How to Interact Within Your Target Communities (Without Being a Jerk)
Mar 8, 2010 by Stephanie Weingart | Social Media Marketing, Social NetworksEvery smart marketer knows the importance of community. Interacting with your audience without being “that guy or girl” is a delicate skill. Many times a community can be infiltrated “below the line” by using poor methods of engagement. Other times this might be the dedicated job of a brand or community manager. Leaving it in the hands of these people and making it their job to know the Ins and Outs and the language of the community and the way they interact can be extremely important to how your brand is viewed within that network.
Rules of thumb:
- Brand / Community manager should know EVERYTHING about the brand and or be a huge fan them-self.
- Community language and slang should be used.
- Brand should be transparent about being involved within the community.
- Off brand subjects and conversation is a must.
- Supply links when relevant to product pages or content pages on site but try not to overburden the user with links unless necessary.
- Don’t just share links to your own pages (be a good resource).
Here are some examples of niche communities and how to engage within them.
Fashion Communities
- StyleMob – Answer Style Advice Questions, Comment on user fashion, Post images, use forum to ask Brand Related Questions and receive consumer feedback.
- Fashionising – Heavy discussion about designers, fashion tips and style recommendations, and comment on blog posts.
- The Fashion Spot – Wide spread topics on forums, comment on fashion tips and include products and links back to site,
Male Related Communities
- Uncrate - Answer community allows users to post question and answers about products. “Real Advice from Real Men”.
- MadeMan – Young Men interacting about humor, sports, gear, “grub”, and women. Post comments and join in conversations about related topics.
- Art of Manliness - This community requires member profile allows connection hub for men to brand. Community supplies member birthdays, events, and forums. This gives the brand multiple levels of potential conversation.
Parenting Communities
- Cafe Mom - Thousands of conversations discussing multiple baby & children brand products to engage in, supply links within, and comment on. Comment on pictures that use products. Join and host groups to supply more content to curious users. Write a daily journal, being transparent and clear. The community manager here should be a real mother or father.
- iVillage Parenting – Message board based community that offers thousands of threads and open ended conversations. Brand manager should be a transparent parent and communicative. This community requires active conversationalists who will stay on topic and be insightful. There are many opportunities to supply other users with links and brand related content.
Not leveraging communities that tie into your brand niche is a waste of many opportunities that are available online. There are thousands upon thousands of communities dedicated to certain niches. These communities and networks are stimulated on a daily and hourly basis by consumers who are actively seeking out information, posting thoughts and reviews of their own, or just stopping by to read up on new content. By engaging with these users in a space that they are most commonly not marketed to, yet in a friendly, one-on-one level could help to create new customers and brand evangelists.
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Identify Target Blogs, Networks and Communities in 5 Easy Steps
Feb 22, 2010 by Stephanie Weingart | Social Media MarketingRight now, as you are reading this, there is a blog being born.
There is a community about Fly Fishing with five hundred users and a “Work from Home Daddy” Blog Network with over forty-seven active blogs that have thousands and thousands of unique viewers. Say you run an online ‘Bait and Tackle’ company, wouldn’t this be very valuable information?
Here are 5 easy steps that will help you learn where and how to start finding these magic portals of consumer engagement and information.
1. Search questions, not terms – this is the easy part.
If you haven’t already, search all of the brand terms and sayings that are a part of your business and trade. You might be surprised what you find when you search for a question instead of a product name. By searching for “How To’s…” and action terms like; “Fishing in the summer” you will find a plethora of blogs and networks of people actively discussing your niche.
2. Social Network Searches – Analyze the competition and what your audience might be doing online.
Search your chosen terms and questions on Search.Twitter.com and http://www.facebook.com/search/ .
You are now able to search Facebook users status updates. This will help you to pinpoint who is an active audience and who you might want to target. Take some time and research the audience. What other networks are they a part of? How do they prefer to communicate? This will help you when you decide what Social platform to participate the most in.
