Last blog, I shall miss you all
October 7, 2012 12 Comments
Hey everyone. This is week 10’s blog for Enterprise 2.0 and thank you for reading my blog and going through this mini blogging adventure with me. This week I will be talking about social media. In particular, I will discuss how organizations can implement social media strategies to promote their brand. It is true that many organizations are beginning to use social media to connect with their customers, but what is the right way to do it and how should they approach this double edged sword task?
Abraham Lincoln once said “If I had 8 hours to chop a tree down, I would spend 6 hours sharpening my ax”. This means, planning is IMPORTANT!
The beginning:
Everything has a beginning, and organizations using social media to establish a two way communication with its customers also have a beginning. An organization doesn’t just create a fan page on Face Book or suddenly create a two way communication. In the beginning, an employee of the organization proposes to use social media such as Face Book or some other social media tools. This is the easy part, anyone could easily create a Face Book profile, but how can organizations attract their customers to subscribe or to stay tuned to what they have to say? This blog will discuss how organizations can implement social media strategies to achieve their objectives and goals. The objectives and goals for most organizations are to connect with its customers through technology (in this case social media).
How can organizations engage with its customers and best leverage the use of social media technology? We discussed that social media technology is a double edged sword, meaning that social media can not only bring positive reputation and customer satisfaction, it can also do exactly the opposite exponentially.
Ways to leverage social media technology:
- Develop a plan – I’m sure you’ve all heard the term ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” This is quite true, I actually learnt that in a unit called Project Management. If an organization has no plan to engage with its customers than it is simply fail, and should be included in failblog.
- Be Social – Social media technology is a powerful tool, and it is the first word of the powerful term is ‘social’, therefore it is obvious and instinctive for organizations to be social when using web 2.0 tools. Ironically, this is not the case! Organizations should first consider how to interact and communicate with its customers and people. There are some organizations out there who have done such a wonderful job with this, such as Starbucks, and KCI Airport. One reason why organizations find it hard to be social is because they also try to be professional, authentic and relevant. Being social and professional is about the right mix of ingredient of humor, knowledge, authenticity, trust, entertainment, and being real to the brand.
- Being simple – This means having a Face Book or Twitter account that is simple and easy to remember. For instance, if you are creating a Twitter account for Mcdonalds, it is not advised to have a Twitter account name called Mackers4life. Simply McDonalds is superb.
- Make it fun – Some smarter organizations have used a larger range of social media and web 2.0 tools to promote their business through many strategies. A typical strategy to make it fun would be to promote special promotions for a limited time or limited edition collectibles. A slightly advanced strategy is the use of viral videos on You Tube. If you are unaware of the power of social media and how it works, here is a link to a video explaining how videos go viral that I highly recommend. Here.
- Have a primary communication platform – Many organizations are realizing the potential of social media technology and web 2.0 tools. Of course organizations don’t want to fall behind, they want to engage with as many customers and its people as possible through different tools such as Face Book and Twitter. However, it is almost important to have a uniform approach in communicating with the organizations customers and people. It is advised that organizations should use only one dominant social media tool for the majority of communication. This may sound like you’re missing out because you’re only using one tool, but it’s not the case. Twitter and Face Book can actually be linked, therefore messages posted on Face Book can also be seen on Twitter users.
- Profile photo – It is not advised for organizations to use a glamorous photo of the manager as the profile photo. The profile photo for the organization should be the organizational brand itself.
This is the last blog for Enterprise 2.0 and I wish you all the best with the last assignment. Please feel free to comment and leave your blog web address in your comments below and I will definitely get back to you! Thank you!