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5 Tips for Digital Reputation Management

To quote Warren Buffett, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” I might change that quote to say, “…and in the world of social media, it takes seconds to ruin it.” Thus, here are my five tips to help you (or your brand) avoid ruination and keep your reputation with digital reputation management.

Be Prepared – Many brands may already have a social media policy, but few have a crisis policy with social media baked into it. When asked how they’d respond in the event of an emergency, they tell us about their protocol – a time line for who will write and review the press release, what to review past the legal team and when, etc. Get real! If there’s an actual emergency, it’ll erupt on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in a fast minute. You won’t have time to write a press release and get your lawyer to respond. Emergencies and crisis travel at the speed of a tweet and in 140 characters or less. The public wants answers now and not in the form of a press release. Spend the time to identify some potential crisis scenarios and think about how you’ll respond on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and your blog.
Monitor – How can you respond if you don’t know what people are saying? Expensive online listening tools like Radian 6 and Sysomos exist, but why spend the money and time to learn them when there are great free options available? Anything from Twitter and Facebook Insights or even Google Alerts to true listening platforms like Tagboard, Hashtagify.me, Topsy, or SocialMention can all work just as well! Pick what’s right for you and your brand. At Everywhere, we use some of the free available tools, but we’re also big fans of NUVI*, a new online listening tool that scales your monthly fee by the number of monthly mentions your brand(s) gets.
Be Transparent – Say what you know and also say what you don’t know as quickly as possible. Transparency fosters confidence in your brand even if you are in a sticky situation. It’s okay to send a vague tweet, which says, “We are aware of [the emergency] and will provide all details as soon as we have them.” It shows you are communicative even if you don’t have all the answers!
Respond Thoughtfully – The best way to completely enrage your customer is to not talk to them! 1 in 3 people who received a reply to a negative online review turned around and posted a positive review in return (1). Here are the 4 C’s for Response that I like to follow:
1. Control - By facing accusations or updating on the situation immediately, you get to control the message. The longer you’re silent, the less control you have and the more likely the situation is to spiral out of control… especially since we’re in the days where “Trending Topics” is more about what others are saying.
2. Compassion - Show sympathy for the situation at hand and how it affects your customers. Making them think you care will help foster a positive relationship even if they’re unhappy.
3. Commitment - Tell your consumers that you are here for them and you’re working as hard as possible to get things done, even if it’s just via a tweet. Reiterating this throughout the situation will help their peace of mind.
4. Communication - I repeat,, silence is the best way to enrage. Open communication fosters good will and trust among your followers. If you have the (wo)man power to do so, individually reply to all or most messages of concern – not only will that show your communication skills are on point, but it’ll also hit home on another of the 4 C’s – Compassion.
Safety First – Create posting moderation guidelines for your platforms and put them in public areas of your pages (i.e., your About section). It’ll set the stage for the types of posts you’ll accept on your page. While you can’t remove whatever you want, you can protect your brand against content that is threatening, defamatory or inappropriate. Deleting a negative comment or review should not be a part of this plan!

These are my five tips that I share with clients. Are there any I’ve forgotten or should add?

—

*If you’re curious about NUVI, contact Taylor Brown at taylor@nuvi.com. Full disclosure: I’ll get a referral fee if you tell him I sent you. 😉

Reference (1): http://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2013/11/12/10-tips-for-reputation-and-crisis-management-in-the-digital-world/

Social Media Listening & Relationship Building

I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying, “We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we speak.” To me, this applies to social media listening and when a brand does it right, it’s #amazing and quite frankly thrilling to the customer. Listening and responding is still one of the most confounding aspects of social media to brands and I don’t really know why they have so much trouble. They often seem seized by indecision: “Do I respond?” “Do I know what to say?” “Is this worth my time?” The answer is, yes, yes and yes. When a brand organically reaches out to a consumer it creates a relationship. It’s more than a wave or a head nod it’s a “Can I buy you a drink?” and who isn’t flattered by that? Over the last few weeks, I’ve been on a mission to test brands I personally love to see if they would offer to “buy me a drink” and I was thrilled when two of them did.

