Five by Five

1 … something that lives in the marketing silo

It disrupts the entire business model meaning you have to listen to customers and change your mindset and behaviour accordingly. Can the marketing department deal with customer services complaints? Senior management buy-in is integral. Social media requires a way of thinking which includes a willingness to listen to customers, make changes based on feedback and trust employees to talk to customers. Integrating with your other activities – marketing and business – is crucial.

2 … just about Twitter

Brand outposts such as a Twitter or Facebook may well be a cornerstone of your social media strategy but don’t start there. Have a robust strategy in place and understand your objectives and how you can connect with the passion points of your consumers.

3 … a quick fix

Social media should be treated with the same reverence and long-term engagement as your brand. It is not a one-shot deal. It’s a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation and change that requires time to truly bear fruit.

4 … free

A constant stream of engaging social currency, deployed across brand outposts and through trusted influencer networks, allied to user generated content, e-commerce with real-time response and moderation, isn’t easy. It needs the right financial commitment. Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, with e-commerce and company brand style sheets takes more than time. It takes skill, experience, and investment.

5 … immune from measurement

One of the oft heard complaints about social media is that it can’t be measured. Bollocks. Engagement, influence, infectiousness, share of voice, sentiment, increased traffic leading to sales. All of this is measurable today. Pizza Hut’s iPhone app delivered $1m. Dell’s Twitter activity alone realised $1m incremental revenue last year and at a recent Revolution event, Michael Buck from Dell stated that a 10% reduction in customer service calls would enable the investment in social media to breakeven. Fundamentally it comes back to your objectives and making sure they have measurable components baked-in to them.

Matt Burrough, Senior Account Director

matt.burrough@fivebyfivedigital.com

twitter.com/@mattb45

Tags: Matt Burrough, social media, social media strategy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Front Page Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.