Chapter 18
Ten Businesses That Excel at Social Media Engagement
In This Chapter
Understanding your audience’s needs
Honing your social networking skills
Adopting the right attitude online
Leveraging content to attract attention
We evaluated several companies after speaking with a wide array of people and industry leaders who have tackled different platforms for social media engagement. Each company featured in this chapter has identified the channels where they have the most success and where they regularly engage with their communities for the best results.
These businesses all have a few characteristics in common: They create plans that work for their brands, they diligently monitor their activities, they adjust whenever necessary (based on the results they see), and they engage.
Wine Sisterhood
www.winesisterhood.com, www.facebook.com/winesisterhood
Women can join the conversation at the online community Wine Sisterhood (based in Napa, California) to discuss wine, food, travel, style, and entertaining. The group’s mission is to entertain, educate, inform, and inspire women, and they do so on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Foursquare, and (more recently) Google+.
Tips
Know your audience, and know what inspires them to respond. Wine Sisterhood realizes that humor goes a long way with their female audience and that quirky products or wine crafts are true crowd-pleasers.
Become more visual. Wine Sisterhood emphasizes visual elements (rather than plain-text quotes or links) on its page.
Distribute duties to better manage the load. Two team members, in two time zones, monitor comments and Facebook messages on the Sisterhood’s Facebook Page several times a day, and they make a point to respond within 24 to 48 hours to all inquiries and requests.
Avoid this pitfall: Ignoring what your fans want. Whenever the Wine Sisterhood deviated from light-hearted and quick-witted Facebook posts and presented a more serious tone, their interactions dipped, with only a few exceptions, such as posts about major events (Hurricane Sandy, for example). Knowing its audience and delivering more of what they want maintains a high level of interaction and actions on Facebook.
Gauge positive results: Without a doubt, Facebook has delivered the greatest amount of traffic to its website and driven a good portion of its online wine-club registrations and online and offline wine sales. As of this writing, the company was gearing up to incorporate an online shop of wine-related and lifestyle products directly into its Facebook Page in addition to a social media-powered e-commerce site.
Mabel’s Labels
www.mabelslabels.com, www.facebook.com/Mabelhood
Created by four Canadian moms with an eye for beauty and a mind for business, Mabel’s Labels produces durable “labels for the stuff kids lose.” In its tenth year, the company has grown from working in one person’s basement to a 14,000-square-foot commercial space with 40 employees. Though the company started on Twitter, its Facebook community is 60,000 strong and growing. And now Pinterest has become a priority as well. For the brand, choosing one person to maintain its social media was crucial — it now presents a unified voice across all platforms as it continues to grow — recently making the move into Target stores.
Tips
Avoid using social media as a sales tool. Be involved in conversations. Don’t push your products — that’s boring. If you engage with your community, they’ll buy your products.
Use social media engagement as a customer service tool. Though many brands delete negative feedback, use it instead as an opportunity to solve the problem publicly and gain a new fan base. Use the critique to show your customers that you don’t hide behind mistakes — you’re willing to fix them.
Don’t waste time “toe-dipping.” People are talking about your brand and products. Either you’re part of the conversation or you aren’t. If you’re nervous, begin by joining the conversation and then move to a second when you’re comfortable.
Avoid this pitfall: Not being mindful of saying or doing something that would damage your brand. Julie Cole, cofounder of Mabel’s Labels, puts it eloquently: “Social media is the voice of your brand. Every time you engage, you’re either contributing to your brand or contaminating it.”
Gauge positive results: Mabel’s Labels keeps an eye on its links, Facebook likes, comments, shares, and overall statistics, but its true return on investment (ROI) comes in the form of in-person relationships. Cole registers hugs at conferences and events as indications that its social media engagement efforts are truly successful.
Girls Crochet Headbands
www.girlscrochetheadbands.com, www.facebook.com/girlscrochetheadbands
The online boutique Girls Crochet Headbands (GCH) is filled with girls’ fashion accessories, including bloomers, tutus, and headbands. Since 2008, it has served more than 2 million customers, a number that continues to grow because of the company’s presence on Facebook (its preferred social media space). In mid-2012, GCH hired Shelly Kramer and her company,V3 Integrated Marketing to help it rebrand and create its new digital strategy, putting in place a social media team that also understands the brand — and engages daily with the GCH community. In the first seven months, the GCH Facebook community more than doubled, by using not only product promotions, coupons, and contests but also true conversation. Many posts are liked hundreds of times (and shared by the dozen).
