Do social media strengthen or weaken brands? (part 2)

15 conclusions of the #sharehoney workshop

1. What do you want people to say about your brand: it’s a simple question, but so hard to make it concrete for brands/companies. The reflex is to start with the internal perspective rather than answering this very simple question. Most discussions about conversation management are about the how and the tools, but it’s impossible to answer those if you don’t know what the end goal is. Really, try this one at work: you’ll be surprised how difficult it is.
2. Letting go the ‘illusion of the big numbers’ remainsa challenge. The typical question remains: should I pay attention to 2000 people because we have a penetration of 2 million people. To deal with this, we used the volume. For most companies 10% of the consumers are accountable for 90% of the volume. So, if your penetration is 2 million, the real activation potential is probably closer to 200.000. Getting this in the right perspective remains challenging.
3. Global versus local conversation management remains a challenge where we didn’t really find a concrete answer to.
4. Observe: JUST DO IT, still too many people are not actively using social media and are making decision about it. Let’s stop that for once and for all.
5. It’s about people, not about technology: people talk to people. People are no silos, they talk through different media with each other. Believe it or not, but the ones who don’t use Facebook actually know people who are using it…strange isn’t it?
6. When joining the conversation, bear in mind these simple rule: Always be positive, learn to say thank you and sorry.
7. Don’t solve everything online: it’s good to pull a discussion offline to really help someone further.
8. It’s okay to give your organization a trial period. Decisions about social media shouldn’t be overrated as well. So, if you don’t fully agree with each other: agree on a test period and re-valuate after a few weeks.
9. 5%-95% rule works: to move forward, be explicit about the situations in which you won’t react until consulting some other stakeholders in the company. In most cases, people agree on 95% of the cases, but don’t move because of 5% of the cases. Writing the 5% down helps to avoid this
10. Copy the existing business processes where possible: let’s not change everything because of social media, but find a way that social media can tap into everything
11. Real openness is a challenge, but this metaphor works: which restaurant do you trust most, one with an open kitchen or one with a closed kitchen. Besides that: if you have an open kitchen you have external pressure to keep things clean and friendly.
12. Don’t feed the trolls: if people are bashing you without a reason, they probably had a bad childhood and we don’t need to give them further attention
13. Superstar Company: create a company with as many people as possible who are on social media to boost the openness and the visibility of your brand. In the end: they are the brand ambassadors and build the brand positioning.
14. We all have a pot of gold waiting for us: consumers who are functionally satisfied about our company are the growth potential. Find a way to activate them and the pot of gold will be yours.
15. There is no control, but many departments still have an illusion of control by blocking stuff. Convince them about the illusion and confront them with the brutal facts