What follows are two great examples of how brands can build customer loyalty and create a direct relationship with someone, in this case me. My first experiment was with Fitbit. I was feeling lazy, my Fitbit died and I did what any person committed to exercise avoidance does. I tweeted. Take a look at my interaction.

What did Fitbit do right? They were listening! They were seeking people mentioning their brand and when someone did they reached out them. I was slightly joking about my Fitbit problem but the support team was right on it. It made me feel and a brand that makes a buyer feel is doing social media right! #AllTheFeels, am I right?!

So after charging my Fitbit and taking a walk, I was hungry for a snack. I simply mentioned @AnniesHomegrown in a tweet about their fruit snacks. The next day they replied with a cleverly worded response, again making me feel special.

My point of this story isn’t to brag about how these brands wanted to “buy me a drink” or encourage me to snack more but it’s to show you how much of an impact listening and responding has. I am now a Fitbit wearing, Annie’s Homegrown eating advocate. These brands can count on me. They built a relationship.

Is it worth it? Heck ya!

Follow me at @KelleyMcLees for more about social media and my life at @BeEverywhere.

Meerkat and Periscope: What’s the Hype?

April 6, 2015/0 Comments/in Blog, News, SXSW /by Lina Skandalakis

Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock this past month has heard about Meerkat and Periscope, a competitor created by Twitter. As the “breakout app” of SXSW being used by Mashable’s Pete Cashmore on a selfie stick walking around Austin and Julia Louis Dreyfus during her VEEP panel, Meerkat was hard to ignore. Now Periscope pretty much does the same thing and has stolen all of Meerkat’s thunder. So what do these apps do actually?

Remember when Charlie Sheen went all crazy with #winning and strippers and held a Ustream of him ranting? I remember – I am ashamed to say that I watched. If Meerkat or Periscope were around back then, Charlie likely would have used that instead. It is the mobile version of Ustream, allowing its users to live stream on the go. So why then is it so ridiculously popular if there was already a similar service? Well, first off they’re integrated with Twitter (Periscope is obviously more so integrated). In a nutshell, when you start streaming, a Tweet goes out. With Periscope, you have the added ability to be able to see reactions to your stream from Twitter embedded in the app. Also, if you think about it, no one has really improved upon the ability to live stream until now. Improvement, you ask? Meerkat allows you to record and schedule your stream for a later time, while Periscope allows users to save videos to replay them later.

So what’s all the hype about? Well, if you’re an everyday person who isn’t a celebrity, politician, or reporter, you aren’t likely to have a big viewership with Meerkat or Periscope. No one really cares what you have to say in real time. If you do happen to fall into one of those popular people categories, it’s the compelling content that is going to keep followers coming back (or maybe not? Here’s a live stream of a fridge at the Washington Post that’s quite popular. Maybe it’s just the big brand that keeps people watching… or the novelty?).

A big challenge for both Meerkat and Periscope as I see it (if either or both stay alive), is that in order to succeed, they really have to encourage the top-level influencers to keep the everyday user tuned in. Periscope may be the present day cool-kid app (Sorry Meerkat), but it’s more time consuming than a simple tweet or Instagram. So if the influencers get bored and don’t use it, the everyday user is going to peace out.

While the live video concept of Meerkat and Periscope is compelling and dramatic, the apps can only continue if both the influencer continues to stream interesting content and the user is available to consume it.

My final thought that I just can’t get around when it comes to streaming-type apps like this is this – who has time to watch live programming anymore? Didn’t God invent the DVR to get around what these apps offer? Even if it’s programmed content (from Meerkat) or a stream that you can save to watch later (from Periscope), I’m still not compelled to tune in at a certain time to be able to view or save the content.

