However, people don’t read books any more – or at least not in the traditional form of a book.  At present, it’s all about e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle in its various iterations (PC Advisor) and then there is Audible (Amazon) to move from the written word into the realm of the spoken word. Actually I think the work of Alexandre Dumas would sound great on Audible. 

Thanks to Web 2.0 and its exponential spread across the globe this century, it’s all about connectivity. The forms of communication have irrevocably changed. The new technology – the Smartphone, the tablet – has contributed considerably to this “wired” lifestyle.  Even at a recent training workshop busy professionals were using every break to check their messages, WhatsApp, and their social media pages whether they were from Latin America or the Caribbean.