How should CEOs Engage with Social Media
June 16, 2011
A guest post today from Jerry Burrows: if you have a CEO who is keen to embrace social media, how would you advise them?
How Should CEOs Engage With Social Media?
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
Source
Forbes’ article, ‘Yes, CEOs should Facebook and Twitter’, provides a sound argument for why CEOs should abandon their traditional prejudices toward social media and hop on the bandwagon.
The idea certainly has the support of “Web 2.0 evangelists [who] argue that social software can be used to boost productivity. They say it can facilitate an open-ended corporate culture that values transparency, collaboration and innovation. Most important, it can be an effective way to build a customer-centric organization that not only communicates authentically but also listens to customers and learns from that interaction.”
Blogs and social media can facilitate that genuine conversation between CEOs and customers–and encourage those customers to become brand evangelists.
If you need one example of how company CEOs can use social media to their advantage, look no further than Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos. Hsieh’s Twitter following is massive. He has just under 2 million followers–clearly, the man tweets hard. And Zappos is a more than successful enterprise for the 37-year-old entrepreneur: it sells about a billion dollars worth of shoes and accessories a year. (And Tony’s not the only one who tweets; at least 440 other employees do, too.) There’s even a dedicated microsite. So how can you replicate his success? How is it done?
Be Careful
Yes, the goal is transparency, affability, and authenticity. But there are limits to that kind of sharing, too. Be casual, but if your personal life is especially tumultuous, you may want to leave the details out. The golden rule? Don’t speak ill of anyone. No, not your competitors, either. Recall the social PR disaster that occurred in 2007 when Whole Foods CEO John Mackey made comments on various finance forums under a pseudonym attacking rival company Wild Oats Markets, and predicting that it would fall into bankruptcy. The result was a permanent tarnish on the Whole Foods brand image.
Don’t Spam
In an interview with Kevin Morris for Wikinomics, Zappos’s Recruiting Manager, Christa Foley, writes:
“It wouldn’t be in our culture to be salesy/pushy so we’re not using Twitter to promote Zappos just for the sake of promoting Zappos. We’re using it for what I think it was intended, which is a social network that we all enjoy.”
If you want to follow in the successful footsteps of Zappos, make your interactions on Twitter and Facebook as genuine as possible by avoiding spammy language. Use your microblogging platform to post useful links about topics that relate to your industry, reply to questions from inquisitive customers (or direct them to the appropriate source), handle customer service requests, etc. Transparency is key; other potential customers that come across your social media profile will be able to view and appraise your customer service dealings without the traditional barrier of secrecy.
Show Leadership
As the CEO, you’re the face of your company. Remember that you’re also setting an example for the rest of your employees. That means that you should use your social networks to remedy problems and address widely-held customer concerns. No, it’s not the same as indiscriminately airing out your dirty laundry; but it helps to keep your brand’s image fresh and timely. Moreover, don’t be afraid to link to blogs and press releases that quote you as an authority. Encourage others to take actions on a social issue that is important to you.
Celebrate Your Fans
The Zappos brand likes to give their fans recognition for their loyalty. Hold contests and competitions for your followers (maybe something to the tune of how many followers can you get to follow you), call out loyal retweeters, etc. It’ll make them more appreciative, and know that they’re the center of your brand. Ask them for their input and they’ll feel appreciated–turning them into even more passionate advocates in the end.
About the Author: Jerry Burrows is a freelance writer for Tektronix. Tektronix is a leading supplier of test and measurement equipment like a digital multimeter or a pulse generator.
Define Your Brand Promise
June 16, 2011
It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about the basics of branding here on the Corporate Eye blog. As marketers and brand strategists, we often get too busy to do the self-checks on our brands that are necessary to ensure we haven’t veered off track.
In other words, you need to ask yourself if your brand is still living up to its promise?
At its core, every brand is a promise to consumers. That means, a brand promises something to consumers based on consumer expectations that are built through perceptions over time. What do consumers expect from your brand? Do those expectations match your brand promise? Does your brand promise the right things to consumers?
