Does everybody need a social media strategy?
Jan 15th
As the hype of social media begins to die down and companies re-evaluate their efforts with a steely-eyed look at the cost versus benefits, I think it is time to re-visit this important question: Does every company really need a social media marketing plan?
This is a very complex question. So to help answer it, I looked at a few companies with brands that might not be natural fits for a social media presence. Adult diapers. Coal. Hazardous waste clean-up. Playing cards.
Let’s explore this important question by taking a romp through some unusual case studies that stretch the boundaries of social media marketing thinking.
Depend Adult Diapers
Do you need a social media strategy? It depends! Get it? Oh, never mind.
Depend, a Kimberly Clark brand, has no apparent social media offerings. With its typically geriatric customer base, the product website offers a fitting guide and coupons but no social media way to connect. A company not affiliated with the brand has set up a rogue Facebook site called “Depend’s adult diapers.” So Kimberly Clark probably should protect itself by nailing down as many name alternatives as they can on the most popular social media platforms.
Should they have a social media component? It’s not a conversational brand, is it? I really don’t want to participate in any diaper polls.
However, they should consider at least a modest Facebook outpost because their future customers will certainly be there. Also, more and more people are using Facebook to search for brand information. At least one competitor, Poise, does have a Facebook page.
Should they continue to poo-poo social media?
Coal
A big argument I hear against getting involved with social media is when a company sells a commodity product. And, there is perhaps no product less differentiated than coal. In a tough business like that, you simply try to excel where you can by managing the supply chain properly.
I know commenters might argue that there are ways to differentiate any business, but the reality is, usually a contract in this market is won or lost by cutting a few cents per ton. That’s life in a commodity business. Why be on social media?
Peabody Energy is the largest publicly-traded coal company in the world. It has an excellent, informative website, but virtually no social presence (a token Twitter account and a weak Facebook page).
Perhaps Peabody’s strategy is to do whatever they can to avoid social media connection. Let’s face it, any company that scrapes away pristine countrysides to mine a product that is a major contributor to air and water pollution is not necessarily part of a conversation that is shareholder-friendly. Coal is important to the world economy, but it’s a dirty, dangerous business that sparks a lot of emotion in people. Should we support coal energy? It is an argument that will never be settled, and one they can never win. If they had a significant social media presence, the debates and hater harpoons would be endless.
Instead, Peabody can provide financial support to trade organizations like American Coalition for Clean Coal, which has a significant social media footprint — more than 1 million YouTube views, a blog, and a meaningful presence on Twitter and Facebook.
Should a company avoid the cost of social media conversation and move it to a trade association? A viable strategy?
Playing cards
I play this little marketing mind game with myself. I pick a product and then imagine what their social media presence might be. Like playing cards. What can you really say about those for heaven’s sake? They haven’t changed for centuries.
Turns out, quite a lot.
I opened a new pack of Bicycle playing cards and was delighted to see an extra card promoting their social media properties: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. These sites are filled with excellent content for people who love card games, card tricks, and even card-related arts and crafts. There are tons of fan conversations going on for this ancient gaming product.
Bicycle has also launched a premium content site called Club 808 that requires a paid subscription. Are there enough card fanatics out there to support something like that? I guess they’ll find out. But it just goes to show that there are content marketing opportunities for even the most common household products.
Bicycle is not a highly conversational brand but this notably non-digital product is finding interesting ways to create new conversations, and renewed relevance, with a digital audience.
Radioactive Waste Removal
You have to love a company with a tagline of “Providing radioactive waste services since 1952.” Straight to the point. And so is US Ecology, a company specializing in one of the most demanding B2B services on earth.
The company has no social media presence with the exception of a short LinkedIn page. Let’s think about their business model. Somebody has a radioactive mess on their hands. There is a well-known and short list of qualified and trained people to clean it up. The customer inquires to see who is available and asks them to get there fast. There probably isn’t much of a negotiation.
Or perhaps US Ecology has some long-term contracts with companies who generate radioactive waste. You probably don’t want to pinch pennies in that case, either.
