Social media continues to revolutionise corporate culture. It opens up new avenues of communication, breaks down barriers between employers, employees and the public, and provides new opportunities for brands to put a human face to their image.

CEOs are no exception to this quiet revolution. Customers want to see that even the big bosses are humans with their own personalities, peculiarities and life stories. Here are two examples of CEOs using social media to communicate their personality to their employees and the general public:

T. Boone Pickens and LinkedIn

The CEO of BP Capital, T.Boone Pickens, has attracted 246,500 followers to his LinkedIn Influencer profile despite having only posted 23 updates. He writes about the economic developments of the energy market, politics as well as sharing his own personal experience of leading a multi-billion dollar business.

LinkedIn users are looking for authenticity and genuine insights into the CEO’s personality. Unsurprisingly, the most engaged post from Pickens is therefore not about his opinion on the free market approach to the energy market, and not on his views of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It is in fact about his office desk!

Can there be a better case for corporate authenticity on social media?

George Colony and Twitter

The CEO of Forrester Research is not using Twitter very often – his tweet frequency averages to around 0.2 tweets per day. Despite this, he has attracted over 13,000 followers. How did he do it? Admittedly, his brand name has a role to play in the follower acquisition process but, more importantly, he engages in an authentic conversation.

Interestingly, George Colony mainly posts plain tweets. His posts contain no replies or links, which indicates that the tweets are authentic, designed purely for communication on Twitter.

His tweet distribution considerably differs to that of Richard Branson, who mainly posts links to the corporate pages of his business:

So, what have we learnt from T. Boone Pickens and George Colony? Authenticity trumps frequency and authenticity trumps impersonal corporatism. Be who you are and get out there. Social media users will recognise your honesty and your social authority will grow because of it.

You may also find this infographic on CEOs and social media thought-provoking.

Images courtesy of LinkedIn, Twitter, Twtrland

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“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”

Kennedy’s inauguration speech was as relevant to the American people in 1961 as it is to the content marketer in 2013.

Why? Substitute the word ‘country’ with ‘audience’ and you’ll see.

Because a successful content strategy isn’t self-centric. And it doesn’t start by asking what the audience can do for the brand. It starts with the audience and it asks what that audience wants and needs. And then it delivers.

Take a look at your content. How much of what you produce is about your brand, your news, reviews, products and promotions. And how much of your content caters to your customers’ wants and needs?

If your content focuses more on your brand than your audience then your strategy needs a rebalance.

Paul Chaney at Practical Ecommerce recommends adopting a 70/20/10 ratio:

• 70 percent of content should address customer interests and needs. These can be delivered in the form of top tips, how-to’s, Q&As, content curation and useful resources.

• 20 percent of content should be user-generated (UGC), allowing your audience to contribute content elements such as videos, images and graphics and giving a sense of ownership back to the community.

• 10 percent of content should be self-centric and focused around news, product and sales messaging. Your community will soon disperse or disengage if they are bombarded with over-promotion.

By adopting an audience-centric content strategy that starts with building a relationship, giving guidance and providing information relevant to audience needs, there is a greater likelihood of ending with acquisitions and sales. Or, as Ted Rubin calls it in this nifty infographic, Return on Relationship.

Image courtesy of Jeff Dean - then a student at Lawrence College, Appleton, Wisconsin, under a  Wikimedia Commons license.

Infographic courtesy of Smarter Commerce Blog.

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Socialbakers recently released its Q4 results for the best and worst performing brands on social media, defined by a brand’s level of attentiveness to its community.

I was immediately struck by giffgaff’s position at number four in the worst offenders list.

This is a brand that prides itself on working “in collaboration with its members”. Surely a business with such a social proposition should be thriving instead of diving down the social league tables?

And then I remembered a chat I had with Heather Taylor, giffgaff’s former Social Media and PR Manager, back in 2011.

We were discussing her views on creating thriving online communities and one of her strongest beliefs was that, while a good community manager should be entirely immersed in their community, the best communities work not on a One-To-Many, but on a One-To-One-To-Many structure.

In other words, the community will not truly thrive until super users rise up and take moderation into their own hands. The community manager is more of a host, there to facilitate the venue and introductions and throw conversation prompts in when required, but also there to take a step back and keep a subtle, but all-seeing eye over events.

That giffgaff has a seemingly low response rate (8.48%) may be less of an indictment and more of a hat-tip to a self-moderating community.

That said, and while collaborative communities administering self-moderating customer service might sound like social Nirvana, it seems not all brands have quite reached this elevated status, with many failing to deliver on the basics.

