social media
Listening to what members are saying on social media will help your club connect to them
Do the obvious: Email still provides you with a major community engagement opportunity and helps you to signpost existing customers to your social media activities. It can be used to share content, tips and exclusive information with your newsletter subscribers. But remember, if you say you’re going to do something, you must actually do it! To help yourself, select a schedule you can stick to. If you can only do a newsletter once a month, that’s fi ne – but make sure it’s relevant, meaningful and interesting to your members. This means planning your content and your approach.
passengers to fi nd out their likes and interests through their social profi les, and then identifi ed a simple gift that would appeal to each of them. Those passengers were then tracked down at the airport and presented with their individually selected gifts. This was an inexpensive way of demonstrating that KLM cared and had taken time to think of its customers in a real way (see
http://lei.sr?a=D1x2W). In terms of converting a few into
many, a seven-week initiative developed 1,000,000 impressions on Twitter alone.
DIESEL: Harnessing ‘likes’ Diesel, meanwhile, focused on two drivers in its social media initiative: getting to know what its customers actually liked; and getting its customers to tell their friends they liked Diesel. We all like telling each other what
we like: this is one of the fundamental features that has made Facebook the success it is today. Some bright spark at Diesel recognised this, and it resulted in a strategy that was really, really simple. This is the key with social media: keep it simple, but at the same time make it an interesting experience. As Picasso said, “all great artists steal”.
So it was that Diesel adopted the ‘like’ click-button concept from Facebook, linking this to handheld technology – a quick response (QR) reader. The ‘I Like Diesel’ social media
campaign encouraged people to go in- store and identify which jeans they loved. Having a QR code next to each product allowed customers to scan the jeans they loved the most. This took them to a web page, where they could vote if they liked or disliked them, which then posted an ‘I like’ on their Facebook page.
In doing this, Diesel created a simple
and effective way to understand what their customers really liked, as well as a mechanism to get customers to tell all their friends they liked Diesel.
A COMMUNITY APPROACH I can’t offer any silver bullets, but I can suggest four key activities that will help you build a community-based approach. There is an obvious interrelationship between these four activities, and it is this that creates success – but this connection can also cause problems, as you’re only as strong as your weakest link.
Learn to listen: This is key to success. Many of your new and existing customers are actively engaged with social media. Listen to the things they are saying and interested in. It helps you to keep in-tune and target activities that are relevant to your brand. Social media monitoring helps identify where your customers are. Key tools are Google Alerts and Twilert. Identifying the key hashtags used by your target also helps. It’s also useful for monitoring what your competitors are talking about.
Engage where they engage: Finding out where new and existing customers hang out really helps – but without listening skills, it’s diffi cult to do this. It’s important to consider the use of multiple platforms to continually engage with your audience; monitoring where they engage is critical to success. This is due to rapid change in platform trends, from niche to mass. The use of social media management dashboards such as HootSuite, Threadsy and Myweboo are key off-the-shelf packages that can help.
64 Read Health Club Managemenwt online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
Merge the digital with the physical: Both the KLM and Diesel examples bring this concept to life. Engaging with your local community through both online and physical events helps to quickly enhance the community- building process. The ability to put a real face to a service builds that emotional connection. This is crucial to success.
CONCLUSION The companies that succeed will be those that are able to identify and focus on the specifi c capabilities of social media. Critical to success will be keeping it simple and relevant. The new success drivers will be linked
to the ability to creatively merge the digital with the physical to increase consumer participation and interaction. ‘Less is more’ strategies will become
increasingly important. Extra emphasis will need to be placed on building quality connections with individuals who are loyal to the business and who can spread the word in a more meaningful way. To achieve this, companies will need to learn to listen, and to engage with customers where they engage. The companies who successfully build
communities will be rewarded with the prize of becoming the trusted brands in the marketplace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simon Bolton is chair professor and director of the Centre for Competitive Creative Design at Cranfi eld University. He is currently a global thought leader for Procter & Gamble, advises BSKYB and has over 15 years’ experience of working in the fi tness industry, collaborating with brands such as Reebok, Fitness First and Escape Fitness. He has also owned his own manufacturing company in China.
s.bolton@cranfi
eld.ac.uk
june 2012 © cybertrek 2012
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