Conversational Brand

Anyone can set up a Facebook fan page where nothing happens. When it comes to community management, thinking in terms of tools totally misses the point. One should think about this issue from a change management standpoint. The real question has to be “Is my organization structured in a way that makes it possible to conduct a social media strategy? “. Social networks are primarily a distribution channel.

In order to live and grow within social networks, your brand must adopt a “conversational stance”. To generate interest, you must feed your community with value added content. Finally, to engage in a meaningful dialogue with your community, you must listen and evolve according to its aspirations. Because if you continue to push content that no one cares about like in the old days, your community will be tired of your marketing messages sooner than you think. And we don’t want to make all these efforts in vain, do we? Here are 6 smart moves you can do to join the conversation before it’s too late.

Component 1, the basics

First and foremost, you must create a “community management committee” (CMC). This will be your special forces, the core of your social media initiatives. As soon as you have identified the Web 2.0 superheroes within your organization and set up this committee, make them work on establishing social media guidelines. This way you will insure the consistency of your “conversational stance” across all touch points. Once this is done, CMC must provide countries with the appropriate tools (Blog platforms, social media guidelines, monitoring tools…) and develop KPIs in order to measure the effectiveness of your strategy as it develops. If you run a small business, you should consider hiring a VA (virtual assistant) to set up, monitor and support your social media strategy.

Component 2, the content

CMC must cover your events, fairs, conferences and other significant actions at the corporate level (including articles, photos, videos…). One thing that we know for sure is that when you forget to cover an event or a news on the web, you miss 90% of the conversational potential of it. It’s too bad because these events cost money and you want your brand to be seen, right? So each time something happens, make sure someone is around with a camera. Then make sure that they talk about it on your corporate Blog, your Facebook page or any branded User Generated Content tool. If you are a multinational organization, the CMC must motivate local community managers to do likewise according your social media guidelines at the country level. Moreover, CMC will be responsible for mobilizing your staff so that it creates powerful content in order to drive traffic and jumpstart the conversation. There are many ways to incentive employees to comment on your company Blogs and to participate in your social media initiatives. If you are a solopreneur, you can team up with other solopreneurs or entrepreneurs to help and support each other in your social media strategies. You can also motivate your existing clients to comment on your blog or social media pages to create more buzz.

Component 3, “take care of the inside, the inside will take care of the outside”

CMC will also create social media accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, you name it) by subject: careers, latest news, investor relations, line of products, community events, etc. By segmenting your news feeds you get more subscribers because they can chose the content that matches their interests. Of course CMC will then urge countries to follow up locally. It will also create value by identifying and promoting “best practices” from all across the organization in order to make everyone move up the learning curve.

And yes, this is the most important point: you will rapidly realize that some of your employees will be more active than others. We will call them the “Ambassadors”. The “Ambassadors” will be very useful to implement your social media strategy and create content. These people like to communicate and don’t mind being in the spotlight. So if you have important recruitment needs for instance, it could be a good idea to interview some “Ambassadors” in order to gather videos for your career section. They could speak out about how great it is to work at your company for instance. They can also participate in the production and promotion of the brand content internally and externally.

Component 4, approaching the blogosphere

Now is the time to get people to read your stuff and that’s tricky! Every day we are bombarded with loads of information and we need to discriminate because there’s just no time to grasp it all. So how do we discriminate? We only read the “relevant” content of course! How do we know it’s relevant if we haven’t read it yet? Most of the time, we deem it meaningful because it is recommended by someone we trust. That’s why you need to get the influencers on board in order to get your message across. That’s why CMC will provide exclusive content and beta versions for influential bloggers. And since these people usually have big egos, they will be grateful if you keep them informed of your company news before everyone else. Make sure that influential bloggers are well treated and that they are rewarded when they cover your brand’s initiatives and product launches. Invite them as VIPs to exclusive venues, conferences and other events. If they are respected experts in your field, ask them what they think and adjust your products and services accordingly. They will be happy to tell the world how valuable their contribution was. Yes, clearly a win-win situation. This works also for small businesses and solopreneurs, but in addition you might consider taking advantage of affiliate marketing to “pay” those who promote your brand, products and events.

Component 5, distribution and consistency

This last part is more mechanical but nevertheless important to get the full potential of social media. CMC must encourage the “Ambassadors” to post comments on other Blogs related to your company’s area of expertise in order to increase your visibility and generate traffic. CMC has to maintain a comprehensive list of social media accounts for your brand. In partnership with countries, it will ensure that the content on these accounts is consistent with the social media guidelines (content quality, freshness, tone of voice …). With the help of “Ambassadors”, it will share and distribute recently produced contents on all social networks (job vacancies, upcoming events, blogs posts, new videos, interviews, white papers, photo essays).

Conclusion: evolve with the communities

Now that your plan is all rolled-out, here’s what all this is really about! Social media changes the whole relationship between brands, consumers and stakeholders at large. Companies that fail to understand this will be left behind by the competition. So please, listen to your community and don’t settle: you must take into account what your community is telling you. Your CMC will gather KPIs both at the corporate level and at country level (some examples: traffic statistics, content sharing via Addthis.com, number of comments, number of posts, photos, videos, number of tweets, number of LinkedIn members). In partnership with the countries, CMC will feed the appropriate departments of your company with information from the communities to make the most of their expectations and adjust your offer according to it. Now that’s adopting a “conversational stance”, bravo!

What are your views on “conversational stance”? Tell me what you think.

Author: Silvia Pencak