JUNE 2011 |
www.opp.org.uk
DIGITAL MARKETING SOCIAL MEDIA | 51
business uses to help justify its digital marketing spend. But it is how you go about doing this that’s the important thing. Their view: sell and push the product openly and quickly. Our view: talk to your potential audience, open up and chat with them about all sorts of different things.
Let them into your company, brand and world by sharing personality and experiences. That way there are two winners - brand and consumer. One brand that does a great job mixing personality with marketing is Vodafone. Take a look at its excellent twitter stream. Vodafone mixes support and product news with chat and conversation through the clever use of personalities. Every part of the conversation is tagged with who you’re talking to and photos of the team are included instead of just the brand logo.
The pre-digital business world Whether your business is part of a major brand, or is a one-man band ... it is always true to say that people do business with people.
Maybe, in a previous world, it was the company who people did the business with. However, even then it was the personalities within the company that made the company what it was. The only difference is that today this is far more transparent.
As we evolve towards a more
synergistic and independent worker culture it is imperative that personalities and characters are fi nely tuned, appropriate and, above all, authentic. We are rapidly becoming a
corporation of independents who draw on and employ each other’s skills and we support, advocate and recommend our ‘colleagues’ at every opportunity – or at least we should!
The digital business world This new social world, both off and online creates a platform on which we can all survive independently but, ironically, on which we are totally dependent on each other too. We are dependent on people who know us and we are dependent on people who don’t know us. And when I say ‘dependent’ I don’t mean that
Don’t get crushed | Develop your own distinctive voice and personality online, then sit back and let the crowd come to you
in a make or break scenario but in a supportive one. At the risk of stating the obvious, we all like what we like and we don’t like what we don’t like. So … it is like-minded characters and personalities that tend to attract and form natural teams and groups (some call them ‘tribes’ but I personally prefer
“Attract business with your personality and character and do business with your intelligence ”
teams and groups). It is these natural organic teams that we are part of which are our support networks and we rely on their friendships, understanding and characters to support and even promote us in our daily digital lives.
This is social media and this is also how we attract business.
Our colleagues and our teams are constantly working on our behalf supporting and enhancing our personalities and characters … as we in turn support them.
The attitude that says “look at me …
I am really clever and look at what I can do” really has no place in social media.
Leave that to others. If you are good enough, please believe me when I say that people will fi nd out... you really don’t have to say a word!
Once we have attracted the business, partly as a result of our personalities and character, it is then that our experience and intelligence kick in.
Doing the business
Once you have attracted that client now you can use every ounce of how clever you are and show the world what you can do to help.
What if you have a company and are doing your social media mainly in the name of that company? Be warned: you have to think carefully about this. Ideally you too should be thinking along the lines of giving your company a personality and a character.
Being the business
Make sure that all the people within your company who are engaging digitally on the company’s behalf have strict guidelines as to your company’s desired personality and brand. It is also highly likely that their own character will be compatible … or you would not have employed them in the fi rst place. The whole approach should
not be too hard. However, the rules should be crystal clear. Attract business with your personality and character and do business with your intelligence and experience. No matter who you are or how big your business is take social media efforts seriously.
And that poses a challenge for companies, says Avinash Kaushik, because social media can build up a great deal of data, but not necessarily generate great insights that translate into action.
And never forget that it is action that is needed to drive more customers and more sales into the company’s bank account. Counting clicks and tweets and postings is nice, says Kaushik, but “our bosses care about something far simpler ... they will ask what has the web done for me today?”
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