Crisis management for social media is challenging due to the nature of how the social web works. Now, iInformation on the internet can be spread quick and go viral within minutes between networks. Companies must always be aware of their online communities and manage issues real-time. Not being able to react quickly or ignoring issues on the web can cause further damage to a company's reputation and brand.
An example of a social media crisis was during the US elections, a staff member of KitchenAid (twitter handle @KitchenAidUSA) accidentally tweeted an inappropriate message relating to President Obama from the KitchenAid account, thinking it was their personal account. It seems it is a common mistake with plenty of organizations (see other Twitter crises) who have community managers using a social media application on their mobile device or personal computer which is also hosting their company's account.
In the case of KitchenAid, immediate reaction to the crisis is imperative to save as much of their reputation as possible. The first step is to address the issue of the mistaken tweet. Never ignore a PR problem, it will only escalate if the public senses that the company does not care to correct their actions. Do not delete the original message, at least without addressing it first. Admit to the mistake and take ownership.
Secondly, reach out to all of those who are affected by it. Think about stakeholders in this situation - who are directly affected by the company's brand and reputation? Communicate a message acknowledging the problem and corrective actions that will be taken. This message should be communicated to the audience of the social media platform, in this case Twitter. It should also be communicated to the those directly affected, in this case President Obama. Lastly, reassurance KitchenAid's customers that the brand do care about their brand and strive to keep it a reputable brand.
Finally, I would suggest that those who are responsible for managing a social media community in the company should not host their personal and the company account on the same social media application for their mobile phones or on their personal computers at work. Due diligence must always be taken in the interest of the brand's reputation. There should be strict policies implemented in the organization regarding the use of social media that has links to the company's account.
These steps can avoid future crises, save KitchenAid's brand and retain their customer base.
It is not news to anyone how much social media has grown over the last few years. A rapid growth in the number of posts, tweets or updates resulting in overwhelming data. What used to be random data from virtual users about their social life has become valuable information for many businesses and organizations. Marketers and PR practitioners are seeing the importance of paying attention, listening and reacting to communities in the social web. However, with over billions of posts and tweets thrown on to these platforms how are marketers or PR professionals understanding their audience? Also, how are they cutting out the noise of the social web and extracting the most valuable data?
Measurement tools for social media are imperative for successful communications, campaigns for products, and relationship building. There are plenty of tools to measure data on social media platforms. Here we explore some free tools and a paid tool.
Facebook Insights is a built-in analytic tool for organizations who have created a Facebook fan page. Facebook Insights reports metric on the content of the fan page. Some of the metrics are insight on fan growth, demographics, number of "likes", page views an many more. This tools is value to organizations with Facebook fan pages because Facebook is the most popular social media platform. Being able to measure audience engagement without paying for the data is saving the company from investing money into a measurement tool and still gain insight to useful data. Facebook insights provide a good view of who is on their fan page and the company is able to monitor their audience's interaction on the fan page as well.
bit.ly offers the ability to shorten URL links to allow maximum space for messaging. It also offers real time link tracking. This is useful for social media because the organization is able to see how many clicks they are getting by posting their website link on to a social media platform. They can see which platform is more successful than the other and will understand which platform they need to invest more time on. This tool is great for quick messaging and for organization who have the goal of getting online users directly on to their website.
Hootsuite is one of the best free measurement tool out there. This tool allows the organization to add all social media profiles on to one deck. This is a valuable tool because the social media specialist of an organization can manage all profiles on one simple deck cutting down time spent on separate sites and allowing the ability to update all profiles at once. Hootsuite also provides an analytic tool which measures engagement on all social platforms. Here you can see data under the same reports or side by side.
For more information on how to use measurement tools, this article suggests ways to measure with free tools successfully. Here is a list of other useful free measurement tools for social media: Ten tools for social media
Although free tools are great ways to gain insight on your audience, they are usually limited in functionality. The quality of data may not be in its true form and may not capture a true representation of your audience. Companies and organizations that are serious about understanding their customers should invest in paid analytic tools. The return on investment is always high due to the quality of information these powerful tools can produce. A very good analytic tool in the market is Google Analytics.
