The Obvious Objectives (Team Carlos)

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.

Social Media Pocket Guide Webcast Overview

Main Message

            The main message for the Social Media Pocket Guide webcast provided by the American Marketing Association would be key tactics that marketers need to be able to employ toward the use of social media. The webcast provided information regarding ways in which social media can be integrated into existing organizational goals. The webcast was very insightful showing how social has become part of the marketing mix. The first three objectives build brand awareness, make customer service personal, and event marketing are three key takeaways that gained from this webcast. The use of social media for product launches/new service announcements, building sales pipelines, and community activation are ways to reinforce the first three key objectives.

6 Key Objectives & Examples

            #1 Build Brand Awareness

Building brand awareness through social media has so many advantages. Being able to reach larger amounts of people is the big advantage. As companies build brand awareness they can lead these people to other corporate channels. These messages can also be received by audiences that before were unlikely to receive the message. It also allows for expertise sharing and positioning to be accomplished. TOMS is a brand that we are all familiar with mainly being that we are a large part of their target market. The way that TOMS reached its consumers is through twitter uploading pictures of what they were doing.

#2 Make Customer Service Personal

            By making customer service personal you give your customers an immediate response, while interacting with them making it even better than a phone call. This can show customers that companies want to help them. Companies can gain new customers because if someone that is looking for a solution for their problem and see how responsive that company is to their customers they also want that type of service. Allowing the staff to interact with the consumer is something that make the experience a lot more personal. YouTube videos demonstrations on how products can be used or are supposed to be used are a great way to do this. This allows for time to be saved and less customer service calls. The example they gave was Discover and the way they use Twitter to do this.  Discover’s description states, “Your connection to all things Discover - news, offers, tips & events. We're ready to chat & answer your questions Mon-Fri 8am-6pm CST.” There are several other companies that have taken to this same type of customer service alternative to having their customers wait for hours on the phone for a representative such as Best Buy with @ twelpforce. This is Twitter account that Best Buy employees use to solve customers’ problems quicker and in a fun way.

            #3 Event Marketing

Integrating social media with event marketing promoting the event is made easier. Posting event details, activities, and live news feed can be done immediately. People interested in the topic can be more involved making it an even greater event. Reminders and notifications can be done through social media. For example West Texas A&M has really been trying to interact with students through different ways and if you follow them on Twitter you would have known of Thunder X’s our mascots Birthday Bash Community Picnic two weeks ago and then got a reminder and feedback that it was a success. As the webcast said sharing in real-time giving reminders and updates ensures that your networks has every opportunity to be in the right place at the right time.

#4 Use Social Media for Product Launches or the announcement of new services

The webcast pointed out that social media amplifies product launches. It is an affordable way to reach a large and active audience. It helps in reinforcing messages and increasing impression. It builds excitement. Last semester in a class a video TOMS: The Next Chapter was shown about what more they were going to do. This build up excitement for their June 7, 2011 launch of the new TOMS eyewear they would be providing. It was the same One for One concept “With every pair you purchase, TOMS will help give sight to a person in need.” It was a simple video of Blake Mycoskie pushing a shopping cart and everyone wondering what it was but by posting it on YouTube and sharing it through Twitter it allowed for everyone who follows TOMS to become engaged with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm8EPcA2gFE&feature=related

#5 Build Sales Pipeline

Social media is where consumers are spending their time use it to drive that traffic to your website. Provide them with a reason to visit your site, ask them for information about themselves, and feedback about what more you can do. Provide a website that allows them to actually gain knowledge about your company and stuff they want to know. What else are you doing outside.

#6 Community Activation

Community activation is about interactivity driving action. It builds a closer connection between the brand and the community. Through a community activity it raises thee hopes for potential for exponential growth for activity. By providing incentives people are more likely to take action. Another reason is making it easy like Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is doing this by having a Twitter page Wal-Mart Community (@WalmartCAN). “Wal-Mart’s Community Action Network works to better the communities Wal-Mart serves.” This is only a twitter page for their actual website walmartcommunity.com were consumers actually interact and share their story on how Wal-Mart allows them to make a difference in their community. Wal-Mart keeps it up to date and allows for people to share their stories easily building a strong relationship with them.