#DeedADay and the Democratization of Ideas

December 31, 2014/0 Comments/in Blog, Charitable Giving, Client Stories, News, Society /by Danica Kombol

In 1992, Mary Fisher stood up at the Republican National Convention looking very much like the daughter of a prominent Republican family (which she was), and announced on national TV that she had AIDS. It was a hugely shocking moment for the crowd and for most of America. In 1992, the very word AIDS was shared in hushed tones and considered a scourge of just gay men and Haitians. At that time I worked in television production in NYC. I alternated between my job working at Saturday Night Live and freelancing at this hot production company, Peter Wallach Enterprises. My boss at the time there had AIDS, something he never overtly confessed to me, even though we were as close as school chums and all the symptoms indicated that he had the disease. My editor at the post-production house, where we cut the short films I produced for SNL, was grey, rail thin and hacked through our late night editing sessions. He said things like, “My immune system is shot,” yet he never publicly admitted he had AIDS. In 1992, I remember watching blonde, blue-eyed Mary on TV, standing there in her prim white dress and realizing that things were going to change for the better. Mary gave a voice to the voiceless.

Ron Edmonds/Associated Press

Flash forward in my career 20-odd years later and I find myself working in an industry, social media, which does just the same. I launched a career in this field over six years ago because I was excited by the power of this new medium to bring about change. What I saw very clearly was that social media was the ultimate democratization of ideas. Anyone could speak – we all had a megaphone in our blogs, our tweets, our Facebook status updates. If an idea was good enough, strong enough, it could be seen, absorbed and passed on to others. For a person like me who had devoted a quarter of a century to working with big media, big PR and big advertising, I was infatuated with the concept that good ideas could be distributed outside of an advertising campaign and without regard to any editors fickle preferences.

Last night I witnessed that democratization of ideas with the woman who stood on a stage and inspired us so long ago. We joined forces with Mary Fisher and her team to launch the #DeedADay movement. The movement is inspired by a bracelet Mary designed called the 100 Good Deeds bracelet. It’s made by vulnerable women in Haiti, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, India, and Bali. The bracelet is strung with 100 beads and wraps around your wrist. There is a small rubber ring among the 100 beads and the idea is you wear the bracelet both as an ethical fashion statement and as a reminder to do good deeds. Every time you do a good deed — going out of your way to do something kind for others — you move the ring over until you get to 100 beads.

I met Mary last year in Haiti and talked to her (a little too enthusiastically) about the power of social media to change the world. I guess she remembered our conversation because she asked me to do something connected to the theme of New Year’s resolutions. Sharing the message of doing good deeds felt bigger than me and my firm alone, so I called a few of my friends who run major blogging social media networks. I reached out to Stacey Ferguson of Blogalicious and the b-Link Marketing Network, Ana Flores of Latina Bloggers Connect, Jyl Johnson Pattee of MomItForward, Barbara Jones of the One2One Network, Cat Lincoln of Clever Girls Collective, Nadia Jones of the Niche Parent Network, and Kelby Carr of the Type A Parent network. They all agreed to join forces with me and ask their collective networks to share the #DeedADay movement on their blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Twitter channels. I hate to use the word viral, but there’s no other way to describe what happened. #DeedADay is everywhere on social media. With over 40 blog posts to date (what will ultimately be 80+ posts total), 6500 social posts and 1100+ individuals who’ve participated, we’re at 50+ million impressions.

Last night we teamed up with Jyl who runs the popular Twitter chat #GNO. We began talking to women across the country about how they think about good deeds. We hit a nerve and the Twitter stream lit up. In one short hour, we generated 25 million impressions. Women talked about ethical fashion, the importance of teaching their children to do good deeds and setting good deed resolutions in 2015. At one point, even Rosie O’Donnell, who’s known as simply @Rosie on Twitter joined the conversation.

A screenshot from the #GNO #DeedADay Twitter chat - Rosie shows off her 100 Good Deeds Bracelet.

As we head in to 2015, I’m heartened to know that initiatives like doing good deeds can build momentum in social media, the democratization is alive and strong, and the fact that one women’s voice can make a difference.

Social Media and Journalism: A Match Made in Story-telling Heaven

December 15, 2014/0 Comments/in Blog, Content Marketing, Social Media Best Practices /by Amra Ikic

When I first scored my internship at Everywhere, I assumed there was no way I could combine my journalistic abilities and the skills needed at a social media marketing firm. Without a doubt, I was mistaken.

For one, things are different here at Everywhere, you’re encouraged to share knowledge of your own while simultaneously absorbing everyone else’s, but in a good way. Simply put: you’re not expected to sit around looking pretty and making coffee runs. Though we do value our coffee, we have a great coffee machine right in the office and everyone is more than happy to make their own cup themselves.