Brands must evolve as consumers evolve. A stagnant brand is unlikely to survive over the long-haul, particularly in today’s fast-paced world where consumer preferences and expectations can change overnight.
If your brand continually meets consumer expectations for it based on their perceptions of the brand promise as it relates to their experiences with your brand, then you’re on the right track for long-term success. However, if your brand does not meet consumer expectations for it based on its promise in every consumer interaction, then consumers will become confused with your brand. They’ll turn away from your brand in search of another brand that does meet their expectations in every customer interaction.
Consumers can’t become emotionally involved in your brand if they don’t feel secure in its ability to meet their expectations. That means they won’t be loyal to your brand and they won’t talk about your brand to other people.
Bottom-line, living your brand promise is critical to your business. Not only does the strength of your brand promise open doors to sales today, but a brand that consistently meets consumer expectations benefits from repeat sales, loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing that advertising dollars can’t buy.
Don’t discount the value that a powerful brand promise can deliver to your business for years to come. Define your brand promise, live your brand promise, and spot-check your actual performance in terms of living that brand promise periodically. Be ready to adapt and evolve, but always remember that consistently meeting consumer expectations is paramount to your success. You can’t change your brand promise without taking time to change consumer perceptions and expectations at the same time.
What does your brand promise to consumers? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: stock.xchng
The Corporate Website: All Work and No Play?
June 15, 2011
Gamification is a hot topic at the moment, so I went to a seminar hosted by Infolab21 from Lancaster University, and led by Dr Paul Coulton to find out more about it, and to find out whether there any way this could be part of the corporate website. (I posted a response to the first one of Dr Coulton’s presentations for Infolab’s Brunch Bytes season—about social media— earlier this week).
For most stakeholders—and for most websites—the corporate site is purely a repository of information; somewhere to find the latest news, reports and share-price.
But some corporate sites aim to be more engaging, at least in some stakeholder areas, including such elements as blogs, live-chat and other more-or-less-asynchronous discussion elements.
Some corporate websites include games and other challenges—almost always in the Careers section—and some companies have added game elements to the recruitment process. Games and gamification aren’t the same thing, of course, but it is interesting to see an element of fun on the corporate site.
But gamification?
Dr Paul Coulton offered a definition of gamification as:
Using game mechanics to encourage engagement in an activity that might otherwise be considered a chore or boring
Hmm. Surely there’s no such thing on a corporate website?
His alternative – and preferred – definition was:
Encouraging certain user behaviour using games as a lens
Now that is a definition the corporate site could work with… And if we look more closely at a few of the simpler elements involved, the chances are that your website already includes some of these things; though a full-blown structure of challenges and rewards is unlikely to be an option.
According to the Gamification wiki, features of gamification include:
- Letting visitors know what others have been doing on the site.
Recent-blog-posts widgets let visitors know what the company has been doing; but recent-downloads, rate-this-page and popular-pages widgets are increasingly common on corporate sites, and show what visitors have been doing.
Potential additions could include popular-videos, or popular-images, or even recently-shared-pages.
Or what about including a ‘you might be interested in this’ or ‘other people who loaded this page also looked at’ section at the end of a page, with genuine related links based on the visitor path or search query? I think I’ve seen this one recently – do remind me where in the comments!
- Allowing visitors to identify themselves.
Avatars: an avatar is a visual representation of an individual – sometimes a photo, but not always. If you allow comments on any part of your site (CSR blog, perhaps) do you show people’s avatars?
The ability to add an avatar for commenters is probably the furthest a corporate site is likely to go with this one. Most visitors won’t be interested in being identified.
- Including intentionally hidden features (Easter Eggs).
I’m sure you’ve seen this as part of a retail promotion, and while highly unlikely to happen in the investor relations section, this could be used in the graduate recruitment section: perhaps as a scavenger hunt/quiz, to help students find out more about the company by driving them through various carefully chosen pages of the website, or from social media outlets to the corporate site and back again.
