Karen

It was almost October, our financial year ends in March, and we hadn’t spent a cent of the conference budget I’d arm wrestled our CFO for.
So the entire marketing team took an “out of office” and attended the Huddlemind Word of Mouse workshop that took place last Friday morning (11th Sept) at the Cape Royale hotel.

The speaker line-up was great. Dave Duarte was first-up with the 5 different approaches to using Social Media for brand building (see post on http://www.thejordanrules.com/).

He was followed by Alex Van Tonder, Creative Group Head of King James RSVP who took us through the highly innovative and entertaining Steri-Stumpi campaign .

Next on the list was Seth Rotherham, the man (or is that the brand) behind the award winning 2OceansVibe blog. And finally Allan Kent, Head of Saatchi & Saatchi’s AtPlay interactive division who spoke on Transmedia Story-telling.

At the end of the morning Dave Duarte asked each one of us to write down the top three things we had taken out from the event. Each attendee then read out the learning they felt was most significant. The exercise generated such a great summary of how (and how not) to tell your brand story within the social media space that I thought I should try a similar approach here.

So – here are my top-ten learnings from the workshop:
1. Within the online environment social media is as impactful as word of mouth. These days, the community is the most trusted source of information. People don’t look to you for advice around your brand – they look to one another. In fact, the connected consumer can completely bypass your traditional brand messaging if they want to. Note to self, don’t spend nearly as much time worrying about the copy on the latest 24.com print ad.

2. With everyone connected to everyone else the community’s perception of your brand is in fact your brand’s positioning. The statement perception is reality has never been truer. Do the necessary research to make sure that you understand exactly how the community perceives your offering. If the perception is positive (even if it isn’t what you planned it to be) leverage it. Don’t try and use advertising to change it. If it’s negative look very carefully at why and then address the real problems. A swanky microsite or fun facebook app will not change how people feel about your brand if the product is unreliable or irrelevant or the service offering is awful. Not even social media can help you polish a turd.

3. Even though it’s crucial to interact with and engage the community - social media IS NOT a marketing campaign in its own right. It is purely a platform or set of tools that can be used to reach and communicate with your target audience. You cannot throw all your basic marketing fundamentals out of the window just because you have a facebook group or twitter account.

4. There are a number of ways to utilise social media to position or build your brand. At the one end you can look to purely open up the channels of direct communication between yourself and your consumers. For example, your brand could write a blog and your readers could comment. Or your brand could tweet and your readers could @reply. On the other end of the spectrum is the concept of brand embodiment where the community is so passionate about your brand that they become ambassadors of their own accord and manage community perceptions on your behalf without your input. Brands like Apple – revered by their users - are in this very lucrative position.

The more you open up to the community the less control you have over the outcome. And within the digital space swarms (where everyone in the community is very easily affected by everyone else) develop very quickly and are close to impossible to control. So, the outcome of the exercise may not be what you had planned at all. Be cognisant of that.

5. Not all aspects of social media are right for all brands. If your brand’s personality does not lend itself to community interaction via twitter – don’t tweet. And, if having a facebook group does not make sense for your brand (and therefore will not make sense for the community) do not create one. The fit between the brand and what it is doing should be completely natural. If it feels forced it will not work.

6. Great social media campaigns must be run by people with great social media skills. It takes experience and expertise to get it right. If the marketer doesn’t tweet or blog in their own capacity he or she should probably not be tweeting or blogging on behalf of the brand. The brand’s presence in the community must also feel “real”. It should be aware of and quick to react to what is happening around it in the social media space. A relevant trend on twitter should be commented on while it is still topical. A question posted on a blog should be answered quickly.

You have to understand that you cannot set up your social media strategy and then walk away. It’s an ongoing project that needs a team of experts to manage it on a day to day basis. And, that team needs to be empowered so if the agency is the team - the client needs to be comfortable with them making the calls.

7. Maintain a good balance between the brand’s presence in the online space and its presence in the real world. And keep the two well aligned. If the brand is running a social media campaign where consumers are asked to submit photos of themselves and their friends having a great time – the brand should consider running a real-world campaign where you can enter a competition and win a party for you and your friends. If your brand has an opinion on a particular topic on twitter, it should not contradict that stance in its latest press release. It comes down to the brand being real – having integrity, knowing who it and being consistent. The community will soon catch on if it’s flaky.

8. Fish where the fish are. Access and work within the same social spaces that your consumers are already active in. Don’t build a new social network and then expect people to move. If facebook was a country it would be the 5th largest in the world. And, twitter is growing at twice the rate of facebook. If you want to engage your consumers in a social media setting, chances are you’ll find them there.

9. Make it all about the community. Put the people and their everyday lives in the centre of your social media tactics. People love nothing more than to showcase themselves and their lifestyles to those around them. And – if it really isn’t your brand’s style to make it all about everyone else, and you have an understanding of how to tell the world how great you are without ever coming across as being conceited or boastful, do a Seth Rotherham and make it all about YOU. Seth has a lifestyle his community hankers after. They all live vicariously through him which keeps them coming back time and again.

10. Have Fun! Don’t take yourself or your social media tactics too seriously. Know how to admit when you have it wrong and eat humble pie while you’re busy rectifying it. Expect some good natured (and perhaps not so good natured) criticism from your community. Take it – think about it and use it to make your brand that much more likable. There was a time when marketers used to worry about the unhappy customer who, instead of telling the company, told ten other people about your brand’s mess-up. Today, if you’re active within their community, chances are you’ll be one of the ten they’ll tell. And that is a very powerful position to be in.

So, that’s the top ten things I took out from the Huddlemind Word of Mouse workshop. I hope I have done the speakers and their presentations justice. It was a great event - interesting, interactive and entertaining and all 4 members of the 24.com marketing team felt they learnt a great deal.
Let me know your comments on the 10 points listed above. Do you think they provide a good guide for how to get social media right? If not - send me your own top ten and 20Fourlabs will publish them.