It’s often around the coffee machine that we have conversations about how intertwined social media and journalism have become. Here are my three takeaways on the similarities between journalism and social media.

Grammar is King (or Queen): To say that grammar is essential when writing a Facebook post or news article would be an understatement. Social media audiences expect the same level of professionalism from brands as they do their newspapers and news outlets. Just because it’s social media, doesn’t mean you can get away with rogue apostrophes or bizarre spellings of words. In fact, with the presence of social media, any grammatical blunders found are called out quickly and often publicly.

Your Opinion Matters: At the end of any article, we usually see a “Comments” section where readers can sign into their desired social media account and voice their opinions. Similarly, domestic and international news articles are plastered on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Pew Research found that 3 in 10 adults get their news from Facebook. This number is sure to increase as Facebook has included a trending stream with relevant hashtags and trending topics on the right-hand side of the homepage.

Limitations are Inevitable: Both news articles and social media platforms often battle with character/word limits. For example, Twitter’s 140-character rule is expected to be sufficient when answering the 5 W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. When the truth is, just the words “who, what, where, when and why” take up 27 of the 140 characters! Be it journalism or social media, being brief and being to the point are critical to delivering your message.

The truth is, journalism and social media have more in common than most people realize. It’s not just old media or new media; it’s just plain old media. As for me, I will continue to enjoy the best of both worlds here at Everywhere, with a delicious cup of coffee, of course.

Has Social Media Ruined the Christmas Card?

December 10, 2014/0 Comments/in Blog /by Danica Kombol

My husband and I used to pride ourselves on our Christmas cards. There was the cleverly art directed “Jack in the Box” one, where we forced my two-year-old son, Jack, into a box and bribed his two sisters with candy to adorn him as his jesters.

There was the one from the year we spent at Harvard before the birth of Jack, when I hired a Harvard art student to take photos of the girls, fashionably dressed in red Hannah Andersen dresses (all the rage back in 1992), among the crimson red of the subway station. What you can’t see are the rats running beneath them as we snapped this shot. What you also don’t know is that it took said Harvard student three weeks to develop the film – by which point, Christmas had passed.

My kids are older now and not so keen on being featured in our annual Christmas card mailing to our 500 closest friends (I lie not, I have the excel spreadsheet to prove it). But I’m beginning to wonder if social media hasn’t ruined the Christmas card. Why bother with stamps and envelopes if you can feature the smiling tots on Facebook trimming the tree, wearing wrapping paper as a crown, or participating in the general merriment that seems to span from Halloween to MLK day? Sitting on Santa’s lap, the tears and the joy can be Instagrammed ten times over. Who needs to buy the bad Polaroid shot anymore? For example, when MiMi took her little precious to sit on Santa’s lap, the resulting yawn of a YouTube video (featuring your typical bow-laden little innocent, dressed to the nines in velvet and crinoline and looking quite frankly clueless) got 27,000 views. Does all social media Christmas content have to be such a snooze?

I’m tempted to say “bah humbug” to social media and make a trek to the post office and buy some stamps (Have you heard the new Jimi Hendrix stamp is in stock?); but instead, I think I’ll explore some of the new possibilities that social media has to offer and spread my merriment well beyond my mailing list of 500 with my “gif” to you below!

A Social Media Intern Goes to SouthWiRED

October 20, 2014/0 Comments/in Blog, COX, Social Media Best Practices, Society /by Josh Guilbaud

One of the benefits of being a social media intern at a place like Everywhere is that instead of being sent out to get the coffee, they send you out to conferences like SouthWiRED. SouthWiRED is the largest digital conference in the Southeast featuring panels and presentations from the top innovators in the country and not a bad way to spend a day interning. What follows are a few of my takeaways from a hard day interning!