Google Analytics measures online interactions, conversions, investments in advertising and social networking. Particularly in social media, Google Analytics provides conversion reports which shows quantifiable data that can be analyzed. Basically, this report can present how social interaction on the web leads to the end sale or goal for a business organization.
This tools also tracks the path of users of social media towards the organization website. It also shows engagement and conversion for each social platform
Lastly, the tool tracks how users are sharing information about the organization and where they are sharing it, tracking the activity of users.
Measuring social web data is critical for business development and increasing brand reputation. Using measurement tools allows more efficient and effective ways to gather valuable data, resulting in positive return on investment.
It appears that social media has increasingly becoming more about visual communication than written communication. In the last week, Instagram and Facebook have made changes to their platform to enhance user/audience features.
Instagram announced that they are going to make their platform available online with web profiles (article here). What does this mean for users and those online? It makes it easier for users to follow and view their friends' photos. Also, available for those who do not have this platform to see some of their friends' photos via Instagram. I know, personally, I do not have an Instagram account and contribute filtered, artsy photos but as a frequent user of social media tools, I am still very much interested in seeing what my friends and favourite personalities or brands have posted. I think this is a good move for Instagram.
After purchasing Instagram, Facebook have finally rolled out the photo filter features for their mobile app (article here). This a good strategic move for Facebook to implement in their platform, since many online users are more inclined to be attracted to visual posts, plenty of users are more engaged on Instagram versus Facebook when it comes to photo sharing. Adding the highly favoured photo filters will get users back on to Facebook. This can potentially enhance user engagement via Facebook even more.
I manage my service club's Facebook page and I have noticed the number of additional followers have plateau over the last month. It was a bit concerning because it is one of our goals to increase membership and engagement via our social media tools. I wasn't sure how to do this but I came across an interesting article on Social Media Examiner on how to grow followers - 10 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Followers
I'll definitely try this over the course of the next few months and report back on how effective these steps are.
Infographics are an increasingly popular way to present data. They are great because information can be organized quick, simple and in a creative manner. The use of images are always more appealing to the audience's eyes versus presenting in pure words. However, is it a useful tool to teach the audience about "content strategy"?
Here I compare a few infographics I was able to find over the internet. I found it interesting that there is not many content strategy for social media infographics available on the internet. Assuming this is because using social media as a PR and/or marketing tool has only started to become important recently.
Content strategy sandwich
This content strategy infographic immediately caught my
attention when I was searching for images. The arrangement of a “sandwich” was
a clever portrayal of how to a PR practitioner can easily content strategy. This
is a very straight forward image which clearly shows what it is about. It is organized
well and a legend is provided with description of how content who be used accordingly.
This one focuses on centering the
audience and building the sandwich around them. I thought that was rather
accurate since the ultimate goal of social media is to engage users and use
content that will call to action. The only point it is missing is providing additional
information on what type of content works well on digital and social media.
The anatomy of content marketing
Unlike the first infographic, this one includes more
valuable information and data on content marketing. It shows statistics of
social media users and how they interact with brands, as well as how it influences
their participation with their online community and brand relation. Despite the
difficulty of being able to read the small fonts, it is well organized in
sections. It creatively uses the anatomy of the body in the centre of the
image, representing again, the audience which is always the primary focus. This
image also has a strong focus on leveraging online communities through blogs, using thought leadership and influencers to increase reach.
The 7 elements of smart content
I found this infographic effective because of the flow of
information laid out. It touches on all the important points of content strategy.
It is straight to the point and highlights key words like informative,
entertaining, consistent, call to action and measurable. This image is lacking
statistics and data, it’s hard to trust the information without references to
research.
Using infographics are great for quick information and its ability to share amongst peers easily. However, I think using it to explain or teaching people on content strategy may be too limited. Content strategy is very important for social media platforms. More data needs to be researched and understood by PR practitioners. Although they are great to quick present a topic it, it is not useful to fully understand everything about content strategy.
