Social Media Strategy Archives - Page 13 of 16

Greenpeace’s Social Media Win Has Losers

08/23/2010 By Jayme Soulati

Rainforest

If you were paying attention to social and traditional media, you will recall the Greenpeace/Nestle global crisis communications situation primarily in March and April this year. I wrote about it here; it was a fascinating study in public relations. (I would’ve liked to have been teaching a PR class when this was unfolding.)

The issue became quite ugly quite fast when Greenpeace launched a crusade with a viral video accusing Nestle of killing orangutans in the rainforest due to its purchase of palm oil from a company in Indonesia that harvested palm oil from the rainforest and sold it to the likes of Nestle.

Nestle went on the defensive on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media hot spots and garnered thousands of hits to its page. Social media erupted against Nestle, as well, and Greenpeace watched their fireworks for weeks. In spite of Greenpeace’s social media win, the losers are still trying to uncover.

The accused Indonesian company from which Nestle and Unilever had been purchasing palm oil, PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources & Technology (SMART), ceased doing business with the two global giants as a result of the allegations. Unilever had been purchasing 47,000 tons of palm oil from SMART annually.

On August 11, 2010, this headline in the Wall Street Journal grabbed my attention, “Palm Oil Firm Rebuts Greenpeace Claim.” STAR paid to conduct a third-party audit of its estates to determine research “shows the company wasn’t responsible for cutting down forest and destroying orangutan habitat for palm cultivation.”

While I can’t corroborate the research report (Greenpeace is rebutting it), I can give you the skinny:

DAMAGE DONE, GREENPEACE “WINS.”

The public relations and social media strategy behind the Greenpeace maneuvers are amazing; and, they’ve been doing this for years. These campaigns are the most well-orchestrated on a global scale; why? Because we live in an interconnected world where videos go viral within hours, and instantaneous, real- time, in-bound communication on social networks heightens the crisis to unmanageable proportion.

The tools are available to all the players except STAR. I have not done my research on this company’s mission, values or business philosophy (here’s a link to Business.com with some info). What I can assume is that people in Indonesia lost money and jobs because of this campaign and monkeys perhaps lost homes, too. World-wide, real-time refute via social media of the allegations by STAR were not possible, but the Wall Street Journal provided the company a solid foundation for which to air its side of the story.

As I weave this story again, I’m drawing your focus to the profound impact social media has all companies. Size Doesn’t Matter!! Word-of-mouth marketing is an amazing channel. If you watched the man in the video biting off the finger of an orangutan when he opened a Kit Kat, it’s highly likely you’ll never eat another (uh, chocolate bar).

Pull Sales to Push Social Media

07/26/2010 By Jayme Soulati

The July 12, 2010 Advertising Age features an interview with LG’s CMO Kwan Sup Lee. He is formerly of P&G and also worked pizza in Korea. LG owns a broad portfolio of consumer electronics products including microwaves and TVs. It is branding itself as a lifestyle company.

The more I study the influence of social media on sales, the more I realize the missing link IS sales. Just like public relations has yet to influence sales directly (we’re on peripheral vision), social media is not touching frontline sales, either.

The story listed five marketing challenges LG faces:

1. Focus on creating great products and then let marketing showcase them.

2. Forget about “one upmanship game” of tech features.

3. Use a broad product portfolio as a strength.

4. …understand your business, your consumers and your brand.

5. Don’t be intimidated by the competition.

Pretty basic and areas of concern by all companies, right? What’s blatantly missing is any mention of sales. The first challenge above is where I paused longest. How I’d like to edit #1 is:

Create great products supported by even greater marketing strategy and arm frontline sales with marketing tools and education about public relations and social media to influence a buy.

Public relations strategy provides a conduit to the customer, and social media channels allow direct, outside-in customer communication. The sales team, however, is WITH the customer face-t0-face whether B2B or B2C!

