Corporate Eye

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Bridget Wright

Bridget Wright

Social Media Engagement: 4 Ways to Launch an Effective Campaign

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.

Coca-Cola Finds Success With Its Social Media Project

Coca-Cola.

Say the name, and almost everyone around you has either heard the name before, or they’ve had the product perhaps a few times. Coca-Cola has been around for quite some time, with its first drink having been sold in Atlanta, GA in 1888. Since that time, the company has grown substantially with their product presence in several major countries across the globe.

However, even with its strong global presence, Coca-Cola still embraces social media and recently decided to escalate their efforts to another level. The company introduced a project called Expedition 206, which focused on instilling their brand of “happiness” in their customers all over the world. To that end, the company organized a team of young people, dubbed The Happiness Ambassadors, who in 365 days visited over 186 countries where the product is sold. What was their goal? To find happiness.

Ideas of Social Networking

Social networking is much more than just parading a long list of friends, or being able to show how many people re-posted one of your best articles. If only our success were measured by how many times our business site received a star, a ping, a re-post, tweet or nod, then there wouldn’t be any room for improvement. Or creativity.

Social networking stretches a bit more than the traditional methods and delves into actually reaching out and communicating with people on different platforms. One of the best ways to quantify any social media project is to engage the audience by talking to them, listening to them, asking their opinions, getting genuine feedback and making your communications count. Coca-Cola took full advantage of this and made great use of their resources by dealing directly with the people and in the places where their product is consumed. The feedback was overwhelming, as was  the media exposure and the attention that this project received world-wide.

Sharing Moments

The crew’s interest was in finding and recording social opportunities to share everything about Coca-Cola. They networked, shared, talked with and photographed hundreds if not thousands of people who were interested in and/or wanted to learn more about the company Coca-Cola. The crew documented their journey directly on the project’s site at Expedition206.com and on the other popular social networking platforms, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

The project has been a creative process for Coca-Cola, primarily to increase brand awareness, but mostly to stretch the idea of social networking to another plane. Many times, businesses are under the impression that the bulk of social media efforts should be done mainly online. After all, the online audience is incredibly vast, and the opportunity to reach such diverse segments of the population is endless. But Coca-Cola approached the Expedition 206 project in a completely different manner.

It has been the company’s largest social media project to date. So can they really gauge their success through this project? Would it be accurate to say that people now have a better understanding of the brand, more appreciation of the company’s efforts and even more, do they enjoy Coke better than they did before?

What do you think? Was the company creative in their social media approach? Is this true success, or simply another way to brand a name? Please share your thoughts.

The Effects of Corporate Blog Marketing

In today’s current business climate, many companies are opting to find smarter and more frugal methods of marketing, and forgoing the mistaken idea that corporations have to spend a lot of money on their marketing ideas. Although frugal does not equate to “cheap” or “poor quality”, it does require that the company be creative and savvy in choosing how they will advertise their product or services.

Marketing encompasses more than just “selling” a customer. It involves relationship-building and networking so as to establish a foundation for future interaction. If there’s anything customers dislike more than hard-selling it’s to be told that they’re “sold” to. They know the difference, and count it as an insult if they are told otherwise.

Securing customers and clients work best when the interaction is genuine and forthright. Clients tend to lean more towards those corporations who can readily admit their mistakes and take a clear stand in correcting any mishaps. However, it’s also a plus when the corporation is doing well and has the confidence to admit so.

Take for example, the Whole Foods Market blog that talks about and promotes a healthy lifestyle and green living. Their blog is very user-friendly, not overwhelming and gives a wealth of information to the customer. Consumers want and love the idea of good, wholesome foods and often need direction in where to find this fare and various ways to prepare it. This information is on their blog and can also be enjoyed by customers when they visit one of their numerous stores in the chain of markets. However, Whole Foods goes a step further by including business news on the blog that also promotes the chain’s philosophy and their stand on environmental issues. So not only do they get the chance to connect with the customers and provide valuable information, they also share, promote and encourage customers to participate in the causes that they support and promote. Rarely will you see commercials for the store, yet their presence is in many major cities across the United States as well as the United Kingdom and Canada.