Twitter has been a key player in the social media world and has been proven to be one of the best platforms for building awareness and increasing follower and brand engagement. Many Twitter users already follow their favourite brand, but what about those businesses they do not know about or are not aware of their Twitter existence?
Twitter advertising hosts several marketing products for companies and brands to help promote their businesses. Theses are promoted, accounts, promoted tweets and promoted trends. Full details on each product can be found directly on the Twitter business page.
Here are a few videos to visually explain how Twitter advertising works and benefits to a business:
Like any advertising product, Twitter advertising comes at a price. Costing companies roughly $150, 000 (in USA) to own a promoted trend topic for a day. Promoted tweets and accounts allows companies to appear at the top in most search results in Twitter or suggested lists to follow - this charges companies on the engagement, which are the number of clicks, retweets, favourites and replies.
Twitter advertising should be deemed as a marketing strategy. However, with the option to promote certain tweets, trends or account can add value to a public relations program but at a cost. Depending on the what companies need to communicate to the public about the brand, PR practitioners should not depend entirely on this strategy to engage with potential followers and/or customers. PR practitioners should weigh the value added by these promoted products and measure the return on investment.
Without a doubt, promoted tweets, accounts and trends fosters better brand awareness, engagement and loyalty. If properly used, PR practitioners can gain a favourable online community for their brand and be able to have direct connections with followers who are loyal to the brand. It is a great way to get in front of the public's eyes and "force" them to look at your tweet or generate curiousity around your promoted trend or account. However, good engagement and brand loyalty still requires excellent on-going relationship management. Using Twitter advertising to create awareness in the beginning is a great boost to kick start a campaign roll out but not entirely necessary to use frequently unless there is a campaign that needs to be communicated. In this article, 5 Proven Twitter Marketing Strategies, it provides good insight on how Twitter advertising should be executed properly.
Do you know where you are? Do your friends know where you are? Did you know that letting others know where you are eating, shopping, travelling, or walking your dog has changed how marketers are targeting us and how organizations and companies are now communicating with us?
Why don’t we understand this function better?
Location-based services is one of the newer social media tools and surprisingly, like myself, not many mobile users quite understand why it exists and why we feel the need to use that “check-in” function on our phones. I am an avid user of my smartphone and probably have accounts to 90% of all social media platforms out there, and I confidently say that location based services is still new to me. I use it to sporadically show my virtual friends the cool places I’ve eaten or obnoxiously make it seem I’m cultured because I’m at the Four Seasons Centre watching an opera.
But why don’t we understand this function better?
During our last lecture, we were graced by the presence of guest speaker, Jonathan Laba (@J_Lab), from BNOTIONS. He gave us more insight to location-based services – where it is now and where it’s going. Despite learning that there is a future for this service in how we interact with our surroundings, it was best to understand it at first hand.
So, I create my very own foursquare account but after that I thought “now what?” I played around with the app for a bit, understood what it was used for but still did not see the benefits to me. It wasn’t until I was at a park event that I got to understand foursquare more. Strolling down the path, I noticed Panago Pizza handed out free butter chicken pizzas along with a $5 off coupon. Naturally, free pizza was intriguing and after tasting theirs I was even more enticed to check out their nearest location.
Saving $5 later and waiting 12 minutes while it was cooking, I thought “Hey! I wonder if there are any specials for checking into this place?” Lo and behold, after checking in I was able to redeem another $5 off coupon because I was a first-time check-in! What a fantastic way to lure me into buying another pizza!
I’m a new user of foursquare so the excitement of this app was still new to me, however during class I learned that foursquare was probably eventually going to fade out into the graveyard of forgotten apps. I was saddened to be behind on this but I can see why the novelty has died.