What we gained…

            The webcast allowed us to gain much insight about the dynamic and innovative ways that companies are using social media. It really broadened our knowledge on the ways that companies can use social media. As stated many times before social media is not creating a Facebook, Twitter, or Blogger, it so much more. It is giving companies a way to reach their consumers in a modern, more proficiently and in larger masses. Something that we do want to point out that we noticed is that the companies that are using social media properly are actually reaching their target market and weeding out unnecessary actions that they would previously have to do. For example with the Direct2Dell blog all of the Dell Community Ambassadors seem to be passionate about their work and the assistance they give others.  It was even surprising to us how a place we shop at so much like Wal-Mart has an online community that we are not aware of. This kind of showed us that no matter how successful and stable of a company you are you can always find a new way to reach out to your market and make a difference.

Brown Bunch

Social Media Pocket Guide (Canyon America)

The point of the webcast is to tell marketers the different ways that they can use social media to promote their brand. Some key uses of social media visited during the webcast are driving traffic, building customer excitement, immediate and more personal customer service and feedback, and lower costs in comparison to other media advertisements. Several times during the webcast, Jordan Viator brought up the importance of driving internet traffic to your facebook page or website where your customers can spend time and learn about the company. This is very important for building brand awareness and getting people involved in the company. By building excitement about your brand in your customers, you then have a source of positive word of mouth and closer connections to your customers. Going back to the previous webinar with Robbin Phillips, customer excitement helps marketers create a “movement” of loyal customers adamantly supporting your brand. Social media allows for immediate distribution of company news and updates, and response to customer concerns, comments, or questions. By using this aspect of social media, marketers can let customers (or potential customers) know about upcoming events, new products, and sales promotions instantly. Customer service can be greatly improved by using this tool as well because customer’s problems can be addressed very quickly and efficiently. Advertising using social media is available at little to no cost in comparison to other advertisement forms because your audience is more targeted so the return on investment is higher.

The webinar gives six objectives that every company should apply to their social media marketing campaign. First is building brand awareness. Social media is very important to creating brand awareness because marketers can demonstrate their expertise within the industry to build credibility, deliver the companies message, and give information about the company to massive amounts of potential customers. Jordan explained that most people who are online use at least two or three different types of social media so it is important that marketers don’t rely on only one form of social media but several. Second is making customer service personal. When a customer has a problem, social media allows for an immediate response to that problem. All customers online (in most cases) can see the problem or question and the response given to it, this helps to show other customers of the expertise of your company. Seeing a person’s name under the answer post makes customers feel like the answer was tailored for them and not a generic answer generated by a computer. It is important to provide “customer education” and show them how to work the product, social media allows for companies to post how-to videos on their website. Third is event marketing. Using social media, marketers can promote event details using real-time updates and customers/attendees can participate in the discussion. Marketers can then share content (pictures, etc.) from the event for everyone to see. Fourth is product launches/announcing new services. Social media is the most affordable way to launch a new product/service and it also gives companies a good way to have contests and giveaways that will build excitement and anticipation for the product/service. The company can post videos of product demonstrations online to show off their products new and exciting features. Fifth is it helps build a sales pipeline. There are unknown opportunities for marketers online. Marketers need to provide their customers with a “call to action” to visit their website, for example put “for more info… [company website]” on products, videos, and advertisements to enhance inbound marketing. The webinar suggests to marketers that they should ask for customer information. Sixth is community activation. Use social media to get closer connections with customers by sharing links, providing incentives, and having pre-packaged content, make it easy for people to share your company.

TOMS does a great job at using this information. TOMS puts their name and website on everything they’re affiliated with and gains huge support with its’ customers by standing for something and asking their customers to do so as well by putting one for one on their web pages, videos, ads, and product packages.. TOMS has a presence on facebook, myspace, twitter, youtube, their own blog, their website, and hundreds more social media outlets.

www.toms.com