Tips
Don’t assume that you can follow only one formula. Don’t follow a posting “regiment,” such as four tweets a day, three personal posts and one promotional post on Facebook. Treat your brand page much like you treat your personal page — engage honestly and authentically, and post a variety of content.
Build a community team that understands social media and your brand. GCH’s social team is not only comprised of people who get social media, but they are interested in the brand itself. Many are moms (as are the clientele), so the voice used to connect with the audience is genuine.
Post on weekends. Social media isn’t a 9-to-5 job. By ignoring the weekend, you miss an important opportunity to engage with potential fans and followers.
Avoid this pitfall: Getting started with social media engagement before you know what success looks like to you and your brand. You first have to ask why you even want to engage on social media. For Girls Crochet Headbands, customer service is a fundamental aspect of engagement — at least 50 percent of customers’ questions are directed to its Facebook page — so one driving motivation to exist in that space is to engage with its customers and answer questions.
Gauge positive results: Though Pinterest and Twitter definitely attract attention from the social media team at Girls Crochet Headbands, if the group’s efforts were split into a pie, Facebook would grab the largest slice. The team focuses its attention not only on the platform where its customers spend the bulk of their time but also on the one that generates the highest level of traffic and percentage of sales. For GCH, the winner in that department is Facebook.
Ramon DeLeon, Marketing Mind behind 6-Store Domino’s Pizza Franchise, Chicago
Ramon DeLeon, has always worked passionately to prioritize the use of common sense in business and to strive to wow his customers. His unique characteristic is that he knows exactly what his customers need to hear at any given moment. Ramon engages with them daily (some would say hourly) on Facebook, but mostly on Twitter, even creating videos when necessary. He and a store manager once responded this way to a tweet from a customer who was disappointed in an order: They first refunded her money and replaced the order, and then they apologized — in a video that has since been viewed thousands of times. Ramon, known for using (appropriately) the hashtag #ramonwow on Twitter, offers advice in the form of the acronym he lives by: RAT — Be Real, Be Accessible, Be Transparent.
Tips
Be real: When you engage with your community, you need to focus on being you at all times — that’s who your audience wants to get to know.
Be accessible: You must have the proper tools (smartphones and apps, for example) to ensure that you’re available and listening whenever your audience reaches out.
Be transparent: Recognize that whatever you say can be used against you. Anything that you add to the social media space is open for scrutiny.
Avoid this pitfall: Wasting time without acting. The social media space is a busy one, and you can easily busy yourself with trivial tasks. Ramon explains: “Things are happening — don’t wait. Don’t let your job get in the way of your career. Done beats perfect. Trust yourself, and trust your instincts.”
Gauge positive results: Ramon measures the success of his social media engagement by the number and quality of responses he receives from customers online and by the measurable moments of success in his stores. In early 2013, he received an award for leading sales in the Midwest region, and four of his six stores were in the top ten in the Chicago Area.
Cabot Creamery Cooperative
http://cabotcheese.coop, http://pinterest.com/cabotcheese
Based in Montpelier, Vermont, Cabot Creamery is owned by more than 1,200 dairy farm families, located in rural communities throughout New England and upstate New York. The farmers own and operate four facilities to produce award-winning, all-natural cheeses and dairy products, including the “world’s best Cheddar.” Cabot engaged on Pinterest early on, then suddenly website traffic coming from Pinterest spiked as the new social network grew in popularity. Pinterest proved to be a perfect partner for showcasing the lives of the Cabot farm families and the allure of the rural Northeast (especially Vermont) — and for featuring delicious recipes created using Cabot products. The Cabot cooperative honors community, and cooperation anchors its social strategy on behalf of the farmer-owners.
Tips
Appreciate. Appreciate your fans honestly, by pinning, sharing, and commenting on their content.
Connect. Nurture and build authentic, ongoing relationships with your followers. (Cabot’s consumers are active in social media.)
Connect even more. Use Pinterest as a vivid platform to deepen connections with consumers and content creators from other platforms by pinning content from their sites.
Avoid this pitfall: Trying to follow all your fans, all the time. Cabot has always followed all its fans in return for following the company. Team members realized early on, however, that they could follow specific (and pertinent) Pinterest boards in order to review and savor fans’ recipes and content — and then share only the most complementary content.
