Client choices on social media
We thought you might find it useful to know what social media activities our clients are focusing on at the moment:
1 Social Media ‘ecosystem’ audits – we are helping clients to explore what is being said about them on social media networks, including newspaper sites, blogs and twitter. With media events coming up, for example, they are keen to know what is being said about them through social media and what the key/growing topics are, so they can be properly briefed. They are then looking for recommendations from us as to how they can act upon the findings in the social media realm.
2 Social media guidelines – we are helping clients develop guidelines for using social media to protect the reputation of their businesses, but also to guide staff on how best to use blogs and social media networks. Lots of agencies are bombarding brand teams with social media suggestions and there is a risk that the company might not follow best practice.
3 Social media executive briefings – we are organising briefings for leaders of businesses and brand teams who want to understand what is driving social media and how it is affecting their business; they also want to see good examples of how other businesses are using social media.
We are finding that a lot of large organisations are keen to see how they can use social media to be more personal in their dealings with customers. They want to bring out ‘the real’ side of the organisation, not what they see as the stereotypical perceptions that have often been generated by the traditional media.
4 Blogging – We are helping clients to develop blogs and become part of communities that are relevant to those blogs. We looking at what content works best and how to develop different channels to support blogs, for example Twitter and Flickr.
We are also looking at how we can optimise blogs and publicise them. And we are getting requests to develop concepts for media blogs so media teams can efficiently distribute their own messages and develop their own platforms. This is based on the knowledge that key audiences are no longer reading traditional medi, nor are they always visiting corporate web sites.
5 Twitter – we are helping clients to develop Twitter channels and advising them on how best they can use Twitter to develop relationships with key audiences and to link to relevant and useful content (such as interesting videos on YouTube or articles in e-newsletters). While there is a lot of unofficial brand stuff created and shared through social media, companies can use Twitter to act as a ‘curator’ of interesting and relevant material, so audiences know which to go to.