The benefits of corporate blog marketing are endless, but many companies fail to embrace the positive things that it can do for their corporations, often because they just aren’t fully aware of the end-result benefits that it can bring to their businesses.

Exposure

Although this is an idea that is preached across the Internet tirelessly, many corporations still fail to see the benefit of exposure that a corporate blog can provide for their corporations. The blog serves as more than just a presence on the Internet, but gives the business a working platform to have a voice and to connect with customers in that genuine way that was mentioned earlier.

The Fastlane GM blog [now closed: see this post on some of the most significant Fastlane articles] is one such example of a blog that offers a company a wealth of exposure. Not that General Motors would need any additional name recognition, but their blog presence is a strong marketing tool because it keeps the customers connected to what’s going on in the automobile maker’s world. Each step that this car manufacturer makes significantly impacts the economy, and in turn, affects the consumer. On the blog, everything is discussed from upcoming projects to their political and social stand on various topics. The consumer is affected by this since very often, these issues affect the prices of vehicles, costs associated with production and even insurance issues. Why in the world would the consumer not be interested?

Interaction

Interaction runs the gamut from writing an email to a customer, to offering sales and discounts on Facebook. It is a very important element for any business, which is why social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become so enormously popular. Customers want to know and feel like they’re dealing with real humans and not machines; blogs offer a glimpse into the driving minds in a corporation and how they’re making things tick.

Corporate blogs pick up a lot of marketing momentum when they are well-written, offer value to the customers and do a good job of engaging their readers. When the blog loses the idea of “selling” to their customers they fare far better, and position themselves better when they don’t try so hard. Also, the shelf-life of blogs is longer for those who treat the blog presence as more of an enhancement than their main method of client/customer pooling. Over time, the blog not only increases their marketing potential and worth, but it stands a better chance of positioning the corporation as a product of longevity. Customers reap the benefits almost immediately, and the company can set tangible, workable methods around the blog to increase its productivity.


Is Your Company Making the Most of Social Media?

maximising the benefits

Choosing a Social Campaign

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Youtube, any corporation who decides to take their business aboard the World Wide Web should take a long, hard look at their social media campaign to see if it’s returning value. Many companies get on board a social networking site and expect a one hundred fold return almost immediately, as if just setting up an account was all they needed to do.

Growing the social side of a business requires focus and a dedicated effort to the process.

Social Media for Individuals

Becoming familiar with and participating on social media outlets can be a lot of fun. Interacting with people online who have the same interests and opinions can be a satisfying experience. Facebook for instance currently has over 400 million users online and are steadily growing. People join Facebook, send Tweets and update their photos to Flickr so they can be a part of what’s going on with their friends and family.

Social Media for Businesses

Part of the attraction for businesses to get on board social networking sites is the audience exposure that is available online. Social networking for individuals is a definite boon, however for businesses, social media outlets and interacting goes far beyond entertainment. It goes to the heart of why and how the business develops their brand online. When businesses begin building their brand and image, they need creative ways to make an impact on their demographics. Effective social media strategies are the key to unlocking the power of the system and getting it to work in their favor.

Maximizing the Outlets

Joining social media outlets is the first step. Finding relevant social outlets is very important. Many businesses will simply join each and every social media platform that becomes available, thinking that the more they’re a part of, the more exposure they will get. This is not necessarily so, which is why choosing the right ones to join should be a relevant issue, and more important than choosing what’s popular. For instance, for a photography business, a social platform like Flickr would be more relevant than a platform that did something completely unrelated to photography. This allows the media department to make better use of their resources and time spent on branding their image than if they joined and tried to work a platform that didn’t match the business’ personality.

After identifying the most profitable platforms for money expenses and time investment, it becomes important to work the platforms. This varies according to what platform you choose, but the basics are the same:

  1. Interact as often as possible, preferably once a day, no less than four or more times per week. This can be managed by one person or an entire media department.
  2. Post links to blog posts and articles that will appeal to your audience. Don’t oversaturate – just post the good ones.
  3. Be genuine in your feedback to others. They will learn to respect you and pay attention to what YOU say as well.

What are some things that you’ve done to increase your social networking exposure? What would you as a corporate entity add to the list of things to ensure that your company was successful in the social arena?