3. Blogsearch – http://blogsearch.google.com/
By Searching Google’s Blog search engine you will be able to find sites that are hooked up to an RSS feed that match your query. You can set date range, specific searches and can omit spam blogs identified by Google.
4. Alltop – Alltop is a current list of Blogs/Networks/ Websites that are respected and popular.
All lists are broken down by category. This reference point makes it easy to find any possible types of blogs there are…. Even Fishing Blogs! New features of Alltop allow the user to login and make favorite searches and recommendations.
5. Social Search – Joongel.com
Using a Social Media search engine such as Joongel.com will pinpoint sites that are community based and social. The site is broken down searches based on the type of social site you are looking for; shopping sites, blogs, social voting and bookmarking sites, gossip sites, questions and answer sites, and more. It comes with a Web Browser Toolbar and is extremely helpful.
While searching these sites, create your list of sites, networks, blogs, and communities. After you have finished all 5 Steps, you will walk away with a few, if not hundreds of sites that pertain to your business. Hopefully this will expand your horizons and open up communities that your brand will be benefit from in multiple ways.
What are some simple ways that you identify your targets online?
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In the year 2010, it is safe to say the brands who are NOT using Twitter as a communication tool have either decided it is not for their product or they just don’t get it. It is so wonderful to see brands embracing social media, and it’s even more exciting when they embrace the culture and community. Not every brand is comfortable communicating with their community on their community terms. However, speaking to your audience in their own language and adopting their culture is very important to be able to properly get the message delivered. By doing this, brands have acquired the sense of being “tangible” and “friendly,” making the consumer comfortable to engage and participate.
Hashtags are tags used in short messages that are either a single term or multiple words concatenated. They are a very important staple within the Twitter culture.
When to Start a Branded Hashtag
1. When you have a clever tagline or question for a campaign. For example; ”Relax in bed and read a book #SlipperTime“
2. When you have a question the audience will want to answer.
When NOT to Start a Hashtag:
1. If you are trying to start a trend by creating a hashtag that will have no value in being used multiple times.
2. If the hashtag would be valuable for competitors’ brands.
When to Use Popular Hashtags:
1. When your brand can contribute to the community or be humorous. For example: “Don’t Forget The Mayo #4wordsaftersex“
2. When your brand can contribute to current and popular events.
Where to Begin
There are a few sites that analyze trending topics and hashtags.
Because hashtags within Twitter are typical meta tags, they can be collected and analyzed after a campaign. This will be really helpful in determining the success of a campaign that exists within Twitter.
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How to Deal with Brand Identity Theft
Feb 2, 2010 by Stephanie Weingart | Facebook, Reputation Management, Social Media MarketingHow much do you trust your fans? Do you trust them enough to manage your Facebook fan page? Do you trust them to converse with other fans that might have customer service-related questions or complaints? A job like this should not be left in the hand of a customer.
Facebook Fan Pages are now thought of as the Brand Community or the Brand Hub. Facebook users are accustomed to asking customer service questions and reaching out to the brand on these platforms. If there is another fan behind the driver’s seat, how can the brand be sure they are being represented well? Because these fans are not trained brand employees, the brand may not not be represented properly. Why do some brands still allow this fraud to happen when there is a vast amount of knowledge about Facebook all over the internet?
There are many potential Brand Identity Disasters that can occur from misrepresentation on Facebook. For example, 7Eleven is a very popular franchise, with their 24-7 Slurpees and delicious coffee drinks. The Official 7Eleven Facebook page is really well done — it has over 185K fans that actively engage with the brand. However, the brand name is commonly misspelled. What about when the average consumer searches for “711″ on Facebook?
Here is what they will find:
Problems:
- Over 35 thousand fans have joined a fan page that never updates content and displays a poor image of the brand
- The fan page insults competitor brands with harsh language
- People who misspell the brand name have no option to find the official page
Sometimes the brands who are not participating within social media are subject to letting their fans take over completely. For example; CVS is currently not participating in Facebook. The CVS fan page is completely taken over by fans in a negative way.
