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Latest Entries
Selling Social Media to the Board
I’ve loved social media since I was about 15. Back then Faceparty was the networking to be on and I’d spend hours chatting to friends, making new friends, and deleting emails from weird pervs from all over the world. Little did I know then, that almost a decade later I’d be integrating these social media ideas into my every day job.
Over the years I’ve experimented with loads of these sites; faceparty, lookitsme, bebo, wayn, facebook, myspace…the list goes on. Some of these I’m still active on like facebook, some I only log into now and then but can’t bear to get rid of, like myspace, and the rest fell out of favour a long time ago. One thing I never saw coming though, through all of this activity, is the massive rise in B2B companies getting a hold on social media marketing and online social networking. At first this was a real puzzler for me. How can a business looking to work with another business benefit from social media? I just HAD to get to grips with it, if only for my own geeky sake.
So, off I went to seminar after workshop after seminar to try and get my head around the concept of B2B social media. Some of the talks I went to weren’t so great, but others, particularly those from Kimberley O’Callaghan (who has been a great help), were so inspiring that I had to get this working for us. I had to take it to the board.
One thing to note is that not all company directors are pro world wide web, especially mine! He is very pro one to one networking, telephone catch ups and corporate hospitality, which is never a bad thing under normal circumstances. It means you have to dig extra deep to win them over…
The first steps I had to take, and I recommend anyone taking who intends to make a social media proposition, was to get as much information, knowledge, and expertise as possible on the subject before making any suggestions.
Evaluate every social media outlet
If you want to succeed with social media and prove to the board you know what you’re talking about, you don’t want to be targeting your efforts in the wrong places. For example, if your sales and marketing strategy is to target the MDs of large corporations, promoting your services/products on facebook or myspace would be almost certainly ineffective (general rule of thumb, myspace is a no no in B2B). It would be a waste of efforts and resources and would make your marketing department look foolish. Assess the value of each outlet and select a couple that would fit nicely into your corporate strategy. I chose to focus on:
- Blogging
- Video Sharing/Webinars
As my business is B2B and we are looking to target corporate customers, these tools are the most appropriate for a variety of reasons.
Blogging
Our brand’s strap line is ‘The document experts’. Blogging is the ideal outlet for communicating our expertise and cementing our brand. By allowing each of our divisions, i.e. IT Systems, Copy & Print, EDM and Service, to submit blog entries on a monthly basis, this enables cross selling between departments. Customers will be exposed to communications from all departments, not just the face they usually deal with. Our customers have suggested that they would like to see more of our staff and learn more about them. This tool is perfect for creating a company voice and allowing direct interaction between Arena and our customers/target market.
The general perception of Twitter is that it seems to have materialised from nowhere. This isn’t the case. Twitter has been establishing itself since 2006 and suddenly hit the headlines when it went wild at the SXSW Festival over in the states. Twitter isn’t like other social media tools, in that you’re only allowed a very small amount of posting space (140 characters). The microblogging tool is like marmite. People either love it or hate it. It was kind of a grower on me. I signed up and for a few months just didn’t get it! Then, when I decided to think about social media for our business I decided to give it a chance and I think it’s a really useful tool. The potential for customer interaction is fantastic!
As a business which prides itself on customer service, this is where our Twitter pages will focus. We will be distributing special offers and important service announcements as well as directing followers to relevant material that we think might be of interest (not necessarily produced by Arena).
Now this is where things get a little complicated as this is probably the most controversial form of social media when it comes to businesses and employee activities, social networking. Most businesses, including the organisation I work in, have restrictions on social networking sites, and in most cases rightly so. So when it comes to trying to implement social media, and more importantly sell it to the board, you really do have to put together a business case for the matter. You have to prove that the site can reap benefits.
