If social media can topple a government,
just think what it can do for or to your business
Well have you been posting on those social
networks? If yes, did you grab any attention, did people want to share what you
had to say, did people take any action? Do you even know? Do you care?
And if you have not posted anything, so what!
Either way what's the impact to you and your business?
Take the Lego story - an example of not so
good - Lego's 'pink ghetto' draws fire over gender-specific marketing . Lego launched
that pink stuff to appeal to young girls which created quite an uproar. It took
Lego quite awhile to engage in a positive way with their prospective customers,
ie the ones with the money - the
mothers of those girls. And it was only after an online petition of 25K or so signatures
was collected. During that time, even those of us with adult kids got involved
socially by posting, commenting and signing e-petitions.
The
lesson - Social Media can hurt you, so be prepared.
Then there's the other example of L'Oreal Paris Canada whose VP, CMO
& CCO - Ms Marie-Josée Lamothe presented a case study of ROI at Social Media
Week in Toronto in February. She explained they started about 3 years ago and for
the first couple of years, it was simply L'Oreal pushing out their new product
messages and updates but that changed last year. And now there is a large
interactive following - 340,885 likes and those fans are helping promote their
products in a big way. She told the audience
that at times they were not sure that this Social Media thing would work
but they are now moving ahead . Well with an audience of 340K, something is
working don't you think?
The lesson - Get in the
Game
So how
are you gonna' do that? By providing a simple way
for customers, prospects and suppliers to easily engage with you. You know, join
the conversation. And at the same time you will be sharing stories about your products and services which
really is just part of marketing and branding.
'a
simple way to engage' hmm First you need to figure out where your
customers, prospects or competitors are, socially that is and what they are
saying. Here's one way, run some google alerts for a week or so. How? Sign up for a google
account if you don't have one, create a google alert using the terms/words that are relevant for your industry i.e.widgets
(just kidding) and you will be emailed a condensed listing of whenever those
words/terms are mentioned out there. Review that content. You can easily change
the criteria if you need to. You will likely be surprised at what you learn and
who is posting stuff about your industry and where they are posting it. Then
next, pick a social media platform like Facebook and just setup an account;
then watch what everyone else is doing and how they do it. Spy on, I mean review what your industry is
doing. Again you will likely learn a bunch.
The lesson - You are now
in the Game
And as for the Arab Spring, don't let that happen to you and your
brand. Check out this interactive timeline from the Guardian.
Stay tuned for 'Monitoring and Measuring (haha) Your Social Media l Media ' #2 in the
Digital Collaboration Series
by Elsie Whitelock owner and CEO of Beyond Parallel Design
Elsie provides digital marketing and Social Media plus web site
design services to small businesses
http://beyondparalleldesign.com/
connect with me:

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