BY SANJAY SAHAY
Till a few months ago, Kogi Korean BBQ was a small mobile restaurant featuring a Korean BBQ taco truck that went around Los Angeles trying to sell juicy burritos and tacos that had a unique Korean and Mexican flavour. Now, the roving truck has become a craze, attracting hundreds of die-hard fans each time it parks. Even the media cannot seem to get over how a small independent restaurant could make it so big, so fast.
So what did Kogi do? It made a great connect with its customers, taking the restaurant to them through a combination of blogs, Flickr and Twitter. Today, as it weaves through the busy roads of LA, it tweets about its whereabouts, takes orders and posts its next destination.
Dell did a similar thing. After an individual blogger’s criticism of the company’s customer service led to thousands of comments and complaints being posted on blogs across the globe, Dell launched its own blog to engage directly with its consumers. Since then, it has also leveraged Twitter (
@DellOutlet) for exclusive sales promotions, generating revenues of $3 million from referrals.
Welcome to the world of social media, which is radically redefining the way we communicate and consume media. Simply put, it is a form of media that uses various online technology tools so that people can communicate quickly and easily via the internet to share information and resources. As opposed to traditional media, it allows its readers/viewers/listeners to participate in the creation or development of the content.
A new user will find a variety of tools online. While blogs, discussion forums, wikis and RSS feeds are generic, there are a few specific websites that have become leaders in their space. These include:
Confusing, but useful
Yes, if you are new to this space, it can seem a little intimidating to begin with. But remember, social media offers you an opportunity to rethink the way you communicate and work.
Imagine the possibilities. You can co-create with your customers the way Starbucks does with MyStarbucksIdea (
www.mystarbucksidea.force.com). Or, service your customers better the way Dell did; or help your customers promote their businesses the way VISA does for its small and medium business customers through its Visa Business Network application on Facebook (
www.facebook.com/app). You can leverage social media for marketing, employee communication, training, lead generation, PR, thought leadership programmes, innovation, product design through collaboration, customer support, etc. This is a world limited only by your imagination.
Where to start: What makes sense for Dell may not work for Visa, and vice versa. Similarly, what worked for them may not work for you. So, first work out the business case for social media for your particular needs. Whatever you do must align with your business goals and company strategy. Otherwise, it will fail. Answer the “why” question first.
Do your research – Listen hard. Analyse the market space, your competitors and your customers. Ask the following questions: are they active on social media, how do they use social media, what types of conversations are taking place online? You can use tools like Buzzgain (
www.buzzgain.com), Radian6 (
www.radian6.com), Google (
www.google.com), and SocialMention
(www.socialmention.com) to listen to the online buzz in your area of interest.
Create the strategy – Who is your target audience and how will you engage with them? What is the content that you need in place? Who will own the initiative? Are the buyins from internal stakeholders in place? How are you going to promote your social media presence? How much money is required? Do you have the necessary tools in place? Do you have the right skills in place or you need to outsource? Do you have a web presence or you need to create one? Are there any risks – legal, financial, branding? How are you going to measure success? Make sure you have the answers to all these before you take off.
In fact, there is an interesting blog by Jeremiah Owyang that tells you more about social media strategies. Check it out at (
www.web-strategist.com/blog/).
Measuring Success – As with any other business initiative, there should be an objective metric to measure the success of your efforts. While the actual metric will depend on specific business goals, there are several to choose from: increase in brand awareness, increase in website traffic, increase in customer engagement metrics, change in company/product perception, reduction in support costs, increase in leads and sales, shortening of sales cycles, faster product development cycle and better internal collaboration, among others.
Whatever be your measure of success, remember that Rome was not built in a day. Give your initiative some time to succeed. There will be pitfalls and challenges along the way. For instance, there might be behavioural changes involved, which can take anywhere between three and 12 months.
Start small and experiment - The social space is evolving so fast that it is very difficult to get it right the first time. Run small pilots before a full-blown rollout. Don’t shy away from experimenting with ideas. Monitor and measure regularly, and tweak, if required. There is no pre-defined formula for success.
Maintain consistency – You may decide to be present on multiple social media at the same time, such as YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Forums. In that case, remember to maintain the same brand experience across all of them.
Risks - You can never predict what will happen. The “Will it blend” series of videos from Blendtec led to more than 100 million views (
www.willitblend.com). Apart from increased brand awareness and sales, it also earned $50,000 in ad revenues! While it was a happy ending for Blendtec, it might not be same story for you.
Take the Wal-Mart case, where an attempt by Edelman PR to mix PR and social media boomeranged. A blog ostensibly written by a couple travelling across America and spending nights in Wal-Mart’s free parking lots turned out to be a fake blog, a PR idea cooked up by Wal-Mart’s PR counsellors at Edelman. The blog finally got pulled down, but by then, the retailing giant’s image had taken a major beating.
While formulating your plans for social media, be sure to cover all aspects, such as transparency, authenticity, copyright, IP, country laws, etc. The social media policy of your organisation is also important. If you do not have one, create one. Else, you might land up in a situation similar to that of Domino’s where two of its employees uploaded a video on YouTube, filming themselves doing disgusting things to a sandwich before passing it on to a customer. The video led to a public outcry on hygiene standards at Domino’s outlets and a major PR crisis. The company finally had to release its own video, where its president apologised and called the entire chapter a hoax. Obviously, it didn’t attract half a million viewers.
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This article has been written by Sanjay Sahay, head of online marketing at Infosys Technologies. The views mentioned here are personal and do not represent the organisation. Sanjay would love to hear from you at sanjay.sahay@gmail.com)
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