It's Open - Social Media Strategy Consultancy

Zappos’ philosophy is that we’re a customer service company which just happens to sell shoes. We think that people like shopping with us because it’s a fun connection. We like to treat them as friends and make them smile. So when it comes to social media, we’re not at all passive about it. It’s all about surprise and delight – creating a shareable experience.

When Twitter started up, our CEO Tony Hsieh jumped in right away and was one of the first users to hit a million fans (he’s now closing on two million).  But Zappos staff can tweet on their own, without anyone telling them what to say. Now about five hundred of our employees tweet regularly – not just about what we sell, but whatever they feel like.

The culture is the most important thing for us, and obviously the clothing and shoes are part of it. But we don’t give any more weight to that than putting up a video of a donut-eating contest from our the IT department. It’s an all-things-considered approach that we take.

On Facebook one time we saw a woman in Massachusetts saying that she and her family were snowed in, and had been without power for four days. So we sent her a pizza.  Recently we put out a video for all our fans, describing how we helped one of our employees to become  US citizen. He has worked here for several years and was going to have to go back to Hong Kong, but we paid for his naturalization.  People love it when we do that sort of thing, and it’s what they expect of us.

Zappos has a smaller footprint on Facebook, where its fan size is a relatively modest 180,000. We should probably be at the million mark, giving away a pair of shoes every day, interviewing top celebrities, and so on. But we are purposely trying not do that. Instead we’re trying to be your attainable fashion friend, someone you can call up any time to see what kind of shoes will match your dress.

We haven’t ever had a ‘like’ button for Zappos itself, however – you can only ‘like’ product and brands. That’s because we wanted to see what kind of interaction we would get if our fans interacted with us organically, and I’m happy to say that almost all of them have been active in the last month.

We’ve found that videos are the most amazing way for people to experience our culture. In fact video ranks higher than just about anything else, and we’re using it a lot more in Facebook than before. We have evidence that 65% of mobile Facebook users check it twice before they get out of bed, so we keep our content short, punchy and easy to interact with. We put out longer content later in the day, when people are on their computers at work, or commuting home.

Is there a risk in being open to customers at all levels? Actually we think there are more risks in not being completely open. Our culture is our biggest asset, and that comes from all the individuals who work here.  We don’t want to stop them from being themselves. If someone tweets or posts something that screams ‘I’m not a culture fit with Zappos’, that’s a much bigger issue for us than whatever it was they said.

For sure, this is not an approach that will work for everyone. Companies like banking and pharmaceuticals are responsible for their customers in a much different way than we are with shoes, and wouldn’t necessarily want to talk to them about car races and donut eating contests. It would not be perceived as genuine. But we built Zappos around customer service, before Facebook and Twitter appeared, so it’s right for us.

A lot of companies are scared about social media but I’d urge them to let go.  Of course they’re concerned about getting a return on investment. But they tend to be  too concerned with the R and not enough with the I. What’s the downside of talking to customers about anything? We don’t have a bunch of data that says that if we were pushing product this is what we get back. We know from the awards and what fans say that they appreciate us interacting with customers in the way we do.

It’s tough to measure true impressions, although we use an SAS programme to measure sentiment on Twitter and monitor tweets on a weekly basis. If there are any negative spikes, we deal with it quickly. We have had 97% positive ratings in last year and a half. But we don’t measure value with social media. It’s not about reaching a count – we think that each smile we create is a win.

(From Social Business, Q4, 2011)

first direct is renowned for the quality of its customer service. So it’s no surprise that the bank is inviting customers to collaborate on new ideas via its first direct lab website.

In 2009 first direct launched its remarkable ‘Live’ campaign, with a microsite that gathered every mention made about it online. It was a remarkable exercise in openness and transparency, laying bare exactly what the public thinks about the brand.  Conversations evolved off the back of that, with customers able to provide continuous feedback by means of telephone and secure messaging service.

Now the bank has taken the logical next step, putting in place an online forum for customers to provide feedback to its initiatives and make suggestions for improvements. The project is called first direct lab, and launched on August 1 after six months gestation.   The site is open to anyone to view and has received more than 7000 comments so far.

From the start it has been clear that customers’ ideas do not necessarily coincide with the bank’s. For its first initiative it solicited feedback on plans to redesign its debit card.  At a casual glance this looked almost identical to the credit card, and the two were hard to tell apart when paying at the checkout.  “When we asked customers for feedback it turned out they liked the existing design for the debit card and would prefer any changes to be made to the credit card instead. Now we are doing that, and hopefully it will go the next stage,” says Natalie Cowen, head of brand and communications.

first direct was an early adopter of online banking, and many of its customers are technology-savvy veterans. So an invitation to comment on a projected homepage redesign – one tailored specifically for existing first direct customers, and another designed with non-customers in mind – has brought a flood of suggestions, gripes and comments. These show a variety and sophistication of views: from widening access to different browsers and the provision of mobile devices, to aiding navigation by cutting down clutter and a facility for customers to label their own direct debits. In short, enough to keep the bank’s designers busy for months.

