Social Media Engagement: 4 Ways to Launch an Effective Campaign
January 20, 2011
Effective corporate media relations is a multi-step process for any online business who wants to enjoy success and productivity. A successful branding campaign takes time, effort, diligence and careful planning. Corporations don’t build their brands overnight, and nor should social media be expected to sprout in a small matter of time. Many heads of corporate media relations spend the bulk of their time solely on building their brand online and creating a presence. A lot of thought is placed into this effort because they want to maximize their exposure.
How can social media benefit your organization? The main answer you will always hear in response to this question is exposure. The one way that you can drive interest to your product, cause or service is through exposure. With online activities of many organizations becoming the standard, exposure in its basic, pure form is ideal for the corporation to embrace and maximize its usage. Using and maintaining social media is just the beginning of what corporations can use to enhance their online presence.
Ways to Campaign in Social Media
To launch an effective social media campaign, there are four key components that should be implemented for total effectiveness. Try incorporating these into your business model for maximum results and client attraction and retention.
1. Target
Your corporation should identify the target market that they wish to attract. Whether they will attract their audience by using standard marketing efforts or social media engagement must first be decided before any action is taken. Decide which of the many social networking tools works best for what your corporation offers. Is the organization a proponent of education and enlightenment? Or, do they have a hard product that they want to sell direct to customers? Knowing to whom you are selling and marketing can make your target attempts more valuable and more precise.
2. Strategic Placements
What works best for your product or service? How can you better cater to your audience? Developing a systematical, methodical plan of approach is what works best here. Nothing should be done as an aside; careful strategic planning is necessary. Some of the biggest, most productive corporations on the planet have teams of strategists that work especially with target markets and analyzing trends. Although these types of resources may not be available to the average online corporate business, the same principle does apply. Research thoroughly and see what areas are conducive for your product or service. Develop a succinct marketing plan targeting that group and engage them through the most effective acts of social networking.
3. Engage
Use every available avenue of engagement to work with your audience. This includes social networking on standard sites like Facebook and Twitter. A very good article at steinarknutsen.com thoroughly discusses the ways to use corporate social media to drive traffic to your company’s website.
4. Maintain
It is just as important to maintain all forms of social networking once you have implemented the preceding steps. To neglect maintenance essentially undoes everything that has been put into action. Maintenance doesn’t have to be involved or complicated. Simple dedicated attention to the systems that have been put into place should be sufficient.
It may be necessary to tweak those areas that may or may not apply to your organization. Your marketing department director or staff can certainly identify any areas where changes can be made but yet keep the basic principles of the marketing effort. Another excellently written article at The Globe and Mail talks about how to build up and maintain your standing in any social media environment. Involving these basic criteria can have a positive effect on any marketing campaign.
Three tips for communicating CSR on your website
January 19, 2011
Just before Christmas the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published a quick glance at three companies which had implemented “Better Corporate Philanthropy” and highlighted why these in particular were trailblazers in a new way of doing things.
Intrigued, I wondered how well these companies had communicated their trailblazing attributes through their websites.
Nike : leveraging strategic focus
Too often companies seem to just give money to the nearest, most deserving charity. One which has always puzzled me has been a certain international airline which picked a South American tribe. Why? Well, because they’re an international company you see and this tribe is, well, overseas from corporate HQ; international, foreign.
Five years ago Nike launched The Girl Effect project which aims at introducing and improving living standards and opportunities for adolescent girls worldwide. Nike looked at their “core competencies in consumer insights and market segmentation” and this is where it led them.
Adam Day, Nike’s Senior Portfolio Manager, explains this in the HBR article: “The focus on adolescent girls is truly authentic to our fundamental belief in the power of human potential”.
And that’s the best explanation I’ve been able to find.
Undoubtedly the strategy of using something you already know about to drive your CSR efforts is darned sensible and if you think about it Nike will know a lot about adolescent girls and releasing their potential (“Just Do It”).
But nowhere is there an explanation of why girls are important to Nike from the strategic point of view, meaning many people will assume they’ve picked the issue out of a hat (well, it’s not that obvious). A shame if the HBR is right and they really are trailblazers in this regard.