I feel that foursquare is not utilized by businesses very well, unlike Facebook or Twitter. I have never seen prompts to use it when I walk into restaurants, stores or places that I check into, which I think is their downfall. Perhaps if they partnered up with a more popular social media tool that majority of the population use or partner up with “deal of the day” websites like Groupon or LivingSocial to better provide value to its users and also allow these discount e-commerce business gain more customers. Which has more value - QR codes or Mobile Visual Services?
Personally, I have never found true value or benefits in QR codes. I usually research something versus taking a picture of configuration of black blocks. However, I do appreciate how these can be used in a unique and creative way. Just like Jonathan Laba’s interesting game to get guests at a conference interactive. Also, learning that one of my Young Employee Network (Hewlett-Packard) board members is using QR codes in a similar way to promote our network in our office and leading them to our kick off by leaving QR codes around the building with trivia questions in them. QR codes can be valuable if used in the right way.
I was extremely impressed that Mobile Visual Services (MVS) exists, how much it has advanced and where it is going to take us in the future in terms of interacting with our surroundings. Apps like the Google Goggles is a fantastic tool to use with our everyday environment without much effort. It makes it more interesting to look up or research something but a click of a picture.
In general, humans are keener on visuals. When it comes to social media, MVS is definitely something PR practitioners should be keeping a look out on and how it can be used as another strategy to communicate with the public in a more visually interactive way.
Google Goggles Demo
Why we should embrace Location-based services? But be careful of our privacy.
Location-based service is an excellent tool for both marketing and social media. However, practitioners must understand how it can be value and use it in the right way. This is a great article on tips for successful location-based marketing Even though location-based marketing has been around for a few years, we can see that the popular social media platforms are now following the trend and seeing the value of using this tool. Twitter recently revamped their location-based marketing and Facebook included it in their mobile app as well. Here you can see the different types of location-based tools currently used and how they compare.
Source: http://kahlain.com/
But who is this really useful for? Customers? Users? Companies?
There is still a lot of work and research on how this tool can be a powerful marketing tool, which mutually benefits the end user and the companies who participate in it. I see this being a valuable tool for business who depend on customers walking into their establishments i.e. Restaurants, food/beverage shops and retails stores.
Location-based service is happening and we cannot avoid it. However, it is controversial when it comes to privacy. This shows use that the general public is aware of this tool but a large amount of them are concerned with privacy and would likely be more inclined to use the tool if they were able to control the privacy settings.
Source: http://whatdidericsay.com
Regardless our setting, we must always be careful with our privacy and safety. Be aware of what you share and know your limits for sharing.
With that, I leave you with another intelligent Google idea
I'm not new to the world of blogging, but I am excited to start a fresh blog focusing less on personal tidbits and photos of food, and more on the wonderful world of social media. I'm taking a great course at Ryerson University's Chang school of continuing education called Social Media in PR. What better way to learn about social media than to contribute to a blog every week on our thoughts and ideas?
Like most people, I primarily saw social media as a tool to keep connected with my social network in the most efficient way while being able to go about my day. We are inches away from our friends' lives just by checking our smartphones or logging on a computer and on to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Only recently I have noticed the value of using these platforms to connect with my favourite brands, restaurants, artists, events and anything else to do with my specific interest. We live in a world that dumps plethora of information in front of us, which makes it increasingly difficult to sift through what actually matters or can be deemed valuable.
I am a huge advocate of social media. Getting back to my original reason as to why I use social media - connections. Connecting is key to social media. Without completing this course yet, I can immediately see that importance of making connections and building relationships via social media. Marketing strategies changes frequently to meet the trend of how society is. It is hard to avoid the fact that social media is crucial for building brands and gaining loyal customers. Social media is not a resource anyone can just start using without understanding its power. Unfortunately, many marketers do not leverage their social media platforms very well. In this article, 5 reasons social media is ruining marketing, mentions that marketers are "becoming lazy" and basically blast their marketing message without a strategy, without conversation and building that crucial relationship. The remainder of the article explains the ways in which to properly use these platforms to benefit the brand and objective of the company.
