I recently started a group on LinkedIn called Web Design and Marketing for Businesses in order to discuss how businesses can improve their online activities. The groups main objective is to facilitate business minded people in talking about everything to do with digital media and to provide a place where they can share ideas, discover and explore opportunities to grow and expand their businesses and generally learn from each other.
The first discussion I started in the group was titled the same as this blog posts: ‘What is your Social Media Approach?’. As this group formed only a couple of days ago, I thought I would create some content to start getting people engaged in discussions. I will begin with two examples of established social media approaches, exploring how and why they fit with the business objectives, why it is successful and then trying to provoke some feedback by asking some questions.
Coca Cola
Coca cola is probably the best example of a successful brand that built its social media approach around establishing their online presence via true community engagement and reputation management. Coca cola increased interaction with their customers through uploading videos on YouTube, likes and comments on Facebook and on Coca colas official website and by communicating their values and missions to the public to create awareness and build relationships. Coca cola made great use of social media in designing their new vitamin water by getting customers/fans to vote for the different flavours and the packaging of the product. They now boast almost 32 million ‘likes’ on Facebook alone.
This approach is perfectly aligned with the business objectives, putting long-term creativity at the centre of strategy. Coca cola realised that the recent shift towards social media provided opportunities to further market and develop the brand by enabling them to interact and engage with their customers and build relationships. Jonathan Mildenhall, Coke’s vice president of global advertising strategy and content excellence, states: ‘We see a clear correlation between positive online conversations and sales’ and the ‘number-one priority is for Coke to produce content that stimulates conversations every single day’.
This strategy is highly successful for Coca cola and is a leading industry example of how social media can positively impact an existing brand. How do you think using pure sales and marketing strategies in their social media channels would affect Coca cola? Do you think this is the most effective approach for Coca cola in terms of profitability?
IBM
Social media in the business to business sector is rarely written about and even less so with any evidence of ROI. So why would businesses use social media in this sector? IBM have claimed that they’ve raised millions of dollars through using social media, achieved by simply ‘listening for leads’. Their social media approaches are closely aligned to lead and sales generation, yet they have a distinct approach: ‘IBM have a careful process of using the conversation maker to identify the potential lead and manage the social media part of the process, before the sales team start to drive the conversion’.
Using social media for business to business e-commerce at IBM is almost a no-brainer, adapting to new technologies and taking advantage of market opportunities. They have been successful in their approaches to fuel sales through using the different social media channels, surprisingly not by audience building and mass marketing, but by listening to conversations and managing the social media aspects even before selling commences. IBM has also utilised social media into the workplace, by introducing ‘Social Computing Guidelines’, a set of rules encouraging employees to use social media and embrace its possibilities.
The social media approaches used by IBM show the depth of thinking and planning taken in constructing a social media strategy that fits with the business and its so far been hugely successful. What do you think of IBM’s social media approaches and practices? How do you think their strategy will change or develop in the future? Do you use similar approaches in your business to the above examples?
What is your social media approach? How does it complement your businesses goals and objectives? Is is successful? Can it be improved?