Begin With a Tweet? Foraying Into the Social Media Landscape

At 140-character increments, marketing your business has never been so easy. Twitter has made it simple and exciting for companies and individuals to interact, network and brainstorm on its platform.

How does social media fit into the grand scheme of things? How can a simple tweet change the way a media department is perceived?

Corporate Networking

Creating an environment that is conducive for social networking can be a challenge for some corporations. Perhaps many of the corporate executives think that the whole “social networking” thing is a fad that will pass. How can they be convinced otherwise? Sometimes, trying to convince corporate directors that a popular idea will work, doesn’t always work. Rhonda Sloan of American General Life Companies found out the hard way, but also found a way around the “no’s” to navigate her way to a “give us more” and at the same time, develop a strong company social media platform that saw growth. On average, public relations specialists may not have that degree of perseverance, but in the end, it can pay off in a big way.

Entertainment Networking

One fairly recent example of the power of social networking was when a Facebooker campaigned to get actress Betty White on the New York, USA-based comedy show, Saturday Night Live. The entertainment community was all abuzz about having the actress to appear and through Facebook and fans rallying to make it happen, the network decided to go ahead and have Betty White host the show. It was one of the most entertaining and impressive examples of the power of social networking seen yet. And, Betty White wasn’t too shabby on the show either!

Incorporating the Two

Although the corporate landscape and the entertainment world are two totally different, distinctively separate types of media, they both work on the same premise.

People.

Both genres need people-power to work, but the biggest difference in the two is the way that you get them to work, or to be effective. It may not be appropriate to have your company executive appear on a comedy-sketch show. It may not be the best idea to have a comedian give your corporate sales-team a virtual webinar either. But some way, somehow, there is a method to lift from both genres the things that work best and incorporate them into your media relations package.

What do you think would work best? I’ve come up with a very short list of the things that I feel would be conducive to it working, but I’d love to hear what you think also.

  1. Be creative, genuine. Don’t re-invent the wheel, just put your own spokes on it. Do something that hasn’t been done before, with your corporate personality on it.
  2. Utilize available resources. There’s no need to incur additional expenses. Use what’s at your disposal. Accounts with social networking platforms are free, upgrades at additional costs are optional.
  3. Engage the audience. Ask readers what they think and what they’d like to see. You’d be surprised at their responses and likely to get ideas as well.

Tell me what else you think would be ideal for social media outreach to work. What tools does your company use?

Is Monitoring Facebook a Good Idea? China’s Approach to Social Monitoring

Who’s watching you as you Facebook,Twitter and go on LinkedIn to talk to your friends and colleagues? Every word you type may be closely monitored if you live in China. They have recently begun new developments in their approach to social networking and the online community where they will start monitoring all social web activity.

According to this article by The New York Times, China has formed a special bureau that was organized solely for the purpose of monitoring social networking sites. They’re expected to watch and look for suspicious activity, study what the trends are and generally see what people are talking about. They are also tasked with regulating and monitoring online businesses and to spot any irregularities or oddities that may exist. There are mixed feelings as to whether or not this is a good idea.

The new bureau marks the latest outgrowth to a morass of agencies tasked with regulating online business and communications in China. (Source)

How will this new condition affect individuals who are constantly online and frequent social networking sites. How will this new bureau affect the way businesses do business?

As for individuals, there will likely be a decrease in their social web activity, or maybe they will watch what they say while they’re online. It may be that the Chinese government is not necessarily looking for anything in particular. Or are they? Most monitoring authorities employ these types of networks to search for certain patterns, activities or styles of communicating. It doesn’t always have to be bad activity, but their search and monitoring is diligent nonetheless.

Foremost, businesses will begin to monitor more closely what they put on their sites and how they engage their audiences. Businesses are going to be more concerned about profitability and their perceived involvement with other business entities. Again, although there may not be any cause for alarm in this area, there may still be slight apprehension with their business dealings.

What do you think about China’s new committee on social network monitoring? Do you think it’s something to be cautious of or that it’s not anything to worry about? How would you feel if your personal or business site were monitored? What is your comfort level on having your conversations monitored or monitoring someone else’s? Please share your opinion with me. Thanks!