Social media fluency key to success

Social media is acknowledged to be powerful, but - like learning Mandarin - many managers and businesses owners put the task of learning how to use it correctly on a very long to-do-list.

To be fair to them, quantifiable results from being involved in social media are hard to measure.

But arguably we're now in a social media era.

Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are having an impact on personal communications comparable to the introduction of the telephone more than 100 years ago.

Probably it was difficult for early adopters of this technology to measure a resulting increase in business also.

What is obvious is that all the big players, such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks (and closer to home Air New Zealand) employ small armies of staff to monitor and take part in conversations about them on social media networks.

Average Facebook Engagement Metrics: How Does Your Brand Stack Up?

AgoraPulse has released its monthly "barometer" measuring Facebook page metrics across nearly 5,000 pages and 168 industries. The data for July showed the average engagement on posts for pages with less than 10,000 fans is 6.1 percent, while the average for pages that have 100,000 fans or more is 4.9 percent.

Looking at "storyteller" averages, this data is defined from the "talking about this" metric in Facebook. Facebook states "talking about this" is Facebook users who have created a story from a post by doing the following:

• Sharing, liking, or commenting on your post
• Answering a question
• Responding to an event
• Claiming an offer

The average percentage of storytellers for pages with less than 10,000 fans was 2 percent, according to AgoraPulse data. For pages with more than 100,000, the percentage grew 0.4 points to 2.4 percent.

So, how do name brands stack up against these metrics?

Statista released a graphic on August 19 that stated Coca-Cola was the most talked about brand on Facebook, according to real-time data that showed more than 1 million people talking about the company.

That number is down slightly as of today, but according to page averages by AgoraPulse, Coca-Cola’s storytelling metric is still below average for a fan base of that size.

Keeping in mind the average is showing at 2.4 percent, and looking at the number of people talking about Coca-Cola on Facebook on August 21 divided by the total number of fans, Coca-Cola’s storytelling comes in at about 1.4 percent. This is one percent less than the average.

However, Coca-Cola far surpassed the average number of fans per industry, according to the research, which showed food and beverage garnering an average of 282,000 Facebook fans.

(via)

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Coca-Cola’s Creative International Marketing: Same Company, Different Approach

International marketing: the way companies get out the word and target audiences who may not be local to the United States. When marketing outside of the US, your company needs to think outside of the box. There’s a difference between marketing nationally and marketing to a specific country or region, and Coca-Cola’s about to show some of the reasons for their success.

Teach the World to Sing

Huge corporations like Coca-Cola have to consider the enormous expanse of their market area. With companies like Coke, which sells its products all over the world, much of the work starts at home. National marketing for small businesses is similar, especially online, where you have the chance to promote your service by refining your content for excellent SEO. Of course, when marketing back at home, it’s hugely important to come up with something that is universally appealing – which can be a difficult, considering the broad diversity of the population within the borders of the US.

This commercial, which ran in 1971, is now regarded as an advertising classic.

Coca-Cola’s “Teach the World to Sing” ad shows a blissful, almost angelic multiculturalism. It’s what Coca-Cola’s image is about: people are coming together. Coca-Cola presents an image of people who look toward a brighter future and become part of the process that makes it happen. The ad was targeted at American viewers, but its global and universal message worked to make people feel like this ad was not only about them, but about everyone.

Make Tomorrow Better

International marketing is its own creative process. When you’re targeting a specific nation, you have to remember that no country’s population is completely homogenous. Just as in a marketing strategy that targets the entire US, your international marketing strategy has to provide a message that is universal within the country’s borders.

Consider this Egyptian Coca-Cola ad, which aired in 2011.

Ahmet C. Bozer talks about this commercial a little more in depth in an interview with Strategy + Business. International business, for Bozer, is a blend of global marketing and local marketing. It’s the job of the strategists behind Coca-Cola to make sure the same message applies across the world.

Coca-Cola’s Egyptian “Make Tomorrow Better” commercial is a spin on the same dream of a brighter future that it has associated with its brand for decades. Bozer talks about the relevance of this particular ad to the Arab Spring uprisings. In this case, the brand is still about people working together to create a brighter future, but the setting is specific to the nation of Egypt: the ad takes place in a gray, gloomy Tahrir Square, and the citizens are literally opening up the clouds to make the sun come out. It’s the Coke promise of optimism and happiness that the brand creates.

How Do They Do It?

The answer is the same as in any marketing strategy: research, research, research. Coca-Cola employs top-ranked marketers who work closely with local agencies and have excellent insights into consumer responses. The company operates out of its headquarters in Atlanta, but has individual teams all over the world.

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Red Bull is top for social video

The first go viral Social Video Equity Report shows that Red Bull tops the list for the 100 most powerful brands in branded content in 2012. 

The drink brands beat technology giants Google (2nd) and Samsung (5th), with Apple and Microsoft both failing to make the top ten, coming in at numbers 11 and 37 respectively.

