Opportunities That Matter on Social Media: Tips from Media Logic’s Retail Social Juice Index Spotlight
You have content ready to go. You’ll publish text, images and videos that show off your brand’s personality via its Facebook Timeline. You’ll engage fans with friendly banter, and you’ll address customer service issues as they arise. Seems like you’ve got social marketing under control, right? Consider these additional opportunities to create the best brand experience:
- Want fans to share your content? Make it entertaining – and stay out of its way. Put your faith in the power of being associated with great material instead of branding everything so heavily it feels like advertising.
- Embrace your brand’s cycles and calendars. Know the times of year customers turn to you automatically, and prepare to welcome them in grand fashion. Go beyond “good enough” – attempt to amaze them.
- Give customers what they want – not only on Facebook, but also IRL! Do your products have direct ties to feedback from customers? Show them you’ve put their requests into action, and they’ll toot your horn!
- Tap into other communities. Share influencer content, and tag influencers in your status updates when appropriate. This strategy extends your brand to new audiences who, based on shared passion, also may be interested in what you have to offer.
- Although timeline places “posts by others” behind the brand page, don’t overlook them. Will you respond to all fan posts? Or only the posts involving customer service issues? Will you mine posts for clues about what fans want to talk about or for information to address troubling product or service trends? However you decide to use “post by others,” keep a close eye on this area to make sure it supports the brand experience you want to promote.
- Imagine your content not only on your page, but also in newsfeed. Know the difference between how a photo looks and how a link looks in each area (and how Facebook continues to change its design) so you can focus attention in the right place. Know what your fans like in their newsfeeds and what they pass over. Know what makes sense to share with friends and what feels too much like advertising.
- Pay attention to what’s going on in the world. Brand gaffs make headlines – and not in a good way. Thinking back to recent tragedies like Hurricane Sandy and the shootings in Newtown, what’s the right thing to do when it comes to posting on social networks? What kinds of posts should your brand cancel? What kinds of posts should you add? Should you go silent on social media for a while? Your brand’s behavior can be an opportunity to demonstrate awareness and sensitivity… or you can appear self-involved and callous.
- Have a plan for real-time crisis management. Consumers in social space are never shy about cheering and jeering. You must actively manage your social streams… even when it gets uncomfortable. Be especially mindful of offensive remarks fan to fan: police those comments and posts! Handling controversy well is an opportunity to show your brand’s confidence and its concern for customers. When Zipcar announced its merger with Avis earlier this year, its fans were unhappy. The brand quickly acknowledged the backlash and reassured its customers, “Thanks to everyone for your passionate posts, as well as your concerns about yesterday’s news. We expect nothing less from our customers, who have guided us and made us who we are over the last twelve years. While we’re very limited in what we can say at this point, we’d like to assure you of a simple fact: We will never veer from our core value of ‘obsessing about the member experience.’”
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Through our “Retail Social Juice Index Spotlight” at Retail Online Integration, we’ve covered social media tactics for over 30 brands and garnered from them about two dozen takeaways. To celebrate a full year of writing the column, we’re revising and sharing some of the content with Media Logic’s audience via a blog post series that highlights our favorite takeaways; this is part one.