In a recent experiment by Research Advice, only 14% of a total of 280 customer service tweets directed at 14 different global brands received any response.

Garnering a community of super users ready to assist, defend and advocate, might be the social idyll, but it will never be achieved until brands get the basic hygiene of social customer service right.

References

Charts courtesy of socialbakers, The Best and Worst UK Brands in Social Customer Service

Infographic courtesy of Ashley Verrill, The Great Social Customer Service Race, supermedia

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What can social media tell us about the sad demise of high street retailers such as Woolworth’s, Comet, Blockbusters and Jessops? Some quick and dirty research shows these high-street failures were also social media fails.

There could be many reasons for their failure, not least the products they sell, their online strategy, brand, pricing etc…

But out of curiosity I wanted to know how these failed stores fared on social. For simplicity’s sake, I just looked at their Facebook pages for the number of likes.*

As you can see from the table below, (unsurprisingly, perhaps), the numbers seem low.

I then compared them to some of the (what appear to be) more buoyant high street stores. As you can see the average community size of this group of survivors is 384,363, compared to 38,535. That is a 10 fold difference!

I am not claiming this is in any way scientific, but it does beg two thoughts about why the failed high street stores have relatively small Facebook communities:

• Is it because few customers literally liked them? So low levels of engagement on Facebook suggests lower levels of consumer interest and engagement with the brand.

• Or is it because of a lack of investment in digital and social specifically to drive up numbers? If so, this demonstrates they were generally a business behind the times anyway…

There seems to be some form of correlation but I would love to know your thoughts…

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Accumulating connections on Google+ isn’t a problem for some brands – take Cadbury UK with nearly 3 million! But for others, growing the size of the community remains a big challenge when using Google+ Business.

The art (and little bit of science) of growing the follower and fan-base for business profiles on Twitter and Facebook is well understood.  Less so for Google+ Business.

Even for individual users of Google Plus there are many ways to engage and connect. None of these can be replicated with Google Plus Business unless the user is in the circles of the page (i.e they have chosen to connect to the page).

Until now. New changes give community managers of Google Plus Business more ways to engage even if users are not in their existing circles. They can now:

• ‘Plus One’ post by individual users
• Comment on post by individual users
• Share posts written by individual users

This will boost engagement with users, and in doing so will increase the likelihood of individual users adding them to their circles. This will increase the reach.

Google official statement on the subject to the Next Web also sign-posts the customer service opportunity:

“We’re always experimenting with new ways to make the social experience more organic. As such, Pages are now able to comment freely on posts of interest to them. We think this provides a better sharing experience for pages and profiles alike. For example, if someone praises their favourite bakery on Google+, that baker could now say thank you to that customer, right in the stream. Or if someone posts about a customer service issue, that business could reply directly, providing a better user experience.”

There is a lot going on with Google Plus. We intend to provide more analysis on the possibilities over the coming weeks.

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I love to talk about social customer service. I think it’s fascinating and incredibly pertinent in our digital world. It also still amazes me how brands and retailers are still missing a trick! I’ve experienced this slow uptake for myself recently; waiting nearly 2 months for a replacement washing machine was certainly enough to make me take to Twitter. Sadly the slow, inadequate response that I received from the whitegoods retailer in question only made me madder.

This brings me on to an interesting whitepaper from Conversocial that I came across today, which looks at the current state of social customer service. Killer stats – not to be scoffed at!

Are you one of the 88% who would be less likely to buy from a brand having seen complaints ignored online? A quick, efficient response on social media no longer impresses, it’s simply expected.

Furthermore, when you look at the outstanding growth stats from 2012 (see below), there’s no denying social customer service is continuing to swell at an exponential rate. It makes you think about the resource implications and how the upscaling of social customer service teams will need to be a priority for many socially active companies in 2013.

297% growth in the number of replies brands sent on Facebook and Twitter Tweet

393% growth in the number of replies brands sent out on Twitter Tweet

“Social media as a core engagement channel will have to be treated as business critical” – I certainly agree with this statement. 2013 looks set to be the defining year in which those who are getting it right really start to see the benefits.  So, I’ll round off with this final graph which serves to emphasise WHY brands should bother with social customer service – pure and simple, it makes customers happy!

To download the full whitepaper ‘Evolving Social Customer Service’ visit this link.

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We love this recent infographic from the guys Our Social Times. With more than 57% of consumers searching online to solve customer service issues, it’s an area that just can’t be ignored.