The top 10 was Red Bull, Google, Disney, Nike, Samsung, Old Spice, Prada, Coca-Cola, Nintendo and Adidas.

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Tips on How to Successfully Interact with Twitter Brand Page

Twitter is unique in the social media sphere as being one of the few platforms where brands can engage with their ever-growing audience and have them reply back in a matter of seconds – many with the expectation that the brand itself will return the reply favor and follow their own personal account. Leading the pack with following back are brands like Coca-Cola, Sephora, and even President Barack Obama. But for the companies that are choosier with who they decide to follow on Twitter, or even tweet back at, here are some tips on how to make that interaction a little bit easier.

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

Like a funny tweet that one of your favorite comedians just sent? How about a new logo or website design that a local business chain just launched? Maybe you just had the opportunity to meet the Twitter user and want to quickly recap on how great it was to finally meet them in IRL (in real life). By replying back or taking the initiative to start a tweet from scratch directed @ the user, you’re showing that you not only noticed they had mentioned you and were ready to reply back, but that you cared enough about what they did and who they were to start up a conversation in the first place.

Spammy Hashtag Filled Tweets Won’t

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have “#followme @(insert username here) I always #followback!” Or “@(insert brand name here) luv your #business it makes me #happy can’t wait to #network soon.” Or even “thanks for following! Have you read my new #book A Thousand Ways to Smile yet? Available on #nook today!”

Getting one of these messages for following a brand or Twitter persona is already bad enough (through experience they generally fall into your direct message folder though), but tweeting it out is just plain bad manners. Bad, self-promotional, manners. If you’re going to start up a conversation, leave the hashtags out of it unless they are relevant to that specific brand and promoted out through their feed as it is. Don’t spam a company or profile either – your credibility will be highly questioned otherwise.

But We All Like a Friendly Tweet… Especially When It Comes with a Photo of Your Product!

Ever notice how often times the tweets that get the retweeting action come with a photo of you, in action with the product? Companies like seeing happy customers interact with what they sell and capturing the moment with Instagram says a thousand words to both their followers and your own alike, which is why it gets shared so much. When it doubt, Instagram it out, and the more creative you get, the better. Make the tweet itself super natural too – just be honest with how much you like a certain product or brand. More often times than not, your genuinely happy moment will be felt on the other side of their social media realm, which could very well lead to a follow back!

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The Real Value of a Facebook Like

Trying to qualify the value of a Facebook Like for a given brand has been shown to be an incredibly elusive and often frustrating exercise. An exercise many brand managers and marketing managers would say ends more often than not, in futility.

Sure, having that large number of Facebook Likes is always great for the ego while standing around the water cooler with the brand managers and marketers – but what is the inherent value?

What good are all these Likes if it doesn’t correlate to increased revenue?

Two recent studies have shed some light on what the value of a Facebook Like truly is:

“The Facebook Factor” via Forrester and the “Power of a Like 2” the sequel to comScore’s “Power of a Like” released last year.

Each study examines the use of Facebook across several large, retail brands.

Released earlier this year, “The Facebook Factor” takes a hard look at the impact of a Facebook fan on brand interactions for four very large, well-known brands: Best Buy, Coca-Cola, Walmart and Blackberry.

Using the Best Buy results as one example, take a look at the startling difference between someone who Likes a given brand on Facebook vs. someone who does not:

The dollar amounts above reflect the average amount someone who Likes Best Buy on Facebook will spend over the course of 12 months vs. how much who does NOT Like them over the same timeframe.

So think about this… someone who Likes Best Buy on Facebook is going to spend, on average, over $200 more per year PLUS are nearly 100% more likely to recommend Best Buy to a friend or relative.

I would say these are very telling statistics wouldn’t you? Similar results were also seen across the other three brands in the Forrester research.

As for the “Power of a Like 2” it’s important to take a quick look back the original, the “Power of a Like” which revealed that Facebook Fans or Likes of a given brand, along with their friends, tend to be that given brand’s best customers.

The original study also pointed out that compared to the average Internet user, Facebook Fans are also heavy users of a brand’s products.

Ironically, the “Power of Like 2” also used Best Buy as one of their “test subjects” and their results were very similar to what Forrester uncovered, showing Best Buy Fans spend on average 131% more in Best Buy stores and online than those who are not Fans of Best Buy.

Ok, So Now What?

The quick-trigger reaction of some reading this will be to go out and try and accumulate as many Facebook Fans or Likes they can with the thought being ‘the more the merrier’ or more precisely ‘the more the merrier we will be for we will sell more products!’

But before you run out and instruct your social media managers to go forth and find any and all people to Like your brand on Facebook regardless of who they are –stop and remember what you learned in marketing class re: demographics.

From the Forrester findings…

“Profile and target your Facebook fans. Use demographics, marketing preferences, and online and retail behaviors to tailor your marketing strategy to them. Your fans are among your highest value customers — they spend more, and they are advocates of your brand. Target your customer retention marketing strategy to appeal to these valuable customers.”

(via)

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