DIGITAL MARKETING a centre.” Once your Facebook application is set up there are a number of
ways to draw people in including advertising offers, promotions and events and posting photos. According to Johnson it’s all about building awareness. “You can
put the Facebook symbol on your literature and encourage people to sign up by running a competition,” she says. “It might be that the 100th person to join gets a prize.” But she warns: “People are still getting used to social
networking and older people may not understand how to use it, so you can’t rely on it as the only means of communication. It should be seen as an added tool and complement the existing marketing strategy.”
MONITORING Another difficulty is monitoring. Often, there’s little or nothing to stop people posting adverse comments on a shopping centre’s
“People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook”
Facebook page. “A negative message can spread very quickly but it is also worth
remembering that social media can help a business identify an issue quickly and be able to react in the moment,” says Bailey. “Brands that actually listen to customer feedback and
demonstrate a desire to resolve issues will showcase their integrity and commitment to offer quality of service that in the long term will enable them to stand out from the competition.” According to Savills’ Johnson, there has to be an immediate
response. “There’s an on-going argument of whether you use an external PR company to monitor the comments or whether you do it in-house. The advantage with in-house is that they have 24/7 access because if the page isn’t monitored over the weekend there could be ten negative comments by Monday. That’s the risk factor and it’s one of the main constraints - you have to be consistent and on the ball.” There are ways around this, for example it’s possible to have comments set-up to go straight through to a mobile phone or email address where it can be viewed and either confirmed and sent to the web page or declined and deleted. “You also have to be careful to post the right things at the right
times to avoid saturation,” advises Johnson. “You have to be creative about it and decide how often is suitable - should it be done once an hour or once a day?”
Bailey admits it takes some fine-tuning. adding: “We know
customers want a steady feed of news updates but this needs to be of value - if you bombard them, shoppers will soon stop following you.” “Facebook has got everybody hooked and I don’t think social
networking sites are going to go anywhere,” Johnson concludes. “But there are no rules so it’s a case of trial and error.”
Find out more: For more information, please contact the author:
mia.hunt@
jldmedia.com
A retail app with over 10,000 downloads in just 3 weeks.
Find the answer at
connectIB.com/retailapps
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