Goldman Sachs: building to scale
It probably goes without saying that the larger the business you are the greater the impact you’re able to have. However not all businesses are willing to take advantage of their size, preferring instead to do a minimal amount in order to satisfy an obligation they are either irritated by or don’t fully understand
Not so Goldman Sachs, it would appear. In 2008 they shifted from the usual round of annual grants to (dare I say it?) a more sustainable model of corporate giving and CSR. This was done by committing $100m over 5 years to a single programme designed to turn promising women entrepreneurs around the world into economic powerhouses within their communities.
The programme is called “10,000 Women” and it delivers a variety of courses to these entrepreneurs from short week-long affairs to more in-depth six-month programmes.
Now $100m isn’t a particularly large amount of money (the company is throwing around over $1bn on other CSR projects). However what caught the eye of the HBR was the support structure the company had put together in order to deliver this money on the ground, including 43 universities and 30 NGOs in 20 countries.
This is a truly impressive network the company has thrown together, especially as it’s happened in less than two years and has already trained 2,000 aspiring entrepreneurs.
How would you communicate this achievement on your website? That’s a rather tricky one, but as this is a trailblazer perhaps in the company’s thought leadership section? It’s not mentioned there and (to be picky for a moment) the whole “Ideas” section of their website seems a little disorganised.
What would be really great to see is this programme published as a Case Study. It must have taken a lot of hard graft to get the network up and running, especially in such a short amount of time. I’m sure there are a good set of lessons learned and best practice tips companies of all sizes can use to improve their own CSR programmes.
Intel: measuring outcomes
It is perhaps no surprise that a technology company should be a little more obsessive about statistics than most other companies, or “rigorously numerical” as the executive director of Intel Foundation, Wendy Hawkins, would have it.
So it is that in one of Intel‘s flagship CSR programmes, Intel Teach, the company doesn’t just measure outcomes, but the outcomes of those outcomes: the true impact of their efforts.
Intel Teach is about training teachers in the US and around the world about how to use technology in the classroom. However they don’t just sling the teachers and equipment out of the door once the training has completed, they go back every year to find out how effectively the training is being implemented in the classroom and whether there are any local conditions which may be impacting its delivery.
In this way Intel is measuring not just how effectively it is delivering these professional development programmes, but also what impact those programmes are having further down the line and whether there are any further obstacles they can use the programmes to overcome within the wider society.
There is an impressive list of case studies, reports and white papers on the Intel Teach webpage, stretching back to 2003. However, the latest annual survey available appears to be from 2005, which is a little disappointing.
Top Tips
So, taking a lead from these three institutions, here are some top tips for website content you ought to include in your sustainability section:
- explain how your chosen strategy reflects your company’s core strengths and competencies and isn’t just a charity picked out of a hat
- show how your strategy uses the resources at your disposal to their very best effect and isn’t just throwing money out of a passing car
- understand and measure the true impact of your strategy, publish those results and feed them back into the strategy as appropriate
- This will help both your CSR strategy and your website to be ranked as among of the best in your industry, and perhaps even the world.
Picture Credit: Armstrong 03 courtesy of Nike.
Caribou Coffee Offers Something Extra in Ambient Advertising
January 19, 2011
Displaying print ads at bus stops isn’t a new form of marketing, but turning those print ads into a complete experience is. Caribou Coffee did exactly that with the help of Colley+McVoy who turned a Minneapolis bus stop into a toasty oven complete with a ceiling mounted heating element. Check out the image below.
The campaign’s objective was to spread the word about Caribou Coffee’s new menu items. By making clever use of the environment to not only raise awareness of new products but also to differentiate them from the competition (by showing an oven heating the menu items rather than a microwave), Colley+McVoy and Caribou Coffee succeeded. Not only that but people who warmed up in that bus shelter while waiting in the cold Minnesota weather surely appreciated the working heating element!
All in all, this ambient advertising effort is an example of clever and meaningful creative and messaging that works. I love finding great ambient media examples that enhance the environment and consumers’ experiences with the ad creative and messaging — and ultimately, with the brand. You can read about a few other ambient media campaigns that I’ve written about here on the Corporate Eye blog by following the links below:
- Recession Bodes Well for Ambient Media
- McDonald’s Hypes Free Coffee Refills with Creative Ambient Media
- Creative Ambient Media for Local Retail Workers
What are your opinions on ambient media? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: AdRants
Photography, Philanthropy and the Corporate Website
January 18, 2011
As you’ve never seen them before…
After last week’s post, in which I pointed to a video from Sainsbury’s containing Dragons and Chief Executives, here’s another angle on images of senior business people.