Consumers are increasingly turning to social to solve queries and resolve grievances

If you would like to find out more about the way social media is reshaping the relationship between customers and brands, then immediate future MD, Katy Howell, is speaking at The Social Customer 2012 conference in London tomorrow, 29 March 2012.

For further details and to find out how you can still claim immediate future’s exclusive 10% discount contact info@immediatefuture.co.uk.

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Engagement is of paramount importance when it comes to getting it right in social media. Your contributions on social networks form the outward representation of your brand or company online and define how you are viewed by others.

Which is why effective and compelling engagement requires scrupulous planning and calls for careful consolidation of your overall social media strategy and content plan.

Three simple recommendations for successful engagement include:

1. Decide your online persona
Your outputs must correspond with your company or brand persona, which should be carefully considered and agreed before launching into online communications. Those engaging on your behalf need to understand and embody your brand or company’s social media personality, so that they reflect this in their tweets, posts and blogs. Bear in mind that social media often requires a different, or slightly more relaxed tone of voice.

2. Establish clear etiquette and workflow guidelines
This should be given careful consideration during strategy planning, however, it’s important to make sure that these rules are maintained and translated in your engagement on social networks. Consistency is key, particularly when you have more than one employee participating on your brand or company’s behalf.

Establishing a clear workflow for handling detractors is also something that requires careful consideration. Your employees need clear guidelines for responding to defamers, general criticisms and social customer service issues in an appropriate manner.

3. Listen & ask questions
Listening to your community can provide you with insight into the kind of engagement that will get them participating. Your followers and fans won’t appreciate it if you bombard them with irrelevant content, which offers no means of getting involved. Social media isn’t about shouting with a megaphone, it’s about generating a conversation, asking questions. If you don’t offer your fans a two-way dialogue then you are failing from the outset.

For further ideas and inspiration for engagement, we recommend a report recently published by Radian6, titled ‘30 ideas for your 2012 social media plan’.

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You may have seen the other day that GPS navigation system Waze hit 10m users. It’s a social tool that aggregates user reports on traffic, accidents and the like. I’m a recent convert and signed up a few months ago, since then it’s become a part of my daily commute. If any of you have experienced the vagaries of rush hour traffic on the A3 you’ll understand that drivers need all the help they can get.

Waze: Useful and free, what's not to like?

As a consumer my prerequisites for downloading a geolocation app have to fulfil at least 3 of the following. Here’s how Waze hits those targets:

• Collaborative – Waze uses thousands of users’ traffic reports to create a map of road congestion and allows them to send messages in real time to update each other. Its success rests on the community spirit of its users
• Timely – this all happens in real time, a boon for an audience where seconds count
• Useful – I’ve avoided innumerable traffic jams with this tool and anything that can make the daily commute less painful and for free gets my thumbs up
• Fully integrates with my existing social profiles without superseding them – this is not a Foursquare, inundating friends with useless and annoying updates. It fulfils a purpose and doesn’t pretend to be a Facebook replacement. Should the jam be particularly bad you can send your update to Twitter or Facebook to alert your wider following, but that’s it. Waze knows its limits

Download it for your iPhone, Android or Blackberry here. My username is rupinjapan, so if you see a Transit wrapped round a traffic light on the Cobham bypass let me know ahead of time.

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An experimental scientist? A mathematician, an historian, an IT geek, a money making  economist or socially savvy psychologist? Last week we conducted a Twtpoll to discover who you would rather employ as a social media consultant for your business. The results were eye opening.

To our great surprise the mathematician received no votes.  One thing that social media and the world of online has is data – mountains of it. The ability to analyse and interpret data is increasingly important in social media, whether evaluating campaigns, assessing website analytics or search data or teasing out insights from the universe of social conversation.

However, it was the psychologist who was the most sought after. Inevitably, being able to understand the human psyche is a great advantage when trying to influence people and help brands to communicate effectively with consumers.

The IT geek ranked fourth in desirability. Having an avid interest in digital is a must, as the technology that drives social media is constantly evolving. But, perhaps our voters thought their technical know-how would obscure their ability to engage?

After much debate in the office we concluded that a professional with a mix of both psychology and a mathematician’s skills would be best suited. Having a firm grasp of statistics really is a prerequisite for the role. Social media campaigns’ success is dependent on a number of factors, one of which is to feel at ease with analysing data and responding accordingly.

Who would you employ in a flash? And whose CV would be quickly chucked in the recycling bin? We would love to hear your thoughts…

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