Why should you use social media for your company?

The German magazine t3n.de released an interesting article on why and how companies should use social media.

Social commerce elements, especially the user generated content,  are on the top of every marketing managers “would-like-to-have” list. While both big and small companies use social networking platforms very successfully (e.g. Starbucks), it can still be a long way to convince your CEO why social media can be so valuable to your company.  Frank Lord from the Art Technology Group give a short view into “how to sell your social media campaign in-house”

1. Define social media

Social commerce is only a couple of years old and still in it’s infancy. Not many managers had to deal with this social marketing methods in the past and therefore there is still a knowledge gap in the executive suites. The first step is to fill this gap and give a detailed description what social commerce is and why it can be so effective. Most important is to show how other comanies like coca cola succesfully use their social media channels. It is also important to show the different roles of the different social platforms like facebook, twitter, youtube or linkedIn and the different opportunities they offer. Show the different roles of the sites, to determine the right “tool-mix” for your company. After you’ve taken these steps you can clearly communicate your strategy. Watch out though:  A consistent communication over all your channels is equally important as reaching your communication goals.

2. “Social” is not a campaign

Your own website is usually not the first site a customers visits to search for your product; and it will probably not be the last one as well. Therefore it’s important to give your customer several reasons to stay on your site and to purchase on your site as well. It is important that you are able to argue, how your different tools bring customers to your website and how you can keep your customers on your website. Intelligent tools like a “Click-To-Call” – button or Ikeas artificial intelligence, help that your customer interacts with your website. Social commerce is not a project but it creates a business case, which uses the online tools  to achieve the business goals of your company.

3. Don’t think in channels…

… because your customers don’t think in channels either. On the contrary: Your customers will not be concerned about the “point of contact”.  Therefore you should show how a multi-channel strategy can create several different “points of contact” – either on a personal level, online, via cell or in social networking sites. All of these channels are opportunities and can enhance your conversion. Only because social commerce is a new channel doesn’t mean that it’s not effective.

4. Analyze your costs

The nice thing about user generated content is, that it doesn’t bind any additional resources of your company. If your infrastructure is given the user does the work. Your own road-map should contain realistic goals though and how high the “return on engagement” (return on investment in social media) should be. One value you should look at is the lead-generation or the click rate of your post inside the social media. It can also be measured by the number of retweets, backlinks or followers of your rss-feed. The higher these rates are the higher are your conversion rates, customer loyalty and your result in search engines. This is your actual social brand value.  Manpower is needed to maintain the contact with your customers and give quick feedback to your customers.

5. Accept feedback

Every marketing manger knows, that mouth-to-mouth is the best marketing you can have. With the new social media possibilities customers will have the opportunity to criticize your product or your company; but with the new media you have the chance to react immediately to this criticism and can therefore enhance customer loyalty. As we all know: a happy customer is the best customer. So use your social media to make your customers happy.

6. Clarity and participation

Bring your colleagues to interact in your social media. This brings an authentic feeling and credibility to your social media. But watch out what you communicate. Not every tweet or comment can be helpful even if it’s meant in a good way. Therefore you should establish a social media policy, where everyone knows what to say and what not to say. (Could we give this the name Corporate Media as in Corp0rate Design?)

Conclusion

Social Commerce doesn’t look like a short trend but will change how people buy products. Social network friendships will enhance the interactive mouth-to-mouth marketing and people will rely even more on the judgment of their virtual friends (As it’s already been done by ebay or amazon)