Stuart Rose was one of the CEOs on the video (did you spot him?), and here he is again, as seen by Bob Wheeler and on display at an exhibition called THIRTY by THIRTY hosted by 85FOUR and The Passage.
For those not familiar with The Passage, it’s a London-based charity supporting homeless people, running a 48-bed hostel and helping over 200 people every day to get the help and advice they need – and 85FOUR are a design and branding agency who have worked pro bono with The Passage for over 13 years.
The exhibition showcases 30 photographers and 30 people who have helped The Passage over the last 30 years. Nice idea… and the subjects of the photos include clients, colleagues and donors (including Sir Stuart Rose, Cherie Blair, Rory Bremner and more).
The exhibition looks interesting, and should work well to promote the charity. Do go: it will be held in the SW1 gallery, Victoria, between January 19 and 29 2011.
But here’s a question. I think that photo of Stuart Rose is great: an alternative view of a senior businessman, while still being a professional, dignified image. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have such good photos on the corporate website?
All too often, the photos on corporate websites are just very… stiff and corporate, and there is at least one blog devoted to poking fun at these images of management (no, I’m not going to share the link). But check out Bob Wheeler’s site for what could be done; if images like these are being presented as part of the annual report, then they could be used on the corporate website too – in addition to the formal head and shoulders shot to go with the biography, of course.
For a while there was a minor trend offering an alternative ‘casual’ shot as part of the management biography in addition to the formal one, but these are harder to find recently (Microsoft is an example of a company that offers some ‘casual’ photos, though these are often simply taken with open collars). I recognise that there is a need for a formal shot, but it seems a pity to miss the opportunity that the web provides to present some beautiful photography as well. (Structurmarine is worth mentioning again here, because they do such a great job of this, and it is still so rare a sight.)
What do you think?
Interested in corporate imagery? Here are some other articles I’ve enjoyed on this topic:
- the use of stock imagery on corporate sites
- a heartfelt plea not to use photos in corporate publications
- examples of About Our Team pages
- and this example of a site using attractively shot photos of clients on its home page: The Old State.
Research Shows Celebrities in Ads Don’t Make a Difference
January 18, 2011
Let me preface this this post by stating that I am not an advocate of paying celebrities large sums to appear in ads. I’m not saying that it can’t be effective, but it’s very rare that a celebrity connection to a brand seems to deliver real results. Of course, there are exceptions (e.g., Michael Jordan and Nike), but those are exactly that — exceptions, not the rule.
A new study by Ace Metrix reveals that celebrities in ads are not effective and are often a waste of money. The chart below from the Ace Metrix report, Celebrity Endorsements: Exposing a Myth of Advertising Effectiveness, shows that celebrity ads more often brought a negative performance lift when compared to non-celebrity ads.
The report was based on a study of every nationally televised ad during the first 11 months of 2010 and included extensive efforts to present fair and balanced statistical analysis of the results. The study found that regardless of age or gender, ads without celebrities performed better than ads with celebrities.
Most consumers cited reasons they found celebrity ads to be ineffective as: being confused by what product the celebrity was endorsing and simply not liking the celebrity in the ad.
Ace Metrix concludes from its findings that consumers today are not as easily influenced as they once were. With quick access to massive amounts of information on the Internet, they want equally quick and instantly relevant messages in ads. Celebrities affect them far less than relevant messages.
I agree with the Ace Metrix conclusions, and it’s nice to see some research support what many marketers, myself included, have believed for a long time — a celebrity might help raise awareness of an ad and get people talking about that ad or celebrity, but it doesn’t guarantee positive results for the brand, company, or product. A celebrity can only help if the message is good, the celebrity is well-liked by the target audience, and the celebrity matches the brand, company, and product, he or she is endorsing. Disparity in any of those areas equates to a waste of money.
What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts about celebrity endorsements and the value of paying celebrities to appear in ads.
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