If it doesn’t need Facebook to generate demand or customer connection, does US Ecology need a social media presence to attract and retain employees? Apparently not. I actually met some of their workers a few months ago and they were happy to have the job. They are paid well and the hours are good. There is little employee turnover in their area of expertise.
If you were the marketing director for US Ecology would you spend money on a social media marketing program?
The world’s oldest company
Fonderia Pontificia Marinelli has been casting beautiful bronze bells continuously in the quiet Apennine Hills of Italy since the year 1000. It is one of the five oldest companies in the world and, in fact, they have been making their bells the same way throughout the centuries.
The bells of Fonderia Pontificia Marinelli toll in the important buildings of New York, Beijing, Jerusalem, South America and Korea. The family business currently employs 20 people, five of them named Marinelli. The company also has a small museum and hosts special events.
They have a basic website circa 2000 and no social media presence. That doesn’t mean that their content is not being shared by social media savvy visitors from throughout the world, but the old ways seem to suit this family business best.
Fonderia Pontificia Marinelli has made it through wars, natural disasters, and economic calamities without fail. Can it keep going without a social media strategy? If you are looking for an epic bronze bell, would you buy from this company, even if they didn’t have a Facebook page?
Somehow, I think they will outlast us all.
So what do you think? Does every company need a social media strategy? Any of these case studies ring your bell?
Social Media Good Samaritan donates tweets to save businesses
Oct 16th
By {grow} Community Member Pavel Konoplenko
The story begins like any sweet story should — with delicious ice cream.
I first visited Ray’s Candy Store, an old-fashioned, hole-in-the-wall family business, when I was strolling around New York’s East Village. The walls of the store were covered with vintage photos of desserts — like Instagram except in real life! There were also articles and reviews covering the history of this beloved 40-year business.
One article in particular caught my eye. The headline read, “Social media saves beloved East Village candy store.” How could social media, this recent tool of our information age, possibly be used to save the decades-old candy shop? After reading the article on the wall and having a brief chat with the man working the counter, I discovered a wonderful story…. the story of Matt Rosen, the social media Good Samaritan who crafted a social media strategy just because he wanted to save this little store.
Ray Alvarez
The store’s owner 79-year-old Ray Alvarez, immigrated to America in 1964 and took odd jobs until he worked his way up to become the owner of the store. ”It’s my heaven,” Alvarez said in an interview in NYU’s Daily Student Newspaper. “I enjoy every minute of it. I came here from Turkey with no papers in 1964. I worked as a dishwasher, then waiter, then saved enough to buy the store.”
But after 36 years in the same location, increasing rent and taxes threatened to shut the little store down. Word began to spread that Ray was shuttering his business and loyal customers came out in full support of their beloved neighborhood store. Ray said, “They would buy anything and hand me a $20,” Ray said, “and then insist that I keep the change! They kept giving me money.”
But even this benevolence was not enough to keep Ray in business for long.
Matt Rosen
Matt Rosen, a long-time Ray’s customer and Internet-startup consultant, stepped in to help. It was clear that Ray needed something with massive reach at a low cost, and the social web seemed to be the perfect solution. So Matt volunteered to manage the pages on Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, and Foursquare that became the hub of an initiative to connect with the thousands of Ray’s customers throughout New York City and beyond.
Through PayPal donations, sales from Ray’s merchandise, and even a benefit concert, Ray was able to raise enough money to keep the store open. In fact, since his foray into social media, Ray has had his best year of business.
Matt was humble when describing his success. “It starts with the business,” he said, “and Ray himself. Without Ray, nothing we did on Facebook or Twitter would have mattered. The call-to-action was really doing something so we wouldn’t lose Ray.”
The goal of the social media effort, Matt said, wasn’t to get a million followers — that wouldn’t pay the bills. It was to keep Ray’s name out there on a regular basis and get somebody who buys one milkshake a month from Ray to buy two or three. Think of the impact on Ray’s bottom line if 200 customers do that.
“This is a simple, relatively painless way to keep Ray’s name out there.” Rosen said. “If my responding to a tweet or thanking someone who checked in on Foursquare brings them back in to the store, then that’s more business for Ray. We know this stuff is working. I can see the metrics.”
