Tag Archives: Community
It’s official: the Guinness Book of World Records has declared a new record for the fastest time to reach 1 million followers on Twitter. Not surprisingly, the “#winning” honor goes to the psycho celeb du jour, Charlie Sheen. Like a car crash, his bite-sized, 140-character nuggets of crazy have captured the attention of Tweeple the world over—at last count, his following is well over 2 million strong.
Is it Sheen’s extraordinary social media savvy that has everyone riveted? I think we’d all agree that’s not it. It’s more likely the poetic verse rolling from his fingertips and the spectacle of a train wreck unraveling before our eyes.
“This Warlock is in the breach. Poised. T – minus 51 mins. read my tigerblood dripping lips; you’ve been warned.”
Right…. Sheen, like the Ashton Kutchers and Kim Kardashians of the world, has what most of us do not: spell-bind celebrity status that draws people into their digital web of antics like moths to a flame.
So what strategy should the rest of us (whether brands or individuals) employ in order to achieve social media success?
If you’re in the working world, you’ve probably sat through a 401(k) benefits meeting and heard the spiel:
“Saving for retirement is really important. And if you just set aside a little bit per day, you won’t even feel the contributions coming out of your paycheck. For example: think about how many times you go for that morning coffee at Starbucks. Now do the math. $5 per day x 7 days a week x 52 weeks in a year…”
When it’s framed like that, it’s hard to argue that a daily Starbucks fix can add up to a pretty hefty dent in your bank account. Yet interestingly, roughly a week ago, Starbucks became the first brand to surpass the 10-million-fan mark.
From a Luxury Brand to a Listening Brand
In these tight, recessionary times, with unemployment rampant and people everywhere feeling the financial pinch, Starbucks, once an icon of edible luxury, has emerged as a winner, warming consumers’ hearts like a peppermint latte on cold winter day.
It wasn’t too long ago that Starbucks was dubbed a brand in crisis with eroding sales, rampant store closings and plummeting stock prices. But now, in August of 2010, they are firmly on the rebound and own boasting rights as part an elite group: the 10 million fan club, which includes such social media superstars as Lady Gaga and President Obama. So how did they do it?
Continue to Starbucks’ 6 Tips to Inspire Action with Social Media.
Todd Shamberg | Critical Mass Chicago
“People laugh at things that are true and we all remember something that was really funny.” -Tom Yorton
It can be challenging to use humor when speaking to a community in the digital space, but it is essential to find ways to “humanize” our voice. One of my jobs is to keep people coming back to my client’s social channels to learn, be entertained and more importantly, just be a part of something. A few great ways to keep the community growing is by posting links to various news articles, posting interesting and relevant videos and developing a rapport with the individuals. In order to use humor in social media, you need to first know exactly who it is you’re talking to, according to Yorton. “You have to know your audience, and you must know what’s true for them – what’s unique for them in that category,” he said. Yorton also talked about how knowing your audience allows you to build that rapport and when using humor in marketing, 
it is crucial to keep it short and sweet. Communities are usually formed in the social space because there is a common interest among members. Using that commonality and producing a little humor will keep people interested in the product or service and entertained by the content. Community members in the automotive world might be brought together by a passion for speed and horsepower. People in the acting world might have a common interest in Steve Martin (he DOES have a FB page).
For those of you that are curious to see how incorporating humor to tell a brand story can be done well, just take a look at the new Orbit “The Prom Date.”
Finding the common interest among community members is the easy part. Finding a way to incorporate humor in a way that’s relevant to the brand is the difficult part. I think one great way to effectively integrate humor in social media from the community side is creating a recurring content feature or theme. An idea I’ve personally been considering is something like Storytelling Fridays where every Friday the members of an auto community share stories about the first car they owned. Most likely you will see some humor come out through these stories and it also gets the community involved on a personal level, which is the surest way to to keep them invested.
I challenge you to use a little humor in your next encounter with an online community. Or have you already? Feel free to share here, we’d love to hear your great ideas.
Todd is a Community Moderator for Infiniti Global, working in our Chicago office.
Lindsay Renwick | Critical Mass Toronto
The good folks at Facebook caused quite a flap last week when they announced a major change to the custom Landing Tabs feature on Facebook Pages. The upshot was that Pages would have required a minimum of 10,000 fans or an existing relationship with a Facebook advertising representative in order to qualify for a custom tab.