A large proportion of comments come from Android smartphone users puzzled by the lack of an app similar to the one first direct provides on the iPhone. The bank’s response is that the iPhone is still by far the most used smartphone, while Android accounts for a minority of the customer base. However it reveals it is now developing an app that will work on all mobiles.

Other content includes a poll soliciting yes/no answers to a specific question and a ‘We love’ column, which this month features a list of cool brands, also an app for ordering from pizza express.

first direct lab is a marketing initiative: of course it makes sense to talk to customers about ways to improve the interaction between them and the brand. But could they also provide suggestions about  improvements to existing products, or even come up with ideas for new ones?  In fact there are plans to do that, although in a banking environment the potential is somewhat more restricted.  “Obviously there is a financial equation that sits behind a product, so there may be less flexibility for changes based on their recommendations. But it is useful to get feedback,” Cowen says.

It’s also clear that the bank must be prepared on occasion for a negative response. For instance a plan to develop a mobile app for finding a mortgage was greeted with a loud raspberry. Many said that this was something they would do on a PC at home, not on the move, while others again took the opportunity to complain about the absence of a current account app for BlackBerry or Android.

The company is also asking for opinions on QR codes, which are beloved by marketers but less so by consumers, to judge by the comments left on the website.  ‘Gimmick’ and ‘waste of time’ are common responses, although some readers have also come up with constructive alternatives.

Negative views might not sit well in a traditional marketing perspective, and it could be tempting to play them down. But any healthy relationship involves a certain amount of give and take.  As a demonstration of the bank’s commitment to transparency, its willingness to throw open the design process to customers arguably counts for far more in the long run than any discomfort from a thumbs down to  particular plans.

In fact a perusal of the comments shows a customer-base that is passionately attached to the brand, and when offered the opportunity to interact is only too happy to do so.  “Social media demonstrates that people want to engage, and if you give them the opportunities and the channel they will respond,” says Cowen.

(From Social Business, Q4, 2011)

In the latest of our video interviews exploring how leading companies are engaging senior executives in social media, Asad Ahmad explains the journey to making Twitter a revenue stream for Virgin Media.

At our most recent Social Media Leadership Forum event, members discussed how best to engage senior executives in social media.

We recorded a series of short video interviews with our presenters on the day. In this latest one Leon Benjamin of Virgin Media explains how social technologies are changing the way the company’s executives communicate with staff.

At our most recent Social Media Leadership Forum event, members heard how senior communicators from Unilever, Virgin Media and Shell have built the case for social media with their senior executives.

In this video Ellie Bowden of Unilever tells us what she has learnt from getting her senior executives to participate in online conversations.

It’s that time of the year when we look over the last 12 months to take stock of the year’s successes and failures and create some countdown lists of our favourite things. This week we’re looking at the which social media campaigns have been the most successful in 2010.

Sesame Street

As mentioned in a previous post this week, Sesame Street has had a very successful year with video-based social media. Taking inspiration from other popular campaigns, like the Old Spice man, they’ve managed to turn around a number of parody videos in record time. With 281,800+ Twitter followers and 138,700+ Facebook followers (and various character-specific pages), the campaign is a definite success.

Old Spice

Probably the most famous campaign of the year, the Old Spice campaign did an excellent job of bringing the brand right back into the 21^st century. Funny adverts won the YouTube visitors over, while a quick response to those who commented with follow up videos won the social media experts over.

The result? It’s always difficult to tell with sales, but initial reports after the first couple of months suggest an increase of 107% of the Old Spice bodywash.

Tippex

The Tippex “A hunter shoots a bear!” video was one of the first YouTube videos to really embrace the interactivity feature. By giving visitors the opportunity to choose what the hunter would do to the bear, using the Tippex mouse, the company produced a viral that mimicked the popularity of the Old Spice videos.

Sales are yet to be announced, and we doubt it will have the effect the Old Spice man had, but with Christmas card time just around the corner, it’ll be interesting to see if the video reminds people of the product.

Domino’s

Domino’s adopted a Foursquare check-in strategy early on, and benefited from a 29% pre-tax profit in the first half of the year. By giving out free pizza to every mayor (the person who has ‘checked in’ to that store most regularly), they increased visitors on foot and online.

Proof that jumping on the wagon before your competitors will nearly always keep you one step ahead.