The very first panel I attended was moderated by our CEO, Danica Kombol and it was entitled, Taking on the Challenge of Social Media in a B2B World. She was joined by seasoned marketers & PR folks from Cox Communications, PGI, Manheim & Novelis. The panelists did a fantastic job addressing many of the common concerns and conundrums marketers face in the B2B realm. Many professionals are under the impression that marketing for B2B and B2C bands on social media is as similar as night and day; they’re more like breakfast and brunch. Just like B2C brands, those in B2B must have an authentic and consistent brand voice. The story they build needs to be fluid, but relevant to the consistent and relatable themes in their overarching marketing strategy. Also worth mentioning is that B2B brands have influencers too and they’re usually in-house. Executives, VPs, and Directors of brands should be both active on social media and engaging in order to build credibility, as this will drive more new business leads. The more we come to understand marketing across social platforms and digital mediums, the more we understand that the age old adages of “B2B” and “B2C” no longer exists—it’s all about H2H, Human to Human.

The next presentation I attended was about understanding owned, paid and earned media from an HR perspective. It helped me understand why companies that strictly put their efforts into either paid or earned media are doing themselves a huge disservice—utilizing both types of media allows them to maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns. Earned media is great for brands because consumers see it as trustworthy due to its organic nature. When influencers write reviews, blog posts, or social media content, they are establishing and perpetuating the trustworthiness and credibility of a brand to their readership. While this effect is great, the reach and audience can be limited. This is where paid comes in—it gives brands the ability to magnify their reach beyond the scope of their followers and those of their influencers, as well as target consumers based on CRM and POS data. Simply, I learned that the key here is to gain as much earned media as possible and to leverage paid media to enhance and refine it.

So, not bad for a day’s work as a social media intern! I can only hope that in a few years, armed with the knowledge I gained at Everywhere, I’ll see myself on a panel sharing my opinions about social, digital and business.

*This post was penned by Everywhere Agency’s wonderful Fall 2014 Intern, Josh Guilbaud.

Three Non-Profits Using Social Media in an “Out of the Box” Way

September 4, 2014/0 Comments/in Blog, Charitable Giving, Content Marketing, News, Society /by Kayla Wright

You’d have to have been living under a rock to have missed the ALS ice bucket challenge that’s swept the web. A few months before the ALS challenge, women were posting photos of their bare faces, free of make-up and hashtagging #NoMakeUpSelfie. Believe it or not, these efforts weren’t even planned by non-profits. But, with some strategic placement and interjections from groups like the ALS Association and Cancer Research UK, the results have been millions raised for both organizations. What follows are three non-profits using social media in “out of the box” ways that deserve notice. Or I should say, more notice.

1. WATERisLIFE

True hashtag hijackers, Water is Life mastered the idea of taking something with a negative reputation and turning it into something for a greater good. #FirstWorldProblems, a trending hashtag, highlights issues that – only those far more fortunate than others – could even deem ‘problems’. For instance, “My in-flight movie was longer than my flight” is a typical first world problem. Water for Life hijacked this hashtag and created a video featuring third world kids and adults in their natural environments (in front of a hut, bathing in dirty water) reading typical #FirstWorldProblems aloud to show just how outrageous our issues truly are. The results? Donations that totaled over a million days worth of clean water to those in need! (1)

2. Cancer Research UK

The #NoMakeUpSelfie trend wasn’t started by Cancer Research UK, but when a bunch of women began posting pictures online of themselves without make-up and encouraging their friends to donate to the cause, the non-profit very wisely jumped on board. The charity sent out a tweet saying:

The campaign isn’t ours but every £ helps #beatcancersooner.” The results? They raised $13.3 Million USD in six days! (2) Why is this my favorite campaign so far? The honesty of Cancer Research UK created a transparent and honest relationship with participants. Also, as a woman proud of her face and body as they are, make-up or not, a campaign promoting women to bare their natural beauty gets an A+ in my book!

3. ALS ASSOCIATION

It’s the biggest viral trend today and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. It’s the #IceBucket challenge. With this campaign, individuals have two options: pouring a bucket of ice cold water on themselves and making a small donation to the ALS Association, or making a much larger donation to the ALS Association but dodging the polar bear-esque plunge. Time limit? 24 hours! With the sharing capabilities of social media and the naturally occurring domino effect that comes with any contest that asks you to challenge others, the #IceBucket challenge has taken over social media. The results? $94.3 Million raised from July 29, 2014 to August 27, 2014. (3)

The use of social media for non-profits has proven to be successful time and time again. The results are in the numbers and as we all know, numbers don’t lie. One of the biggest draws for companies to use social media, is the rate at which a message can spread.

