The main message of the webcast was to inform the business owners that social media is now apart of the marketing mix. Spread Fast was educating the business owners on how to not rely on just one network just as Facebook and Twitter, but to venture out and try creating their own social networks. The webcast also talked about how to focus on objectives to satisfy what the customer needs. Spread Fast came up with six objectives for business owners to follow and allow them to tie their efforts into the ultimate goal.
The first objective to social networking is to build brand awareness. Social networking is a great way to reach people and to drive traffic to other channels such as the company website. Social networking also allows you to reach a new audience and allows you to share your expertise and positioning. Ultimately the goal is to allow people to follow your brand easily and at the consumers’ convenience so they can learn about it.
The second objective is to make customer service personal. Social networking allows you to have immediate response and interaction with the customers. Build helpful communications that illustrates the responsive nature of the company. It can also allow you to discover new customers and some of the issues that are going on in social channels. The company should make the experience personal with actual response from teams. Best Buy is doing something like this with the Twitter account they have set up where the consumer can ask a question about a device on Twitter and they will get an answer by someone that works at Best Buy.
The third objective is event marketing. You can promote event details, activities, and news broadly in a social network. There can also be real-time updates, alerts, and reminders of an upcoming event. It allows people to participate and get the information they need much easier. You can also use the social networking site to share content from the actually event as it is going on.
The fourth objective is to promote product launches. It is an affordable way to reach new and existing audience. It is all about getting the consumer involved with your company. For example, Nokia uses youtube.com to demo a new product that is coming out so people can get a look at the new product before it actually hits the shelves of the store. Also doing something like online contests can help increase the involvement of the consumer.
The fifth objective to social networking is building a sales pipeline. It is very effective in driving traffic to their websites. When you make an advertisement about the company, you can insert things on the end of the ad such as the website of the company, and a catchy slogan to get people to look at the site.
The sixth objective to social networking is community activation. It allows you to have a closer connection between the brand and community. Knowing when to distribute the message is also key to a successful social network page. It is good to provide the consumer with incentives. TOMS Shoe Company does a great job of this with the fact that they promote when you buy one pair of shoes, TOMS will give a pair of shoes to a child in need.
Although this seems like the obvious choice to go with, we chose TOMS shoes to elaborate. If you notice through out the presentation, TOMS uses at least three of the six objectives Spread Fast went over; building brand awareness, building a sales pipeline, and community activation. The message that the TOMS Company has is a great one. A lot of people want to find ways to give back but do not really know how, and this company gives you a way to do just that. If you watch the video we embedded, you can see how they embed each objective. With building awareness they give a few statistics on what is going on in third world countries and why children need help. With building sales pipeline, they put their website at the end of the video for people to go to. And with community activation, TOMS gives people the incentive to get involved because the consumer knows if they buy a pair of shoes, another pair will be given to a child in need in a third world country. TOMS has great word of mouth and this could be part of the fact that they know how to use social networks to promote their cause.
Ultimately, I think these are great objectives to use in order to start social networking. With the way the world is today, social networking is key because that is how a lot of people communicate and get informed about new and existing products. Consumers don’t just go out and buy products anymore; we want to know exactly what we are buying and what different people have to say about it. If you can really “sell” your product to me in the right way, I am more like to go out and buy it and probably tell more people about the company.
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