Groupon

A type of social media in its own right, Groupon sells reduced deals for a short period of time, once a certain number of people have signed up for it. A couple of months ago, they realised ‘Grouspawn’, a dating website for bargain-hunters. The social twist? A couple that conceives a baby after meeting on the site win a scholarship for the child.

While it’s unclear what effect Grouspawn had on Groupon’s sales, it’s clear that the company has an innovative approach to their social media. Their strategy is made up of a strong affiliate scheme, the adoption of ‘Superlocals’ who write regular local reviews, and Twitter and Facebook for every town. By realising that word of mouth and social interaction are the keys to expansion, Groupon have dominated the group-purchasing market, and continue to do so.

Coca Cola

Coco Cola’s Facebook page has been widely complimented for its early adoption of an interactive landing page. Regular videos, blogs and discussions on the page keep fans hooked, and coming back.

A great example that a simple, consistent campaign is just as effective as something flashy.

Starbucks

Back in June this year, a survey of brands revealed that Starbucks was the most popular brand on the social web. Their high level of followers is attributed to listening and engaging to their customers, and asking their followers to spread the word about their page. Their ability to converse with their customers and find out what they want has led to a Facebook page that is effectively customer-built.

Compare the Market

The furry star of the Compare the Meercat/Market adverts has been a cult figure for a few years, and the company made the smart decision to maximise on that popularity. Apps for the iPhone, a Facebook page for Aleksandr Orlov, and regular adverts and YouTube videos kept the popularity of the meercat going.

Are you more likely to head to the friendly meercat company, or the company with an irritating opera singer?

E.L.F (Eyes Lips and Face)

Brands that only sell online benefit most from social media, as they lack the offline presence on the high street. However, selling online usually means a company can offer lower priced items as they cutting out the middleman.

E.L.F is a prime example of a company who offers a low cost product through the medium of social media. Regular discounts for Twitter and Facebook users once thresholds are reached, a blogger outreach and a YouTube channel featuring many of the up-and-coming beauty bloggers has led to word of the new brand spreading like wildfire.

The result is a Facebook page with over 87,000 fans, who constantly update the page with their own reviews and discussions of the products.

Skittles

The confectionery brand has been building its social media campaign over the past couple of years, and it’s finally paying off. Sitting third behind Starbucks and Coca Cola among U.S brands, it has over 13 million Facebook fans.

The high number of followers is down to the promotions they offer, like 2 for 1s and money off vouchers.

What has been your favourite social media campaign this year?

How much time do you think you spend online? With internet access at work, at home and on your mobile, you’re never far from an opportunity to tweet, Google something or shop online.

Check out this infographic How the World spends its time online, taken from a recent Nielsen study.

To summarise:

• The average American spends more than 60 hours a month online. That’s the equivalent of 30 days a year!
• 42% of users are viewing content, 22% are using social networking and 36% are using other aspects, like retail sites, email and search sites.
• The average person visits 2,646 web pages a month, 89 domains and log on 57 times.
• The most popular brands include Google, MSN/Bing, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, Wikipedia, AOL, eBay and Apple.
• Brazil leads the pack for social network usage, with Italy, Spain and Japan following just behind.
• Of the Americans surveyed, 55% use the internet, 45% send or receive emails, 40% use search engines and 30% get the news.

Do you spend more than 60 hours online a month?

Source: Penn Olson

The last twelve months have seen companies adopt social media strategies by the truckload, leading to some excellent examples of social media….and some examples of what not to do. There’s been some interesting developments on Twitter in particular, where bad news spreads fast.

So, what have we learnt about social media?

Though shalt not steal

The web has provided a whole new way to crowdsource business ideas and creative processes. But that doesn’t make it a general free-for-all when it comes to words and designs. A writer called Monica Gaudio alerted the social media world to a plagiarism case, where her work was featured in a food magazine without asking for permission. Sadly, it’s a common occurrence, but it’s the response from the editor of the Cooks Source that shocked people.

‘The web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it….. you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally.’

To make it worse, the editor then went on to say that Monica probably should have paid her, considering the favour she did for her on editing. A further statement on the Facebook page seemed to mock Monica, and boasted that their followers had gone up.

The editor clearly didn’t understand the legalities of taking someone’s work, and clearly didn’t anticipate the backlash that followed.

Paperchase also had trouble when Hidden Eloise, an illustrator who sells her designs on Etsy,  blogged about how they had stolen one of her designs. Their slow and ineffective response led to a huge amount of bad PR across Twitter and Facebook.

The Lesson

Bloggers have a powerful voice. Befriend them instead of alienating them.

Respect the power

Nestle unfortunately learnt this lesson the hard way. Already a brand connected with all kinds of PR disasters, the company’s connection to the deforestation in Indonesia was unearthed by Greenpeace, and the message spread like wildfire on Twitter. Since then the brand has been in trouble with various activists on a variety of issues, and continues to struggle with its brand reputation.