- Enabling unique experiences.
Some companies enable people to create an account, to personalise their landing pages, and to create collections of items that they are interested in (on a corporate site, usually called bookmarks, briefcases, folders…). Perhaps the next step is to enable people to create and share the URL to their collections of your content with others? If you know of anyone who already does this, do please let us know.
- Leaderboards
It’s unlikely that people would want to rank on a leaderboard in any of the main sections of the corporate site (even if they might for a game in the careers section). The person who’d reviewed the share price the most often? I don’t think so. However, a leaderboard for ‘most frequent commenter’ just might work, if you get enough comments.
- Keeping the visitor informed about their progress or change of status.
A progress bar, for instance, to indicate how far through an activity your visitor has got. These are commonplace in retail, as you step through the shopping cart; but in corporate sites? How about a progress bar to indicate how far through the application process your potential recruit has got?I haven’t spotted this kind of experience on a corporate site, but how about ‘There have been 5 new press releases since you last visited: do you want to see them?’ (filtering out the ones already seen). Some websites have experimented with enabling the visitor to identify themselves as of a type (e.g. journalist) and then presenting them with relevant information on their next visit. If people have created an account, then it should be possible to filter new content based on their expressed interest.
- Displaying a visitors activity.
I have seen this one occasionally: a widget displaying your recently visited pages; or your recent downloads. If registered for an account within the careers section, then you might be able to check which jobs you’ve applied for, and what their status is; or if required to register to see corporate images for download, you might be able to see which images you’ve previously used – though this would be less useful.
OK, so it isn’t putting together an international team of warlocks, were-beasts and night-elves to hunt for the Shadow Troll; but it is all adding the potential for engagement to the corporate website.
And that is probably one of your metrics for success.
The Beautification of CSR | Renewing CSR 1/3
June 14, 2011
To borrow from The Goons, “listeners who are listening…” will know that I get a little wound up about the phrase “ethical business”. Ethics, I say, shouldn’t come into it because that’s a cultural issue and business is all about the technical management of money.
Hence my preference for sustainability: it simply widens the scope of technical accounting from money to other things. Academically this is also a moral stance, but then so I guess is the expectation that a business should generate profits.
However, here’s a third strand of how business should address their impacts, courtesy of the National Trust and renowned professor of philosophy at the University of London, AC Grayling.
Recommendations Are Still the Most Trusted Form of Advertisement
June 14, 2011
In a new report by Nielsen that tracked advertising spending and effectiveness in the United States during the first quarter of 2011, 76% of consumer respondents indicated that recommendations from people they know are the most trusted form of advertisement. However, even the opinions of people that consumers don’t know are important. 49% of consumer respondents to the Nielsen survey indicated that they trust opinions published online by other consumers, including strangers.
What does this mean to businesses?
In simplest terms, you need to get people to use and then talk about your brand. The social web provides a perfect place to do this. By engaging with online influencers and your brand’s target audience through social media tools and websites, you can start conversations, join conversations, and guide conversations in the right direction. Not only should you encourage consumers to write reviews on your own website, but you should also ask them to do so on your Facebook page, on Twitter, and on local sites like Yelp.com, MerchantCircle.com, Epinions.com, or similar sites that are popular in the countries where you do business.
Consumers don’t always trust ads, but they trust other consumers who have real experiences with brands, products, and services. Take some time to connect with online influencers who have the attention of consumers in your brand’s target audience. Reach out to them and get on their radar screens. Ask them to try your product and review it online (be sure to follow regulations related to consumer endorsements — CFR Title 16 Section 255 in the United States).
Think of it this way. You can spend thousands or millions of dollars on advertising, or you can work on building word-of-mouth marketing related to your brand through consumer conversations and recommendations on the social web. The latter takes more time, but it costs a lot less and can be far more effective over time. In other words, ads are great for short-term results, but social media and online word-of-mouth marketing can benefit a brand for years to come.
What is your company doing to generate word-of-mouth marketing and consumer reviews for your brand online? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: stock.xchng
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