Mere days later, the policy has been rescinded due to the overwhelming outcry. Claiming that the change would stack the deck against companies trying to use Facebook to deftly and inexpensively build a social following, marketers, developers and small businesses persuaded the world’s largest social network to reconsider. The furore is dying down, but it remains a sobering reminder to businesses and to the agencies who recommend and maintain Facebook Pages for their clients, that carefully-crafted plans can come tumbling down at the flick of a digital switch.
Would it really have been that bad?
With the potential crisis averted, let’s explore the question of whether this would have been as huge a disaster as predicted.
At no point did Facebook threaten the wholesale removal of brand pages from the network. Brands would have been permitted to maintain their Wall feeds as usual which means that the social activity the Pages feature was designed to host and foster was never under threat. Brands with active and engaged community managers would have been free to continue building their followings by posting links to their Wall pages, generating discussions and hosting contests.
What would have been limited are the static Landing Tabs, which provide good SEO, allow a quick hit of brand messaging, and provide ongoing work for developers. While brands that can afford the investment have engaging and interactive Landing Tabs, smaller businesses tend to use them as a one-stop spam page that users bounce from nearly immediately.
This is about engagement, not spam. Read More
By Nicole Armstrong | Critical Mass Calgary
Last year, the ENGAGEMENTdb Report came out proving the more socially engaged a brand is the better it performs in both conversations (building consistent brand perceptions) and financial performance. And last month, eMarketer came out with a report finding that people who follow brands on social platforms have an increased intent to purchase that brand. In addition, 60% of respondents claim their Facebook fandom for brands increases their chance of recommending that brand to a friend–this is almost 80% for people following brands on Twitter.
So, this makes it very clear that online brand engagement leads to positive business results: increased purchase intent, positive word of mouth & brand affinity. However, if not approached from the appropriate angle, things can turn very sour, as bad news travels faster than ever because of social platforms. More importantly, if a brand is not being honest & genuine in its actions, consumers will discover its falsities just as fast.
So, when a brand engages with its customers, it must do so genuinely and with purpose.
The other day, one of my colleagues mentioned that his dentist sent him a Happy Birthday email. He explained how out of place it felt, as it was a generic, insert-name-here kind of email, plus he doesn’t have that kind of relationship with his dentist – a person he sees once, maybe twice, a year. Now, if he sent a Happy Anniversary: Thank you for being a valued patient for ‘X’ number of years, that would have made more sense, because it would have been in context with his brand relationship.
This got me thinking: if engaging with customers can lead to such fantastic results, yet becoming too buddy-buddy can sour that relationship, where is the line for appropriate brand engagement? Because, really, there is a fine line between treating customers like revenue generating units and going too far in trying to “friend” customers.
So, I began looking into how customers want to engage with brands online. What I found was 4 key things customers want from an online brand relationship – they want to:
- Ask questions / make suggestions and be answered / heard
- Be “in the know” with exclusive content about new products, features, services, etc.
- Be rewarded for showing their support with exclusive offers & promotions
- Be introduced to others who are associated with the brand as well
In essence, customers don’t want to become friends with their favorite brands; rather, they want to form a utilitarian relationship with brands. This helps them get the most out of their brand experience, whether it be insider tips & tricks, deals on the next hot thing, recognition for being a valued customer, etc.
So, in the end, social media should be leveraged to enable brands to reach the middle ground, between treating customers like numbers and close friends, and, instead, treating them like people, who want to get the most out of their brand experience, beyond the product and/or service.
Nicole is an associate planner from our Calgary office.
By Jeana Anderson | Critical Mass Chicago
Illustration by EffingBoring
I recently started following the White House on Twitter, @WhiteHouse for those of you who want to check it out. A closer look at the content in the twitter stream sped me on a path towards applying some of Critical Mass’s Community Management best practices to the White House’s social media presence.
Best practice one: Research and understand the community before engaging. Moderating a community of President Obama’s supporters alone, the over 13 million citizens who opted into the campaign’s e-mail list, presents itself as a gut wrenching challenge for a single moderator. Thinking big picture: moderating President Obama’s social media community would never just be those 13 million opt-ins. The community would potentially consist of every U.S. internet user, 163.3 million people according to comScore.