The Lesson

Run your business in an unethical or disrespectful manner, and you can expect to be exposed online.

Don’t cut and paste

Tiger Airways made the mistake earlier this year of giving every negative comment a bit of a brush off, along the lines of “You get what you paid for.” This, understandably, only riled commenters up further.

It then got worse. They started deleting any negative comments, and banning users who left them.

Overall, not a great way of communicating with customers and visitors.

The Lesson

Reply to each follower individually, and try to take a negative comment as constructive criticism. It might help your business improve.

Create some rules

Underestimating the social media usage of employees was a mistake Domino’s made at the start of the year. Prior to the success of the Domino’s Foursquare campaign, the company was the victim of a recording made of two of its employees, who were filmed wiping mucas onto sandwiches. Nice.

Domino’s were quick to issue apologies on Facebook and Twitter, and produced an apology video on YouTube

Great response, and a lesson learned about how employees have to be careful on social media too.

Vodafone had a similar problem at the start of the year, when an employee posted an obscene remark on their Twitter feed. Like Domino’s, they were quick to respond and suspended the employee immediately.

The Lesson

Put together a social media policy pronto. There’s a great list of social media policies over on Social Media Today.

Don’t blame the intern

Habitat came a cropper back in 2009, when they misused the hashtag in their tweets. Hashtags are terms or words added to tweets, like #HarryPotter or #RoyalWedding, that allow people to search for all the discussions related to that topic.

The company inserted popular hashtags  into the start of all their tweets, in order to raise the profile of their content. The practice had already begun to irritate followers, who called it ‘spamming’, but the use of a tag for the Iranian election really angered people. A backlash occurred, with Twitter users retweeting and criticising the move. Explain this more – link to what a hashtag is. Imagine you’re explaining to someone who doesn’t use Twitter.

The Lesson

By patronising followers with blatant advertising and the misuse of hashtags, the company was left picking up the pieces of a damaged brand name. Worse still, the company blamed the intern! If you’ve got a social media policy in place (see above), this sort of thing should never happen, but if it does blaming the intern is a terrible excuse — not only does it make an unpaid, untrained work experience person the scapegoat, it doesn’t say a lot about how seriously you take your social media strategy.

What lessons have you learnt about social media this year?

Image via Wikipedia

Wal-Mart hasn’t had the best track record with social media. Their biggest problem is a lack of understanding of what social media is, believing it’s there to talk at customers and not with them. In the past, their experimentations with ‘The Hub‘ (a MySpace-based site, but lacking in social media) and the fraudulent Wal-marting Across America (where a couple, travelling across America and parking in Wal-Mart car parks, turned out to be part of a Wal-Mart campaign) have been a PR nightmare for the company. So this latest campaign has a lot riding on it.

The new campaign revolves around their new Facebook page deals app, Crowdsaver. The concept behind the app is that a deal will be ‘unlocked’ every time the app received a designated number of ‘likes’.

Wal-Mart received 5,000 ‘likes’ in less than 24 hours, which led to a discount of 18% off a $500 plasma TV. This promotion is similar to promotions by sites like Groupon, who offer a cheap deal on meals, entertainment and products once the set level of people willing to buy it is reached.

The biggest difference is, Groupon offers deals from a variety of companies, while Wal-Mart is limited to its own products, making it more of a price promotion then a unique deal. They’re also slow to pick up on when a threshold is passed, meaning fans have to keep checking the page until the discount is finally released.

It’s an interesting concept, but one that still seems to lack much sociability. Wal-Mart still seem to be talking at their customers, with only a ‘like’ required as interaction.

Time will tell if this latest stab at social media will work.

Social media hasn’t had the best reputation in the courts this year. Back in February, a Baltimore Judge took the decision to ban Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all other forms of social media from the court. Although how they can enforce it outside of the court is another matter. This followed a string of cases where members of the jury have used social media platforms to discuss the private court cases.

One case in particular involved 20-year-old Hadley Jons, who was on jury duty and made the mistake of writing on her Facebook page “Gonna be fun to tell the defendant they’re guilty.” Unfortunately, the court case was still in session, and a decision hadn’t been made yet. On discovery, Jons was removed from the jury and faces the possibility of seeing the judge herself for contempt of court.

Interestingly though, Mashable touched upon some of the more positive uses of social media within the law. Some judges are now using social media to test juries, on top of the usual background checks, interviews and other information collected.

Social media can also now be used as evidence in a case. Robert Algeri, a partner at the marketing company Great Jakes, commented “It just makes sense. If you can use e-mail as evidence, why not use a Facebook post?”

What do you think about lawyers using social media for evidence? Invasion of privacy or fair play?