Problems:
- Over 6 thousand people became fans of an imposter brand page
- The fan page has no brand information
- The fan page lacks any fan engagement on the Wall
- The photos that are uploaded by fans hurt the brand tremendously
Fan photos include an image of a letter from a CVS employee who is upset with the store and how it operates, images of a man who scams people outside of a CVS parking lot, and a faulty flu shot done at a CVS pharmacy. These images have the potential to turn many customers away from CVS. When choosing not to participate in social media, brands like CVS should look at competitors like Walgreens, who are extremely active and powerful on Facebook.
Facebook fan pages have the ability to serve as a Community hub where consumers can come and show their appreciation to other fans. But fans can also actively show their complaints and aggravations with the brand. Facebook users have become familiar with this practice.
When your customer comes to your Facebook fan page, asking questions about products, complaining, and looking for more information, who do you want behind the driver’s seat? There are many resources out there to learn about implementing great Facebook fan pages.
Here are some tips on how to better control your brand on Facebook:
1. Search: Look for your brand terms and misspellings of your brand name on Facebook. Make a list of how many impostor fan pages are out there and tally up the total number of fans that are engaging on these pages. This is your audience!
2. Prepare: Are you ready to take over these fan pages? Do you have the right content? You will need photos, oodles of brand information, witty status updates, and a strategy to implement in order to engage and stimulate the fan base.
3. Create: You will need to create an official Facebook fan page and build it as if it is your website. You should build tools and “Tabs” that are brand specific. For example, if you are a movie theater, you’d want a unique way to show movie times.
4. Control: Taking control of the impostor pan pages is easy. People at digital agencies have frequently dealt with this issue and work hand in hand with Facebook to take control. It is extremely important to make sure that fans of the brand are getting the correct information.
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Letting Fans Create the Product
Jan 14, 2010 by Stephanie Weingart | Contests, Social Media MarketingWhen a huge brand creates a Facebook fan page that generates an audience of more than 1 million fans, how should those fans be utilized and stimulated? Vitamin Water recently took advantage of their huge community by having them create and vote on a new flavor to be sold in stores. The contest took place on a tab within their fan page called the “Flavorcreator”. The application located on the tab required fans to create a unique flavor combination, name the flavor, write a witty description, and create a bottle design. This is Audience Participation at its finest.
However, as we commonly see on Social Media platforms, even the best contests need to be set free. Holding a contest for fans of Facebook eliminates the avid YouTube browser. This is where it becomes hugely important to Know Your Audience before asking them to participate.
5 Questions Before Asking a Brand’s Audience to Participate in a Social Media Contest
- Can the contest/ campaign be fluent on all social media platforms?
- On which social media platform does the average consumer most often spend their time?
- What is in it for the consumer?
- Will the consumer want to promote their participation on their social media profiles?
- What is the longevity of the campaign?
If all of these questions can easily be answered, it could be possible to allow a fan base of over 1 million people to choose a brand’s new product.
5 Benefits of Consumer Participation
- Consumer approval
- High ROI potential
- Increased awareness potential
- Brand Appreciation
- Increased Fans across Social Media profiles
Vitamin Water flexed their Social Media muscle by knowing exactly what their fan base wanted. The majority of the campaign existed on Facebook, while promotional videos existed on YouTube with celebrity appearances by Steve Nash and 50 Cent. However, voting for the new flavor took place across multiple levels of Social Media platforms. Every tweet, image, blog post, etc. on Twitter, Google Blog Search, FoodGawker, and Flickr were weighted as a form of voting for the winning flavor.
As a result, Vitamin Water was able to achieve popularity and recognition on huge news sites declaring them as the brand taking chances. Whether or not Social Media masses agree with the flavor choice is another question.
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