LinkedIn is probably the most business focused social networking site online at the moment, if not the most popular. It is designed primarily for business networking and contact building and that is the exact role I proposed it should serve in my business. When putting together my business case I was a little stuck for time as my Marketing Plan deadline was fast approaching so market research was minimal. If I were to do this again, I’d definitely recommend speaking with your customers and finding out whether they use LinkedIn, or any other social media tools, and how they use them. From this you can gather how useful the site could be. Don’t, however, be completely dejected if your entire audience says they don’t use it. That isn’t to say they won’t ever use it and you could be the exact reason they join.
Being so strapped for time I decided to take a look at some of our existing, corporate, high end customers (our no.1 targets) and find the contact names. I then did quick searches on the site to uncover whether our existing market were using the site at all. This worked out brilliantly and I found around 80% of the contacts already listed. This was a great way of swaying board opinion.
Resources
Make sure you’ve got the resources to implement everything you plan. For me, as a one person department, even the few tools I’ve chosen to focus on will be a stretch when you consider I have the other day to day marketing activity to stay on top of. It’s no use planning to spend three hours a day on social media if you just don’t have the time. It’s a recipe for disaster! It’s far better to be really successful on a couple of platforms and extend slowly. I’m lucky in that, I am very familiar with social media from the off but if you’re new to the concept, take it slowly and get to grips with it all bit by bit. DO NOT go live before you’re ready. This will make readers/followers/subscribers think you’re unprofessional or worse, unreliable.
I have spoken with various departments throughout the planning process to make sure I have their support and that I aren’t heading into it with my hands full, about to fall on my face. You have to make sure you have support and departmental ‘buy in’ before you start. If people haven’t ‘bought into’ the project, find others to support you. Don’t be overwhelmed and don’t take on too much.
One other thing to bear in mind when allocating resources is, people have other jobs to do. Don’t expect too much from your help. I have chosen to have each department write one blog per month. This way the blog is still updated weekly but other people don’t have a responsibility to write blogs on a weekly basis and can get on with their other jobs.
Don’t forget cash! Whilst people think social media is free, that isn’t quite the case. In order to launch a successful social media campaign it’s important, like any other marketing campaign, that it’s integrated across the marketing mix. Whether this means links on email signatures, business cards, online advertising, or direct mail (post/email). There’ll also be email updates to be budgeted for, hosting cost for blogs and website alterations, not to mention the cost of time (man power).
The real nail in the coffin for sealing the deal
As with all (or a VERY large proportion of) corporate Boards, the focus really is on ROI. Now predicting the ROI for a business (and individual – me) that has never implemented a social media business plan, I found it pretty difficult to predict ROI. So, instead, I made predictions on the number of subscribers and followers I hoped to get and threw in a fairly low figure (I don’t want to set myself up for failure) on how many qualified leads will come from social media. To support all this I threw in a McKinsey Quarterly Report on the use of social media in business and how successful it’s been. Well thought out ideas and plans, even if you’ve covered everything possible, are all well and good but if you can’t back it up with case study examples, you will never get Board approval. Would you risk valuable time and money, especially in the current climate, if there was no hard evidence that the idea would work? I know I wouldn’t.
Considering all the above worked for me, and I managed to win over our board of directors. Once the budget is set in stone I will get started on full implementation. I’ll keep you posted…If you have any questions, need advice , or want to take a look at the proposal I put together for this, please drop me an email and I’ll get in touch.
Out with the Green, in with the Politically Incorrect
My regular newsletter/giant magazine from Propaganda landed on my desk recently and, being that I’d hit a bit of a bump in the road on our YPO advert I thought I’d take a look. Usually I just flick through the pages and nothing really grabs my eye, but I have to say, I was pulled straight in by a campaign by Propaganda for a new hair product, Beever.
It’s fantastic. The agency has thrown out all the tired marketing ideas which tend to drive the message “this brand is green; we don’t test on animals; and god forbid a brand is ever politically incorrect!” The campaign is fab!
Dwarves, testing on children, feeding rats to beagles. I’m over the moon to see a brand which is doing something a little differently and challenging the ‘safe’ marketing tactics. I really hope the campaign works well for the guys because I loved it.
If the campaign raises a smile, and sticks in the memory because it challenges the norm, then in my mind the guys at Propaganda have ‘done good’!