This strength of position by sales can help influence consumers to:

1. “Like” a Facebook page and subscribe to RSS feeds.

2. Comment on a blog post or YouTube video with positive product feedback.

3. Ask for a Yelp comment.

4. Eliminate the blasted surveys with evey transaction we make and instead drive traffic to social media networks.

A flexible and nimble sales and management culture can make this happen and positively influence consumers’ buys. What do you think? Does this resonate with your thinking about what’s possible?

Social Media Tips & Auto Repair

07/21/2010 By Jayme Soulati

We in social media often forget there are numerous industries and businessess nascent in social media adoption. While we continue to learn the intricacies about new channels, back-end tools, and amplifying our own brands, there are business leaders who still don’t know what Twitter is or why they need a Yelp profile to push local revenue.

This week, I gave a two-hour presentation in Chicago to a 20 group in the auto-repair industry on social media and amplifying brand. To the business leaders who are owners of five to 10 local collision-repair shops throughout the country, I provided the following recommendations to introduce social media and help them tie it in with the core marketing foundation:

Engage, for if you’re not engaged you cannot create community, control the message, or build reputation.
Re-trench the foundation that includes the brand, the Web site and the core communications strategy aligned with business goals.
Execute public relations as part of that core strategy so powerful content can be developed.
Cross pollinate all social networking sites with the Web site to drive search engine marketing.
Develop a corporate social media policy and select and train a front-line team to help build community, trust, transparency, and reputation.
Start slowly; do not tackle all social media channels at the same time. It’s not an all-or-nothing engagement, either.
Yelp is a must for local businesses, and a breadth of opportunity exists to take the lead in a region and vertical.
Because women 55-65 are the fastest-growing segment on Facebook, create a business page and begin a marketing thrust to create community and a new revenue stream among that demographic.
Managing “grudge” emotion is critical to diffuse from becoming an actual complaint or negative comment.
Leave Internet marketing to the professionals. It’s too complex to attempt on your own.
Respond to social media interactions within 12 hours max. If you wait 2.5 days to respond, you’re losing your community.

In your company and to your clients, are there other tips you might offer to those who are late to the party? We who lead have a ton of opportunity to help executives educate and navigate new media before the online world migrates to Web. 3.0.

First Social Media, Then a Buy

06/28/2010 By Jayme Soulati

There are companies not engaging in social media. There are consumers not engaging in social media. There are marketing public relations practitioners not engaging in social media. But that window is closing fast. For those who believe social media and networking are not our future, just look around you.

According to Website Magazine in its Feb. 2010 issue, it says your “social graph” is the most important asset in business. A social graph is a collection of online connections.

In the magazine’s article, 50 Top Social Media Resources, they provided some data (from February):

Facebook is the most popular social networking site for business owners.
Of B2C organizations, 83 percent have Facebook profiles.
Only 45 percent of B2C organizations have a Twitter account
B2B companies have profiles on both sites in more or less equal proportion — 77 percent on Facebook and 73 percent on Twitter.
Participants using social media day-to-day visit company or brand profiles on social sites 62 percent of the time and 55 percent of them search for business information on the social sites.

Before many a consumer makes a buy decision, they comb the search engines for buyer reviews, perhaps on Yelp or Complaints.com, and make an informed decision whether or not to make a purchase. In addition, consumers seek a company’s Facebook profile to see how they engage, what news is available, how fans are responding, and how the company is replying. Perhaps there is a select group of people using these tools to inform a buy decision; and, this will be common practice as the months go by.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are for sure the most well known and used by a plethora of people world-wide; however, they’re not the only players. Ever heard of Revver.com, diigo.com, blackplanet.com, hi5.com, or yuku.com? (Me, neither!) I don’t believe any company is solidly engaging with a majority of the top 50 social media resources listed by Website magazine.

I’m going to make it my mission to share in my sleuthing. What’s your mission in the six months remaining in 2010? (Tick-tock…time’s up!

ENGAGE!

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