One thing is for sure, whether these non-profits raised money or not, they met their most important goal, awareness. When done right, the buzz around these non-profits and their purpose continues to rise with every share, post and call to action. The ice bucket challenge has not only raised millions of dollars, it has also proved a very important point. As Oscar Wilde once said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

*Sources

(1) http://www.nonprofithub.org/social-media/the-top-4-nonprofit-social-media-campaigns-of-2013-and-what-you-can-learn/

(2) http://guardianlv.com/2014/08/ice-bucket-challenge-better-than-the-no-makeup-selfies/

(3) http://www.alsa.org/news/media/press-releases/ice-bucket-challenge-082714.html

Kids As Brands’ Ambassadors

August 5, 2014/1 Comment/in Blog, Content Marketing, Society /by Lina Skandalakis

Having launched my career at Cartoon Network, I’m pretty familiar with the in’s and out’s of kids marketing. What’s really interesting to me is how kids are beginning to be marketed to on social media. The minimum age that Facebook says kids can join is 13, but the truth is that kids at the age of 9 are jumping on the social media bandwagon. It’s not just to chat with friends – They’re there to interact with brands too. To put this info into perspective with numbers: 55% of parents of 12 year olds say their child is on Facebook, 81% of online 9-17 year olds say they visited a social networking website within the last 3 months, and more than 25% of Facebook’s users are under the age of 10 (1).

No matter how you feel about social media marketing towards kids, let’s take a look at how some brands are using the medium to interact with youngsters. Note: I’ll shy away from Cartoon Network, since I’m a little biased towards them. 😉

Angry Birds
By engaging its customers on a variety of platforms and deepening the presence of its new brands, Rovio took Angry Bird’s social media presence to the next level. On Facebook, you can play two versions of it against your friends. While on Twitter, the brand engages fans in a variety of ways including product giveaways (which not many kids brands do), videos clips for upcoming game or level releases, retweets of user generated content. My favorite way that they engage their fans is by posting images of kids’ fan mail they’ve received. Why does Rovio do this? My hunch is they are showing kids that they care about what they say. They’re also developing “loyalty,” essentially making their kids fans ambassadors for many years to come.

Nickelodeon
Using social media to poll one’s audience is red hot right now. And Nickelodeon is no stranger to the game. They activated their Facebook page with over 32.1 million likes to join in and vote on the Kid’s Choice Awards (2). They also incorporated both Twitter and gamification into their Kid’s Choice campaign strategy. Leaderboards showed “fan armies” supporting the nominees – fans could track who was winning and losing. Facebook/Twitter fans contributed to their favorite nominees’ placements on the board, creating the ever-elusive ‘engagement’. Nickelodeon extended its viewing audience beyond the channel, keeping fans engaged for weeks before the awards show, compared to previous years where consumers would only vote once. What I love about this strategy is that it engaged fans as true brand ambassadors. While I don’t know how it affected their viewership, I can imagine that fans who engaged on Facebook and Twitter so actively would want to tune in to find out who won.

Lucky Charms
While Lucky Charms may not be magically nutritious, it is magically smart when it comes to their social marketing strategy. General Mills created a webisode series on YouTube depicting the animated adventures of Lucky the leprechaun, linking them back to the Lucky Charms website, which states “Hey Kids, this is advertising” in the bottom corner. The site creates an immersive experience in Lucky’s world and asks kids to join the Adventurer’s Club, which houses their game stats and gems to be used in the flash games they offer on the site. Furthermore, they’ve got a load of comics depicting Lucky’s adventures. If you’ve ever eaten a bowl of Lucky Charms you know the intrigue of those marshmallow pink hearts or shooting stars. General Mills brought those marshmallows to life in a way that kids will surely share it with friends.

Disney
I admire Disney’s use of YouTube (3). They jumped on the beauty vlogging bandwagon and created a Disney Style account to convey tips, tricks, and how-to’s from top beauty, fashion, and DIY vloggers. Why is this a relevant way for Disney to spend its marketing dollars? The page posts tutorials on how to do you hair and make-up like Elsa or create a costume inspired by Miss Piggy; the videos are tied to recent releases and encourage fans to take their love of the brands offline and into the real world, sparking brand ambassadorship in these kids and making them walking, talking billboards.