Speaking to a local newspaper, Mr. Rosen said he volunteers roughly 15 minutes a day to managing the assorted online accounts for two star clients. At the end of a typical day he searches for mentions on Twitter of Ray’s and responds to them.
In the first month of setting up Foursqure, 130 people had checked in to Ray’s Candy Store through Foursquare. “That’s tremendous,” said Mr. Rosen. “That’s two days-worth of revenue from Foursquare, and it took me just 15 minutes to set up.”
Social media buzz was a huge economic benefit for Ray, but it also brought his dilemma to the attention of a law student who helped him register his papers with Social Security and Medicare. Ray also recently got naturalized recently and is now an American citizen!
And what does Ray, who first saw his first computer a year ago, think about Matt’s efforts?
“Lots of young people are coming now with their iPhones,” he said. “They say, ‘If I do this, I get $1 off, right?’ I say, ‘OK.’” Ray continued, “[Matt] does advertising for me — it’s really high-tech. I still don’t have a television — I don’t know what Twitter is. This is a free country and you can do what you want,” Alvarez said. “How long am I going to keep working here? Until the end!”
Oh yes, follow Ray on Twitter won’t you?
Pavel Konoplenko, one of the most active commenters on {grow}, is passionate about social media and technology and their effect on today’s world. Connect with him on Twitter (https://twitter.com/pavelnovel)
Photo of Ray Alvarez Courtesy of The Villager
Adopting a Piggly Wiggly View of Social Media
Aug 9th
By {grow} Community Member Lou Hoffman
Companies understand the intellectual argument for embracing the digital world. Prospects, job candidates and other target audiences increasingly conduct due diligence on the Net before making decisions.
That’s the easy part. Most marketing execs get this and the need to come up the digital curve.
But expertise by itself isn’t the game changer.
Mark hit the nail on the head in a recent post: “… social media success is not going to be a function of marketing vision or budget. It’s going to rely on radical organizational transformation.”
Amen.
But this transformation goes deeper than org charts, training and replacing the Friday jelly donuts. I think the game changer lies in companies changing from a mentality of centralized control to one that cultivates a distributed approach of digital actions.
Getting Past the Fright
This is a scary proposition. I can hear the lament echoing in the corporate corridors:
“It’s tough enough that our comms team is deploying social media that generates real conversations, dialogue we can’t always anticipate and with people we don’t always know. And now you expect us to proactively put these tools in the hands of amateurs. Borrowing from Match Box 20, you might not be crazy, but you’re certainly unwell.”
The shift away from a command and control model always causes heartburn.
When the Piggly Wiggly invented the self-serve grocery store, the common wisdom was that customers would steal them blind. The idea of picking your own groceries from the shelves instead of ordering from a single counter was viewed as totally radical in the day.
As it turned out, people lived up to the trust.
Last year we went through the exercise of helping a client CMO sell the idea of a hybrid decentralized model – select employees from all functions across the company would be trained and guided in social media – to the rest of the executive management team. The CEO put the kibosh on the proposal. His rationale – as a public company, they carefully scripted what they’re going to say during each quarterly earnings call and the last thing they needed was some guy in procurement tanking the stock price with an off-hand tweet.
Being a glass-is-half-full type, I told the CMO this is a good start. At least your CEO knows what a tweet is.
Here’s the part the CEO hasn’t figured out.
It Comes Down to Trust
If Piggly Wiggly can trust customers, you can trust your employees. With the right training and guidance, their use of social media will become a net positive and expand the company’s digital footprint.
A few companies have the right spirit.
My favorite example of an organization willing to give up control in exchange for the multiplier effect of social media is the Department of Defense. In fact, the DoD established a SlideShare platform to support the rank and file on topics ranging from how to tweet to tips and tools for YouTube.
Look, I don’t pretend to have all the answers on how a company can harness the collective power of its employees in deploying social media.
But I do know this. If companies don’t start rethinking their centralized mindset, trusting their employees and trying new things, the answers will never come.
Lou Hoffman spearheads a global communications consultancy and writes about storytelling through a business prism at Ishmael’s Corner. You can follow him on Twitter @LouHoffman.
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