So what does this all mean? Kids are on social and brands are there too, interacting with them. We can’t turn back the clock on social media and stop kids from joining and interacting. What brands should think about is what are the right channels to use and what’s ethical when it comes to younger kids who may not realize they are being marketed to. What’s interesting to me is that there are clever ways to reach out to kids and build brand loyalty without doing so in a devious manner.

Sources
1. http://www.guardchild.com/social-media-statistics-2
2. http://lostremote.com/why-is-spongebob-is-so-popular-on-social-nickelodeon-talks-about-social-tv-strategy_b30281
3. https://econsultancy.com/blog/64550-how-disney-uses-social-media-vine-youtube-pinterest-instagram-and-more#i.cts9cm1edxepb1

What Movies Teach Us About B2B Social Media Marketing

June 25, 2014/0 Comments/in B2B, Blog, Content Marketing, Social Media Best Practices, Society /by Jason Maldonado

Whether your company is small or large, B2B social media marketing is no trip to a Pixar movie. For some brands, it’s more akin to watching a suspense-filled mystery. B2B companies know they have to use social media to stay in the forefront of peoples’ minds. Even though it’s called “business to business,” company decision makers are people and they use social media to participate in industry conversations. What makes B2B social media marketing a suspenseful mystery are the quandaries of where to start, which channels to participate in, and blah blah blah…

If you are a company getting started in B2B social media marketing, or are currently struggling, I have compiled a few thoughts for your consideration. So… #LetsGoToTheMovies

1) “Big things have small beginnings.” (Prometheus)

It is important to acknowledge that B2B social media marketing does not always feel natural to online users. These social channels were not created as a mechanism for businesses to interact with potential leads or push marketing messages. Rather, they were originally built to give users an optimal way to connect with friends or family. With that said, users are becoming more comfortable with B2B messaging on social media, but acceptance and engagement is still growing.

>>Lesson 1: Growth will be slow. If you have patience, you will develop an audience and engagement.

2) “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.” (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory)

In social media, the messages, status updates, and tweets shared take on an informal tone. They abide by the relaxed vernacular and popular culture inherent to most social media channels. From a content perspective, this often causes anxiety for B2B brands, which typically employ a more serious, corporate tone. Let’s face it, B2B brands aren’t used to sounding “informal,” and this tone does not correlate with anything else they say or do. Everyday corp-speak can be interpreted as “boring” to audiences.

>>Lesson 2: Achieve a balance of formal and informal tone. If your content reads like mini press releases or has a review process of 60 days, you are essentially creating content that makes you THAT adult at the freshman college party. Let me tell you, you’re not “down with it.”

3) “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” (Inception)

A recent study on B2B content marketing showed that companies who experienced the most success utilized six or seven different social media channels. This highlights the importance of being “everywhere” (pun intended) for your target audience and the need for a sound budget. Using a greater quantity of channels requires bigger budgets and more staff or agency support, which are not always the easiest things to obtain. The research study also found that LinkedIn®, Twitter®, YouTube®, and SlideShare® were all more effective in B2B content marketing than Facebook®. Yet, Facebook remains the equivalent of an online license or passport, meaning you simply do not exist to some people unless you have one, and the fact remains that many users search for businesses on Facebook.

>>Lesson 3: Set expectations from the beginning. Your business must use multiple social media platforms, and your executive leadership team must understand that having advertising dollars set aside for paid social promotions is essential, which is an expectation that not all ELT members share. Unfortunately, your executive team, who might not personally participate in social media, has no clue regarding the amount of time community management of social media channels actually takes. It is critical for you to set expectations from the beginning so you do not strain your team. Such strain could ultimately affect the content’s strength, which will lead to slow growth and low acceptance of the brand by online users.

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There are plenty of other B2B social media best practices, but as the Joker says in The Dark Knight Rises,

If you have additional questions, let’s get coffee, because our goal for our existing clients is to have them say…

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