Gauge positive results: Pinterest is the perfect platform to showcase the farm families who own Cabot, their cows, and (of course) their mouth-watering food. Pictures truly tell the full story, and quickly. The Pinterest community, which has grown continually and steadily, has become a helpful source of traffic to and from the Cabot recipes. Pinterest also affords a two-way path to bloggers and other content creators who enhance the farmers’ products and purpose.
Nylabone
www.nylabone.com, www.facebook.com/Nylabone, https://plus.google.com/+nylabone
Putting their company on the cutting edge of social media is a priority for the folks at Nylabone, which has been entrenched in social media since early 2009. They began with Facebook and have now even adopted the brand-new platform Vine. The social media team strives to cover all its bases by developing a presence on any social media site where customers are spending time. Though Facebook is where they see their greatest level of engagement, they believe it is important to embrace new social media platforms that have less “noise” and where it’s more cost effective to develop a community. For example, though Google + is one of the newer platforms, Nylabone has established a strong presence there, noting the opportunity to reach their customers and take advantage of the special features: Hangouts, Circles, and Adwords.
Tips
Observe results, and respond accordingly: Ideas that you believe will be hugely successful sometimes aren’t, and less appealing ideas can turn into gold. Be adaptable, and be fearless in applying new content ideas.
Add value: Ask “What value does my content provide to a consumer following our brand?” For example, it may be entertainment, education, current events, coupons, or giveaways. Give people a reason to follow it by offering interesting and valuable content! (Don’t post only about your own products or services.)
Follow our 70-20-10 rule for dedicating time on social media: Spend 70 percent on entertaining your community with interesting and compelling content (as just described); 20 percent on asking consumers to share their photos or stories and thanking them for engaging with your brand (always respond to their questions!); and 10 percent on marketing your products and services. A small amount of obvious promotion is fun and inviting as long as it aligns with the theme of your content.
Avoid this pitfall: Inadvertently upsetting your online community. Do lots of industry research and figure out what the controversial topics are and try to avoid posting about those issues. Develop a Crisis Strategy for your brand so you know exactly how to deal with an issue (should any arise) in a timely manner. Addressing a negative post or situation can create a new positive relationship with your online community.
Gauge positive results: Nylabone measures SME in a variety of ways. They track online leads via brand community growth on Facebook, Twitter, other social media sites, and its e-mail marketing lists. Additionally, they measure success based on brand impressions, customer engagement, website referrals and conversions, and online coupons/offer redemption. Beyond that, they hope to gain a better understanding of their target market, gauge customers’ product needs, connect with brand advocates, and generate a positive brand image.
MomBiz
http://mombiz.com, http://mombizcoach.com, www.blogtalkradio.com/mombizcoach
The coaching and training company known as MomBiz serves the global community of moms who are business owners. As the MomBiz Coach, Lara Galloway helps mom-entrepreneurs figure out how to survive motherhood, and even thrive in it, by creating and running businesses they love. For more than four years, the MomBiz Solutions Show podcast has provided information about successfully running a business that suits women’s strengths, skills, and priorities. MomBiz uses Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and podcasting.
Tips
Market and promote your podcast. To encourage your audience to look forward to hearing about a topic, let them know in advance that you plan to discuss it. Galloway uses e-mail newsletters, Twitter, and Facebook and Facebook groups to alert people to upcoming topics.
Ask your readers, listeners, and followers what they want to know about a topic. For example, if Lara talks about the difference between blogging for fun and blogging for business, she asks clients about the topic and incorporates their answers into a podcast.
Archive and leverage your podcast. When your podcast is complete, archive it and post it to your blog, your Facebook Page, and your other social networks and highlight some of the material you covered. Ask more questions to generate discussion so that people will listen to your podcast and give feedback.
Avoid this pitfall: Recording a podcast in a robotic voice, devoid of nuance. Rather than read a perfectly crafted script, let your audience hear you speak in a conversational style and even occasionally stumble over a word or phrase or make a mistake.
Gauge positive results: About 80 percent of Galloway’s clients find her by way of her social media channels, especially Twitter and Facebook and her podcast on BlogTalkRadio. (Most clients have listened to every archived show from the past four years.) The podcast helps Galloway attract highly qualified — and even ideal — clients.
Blendtec
www.Blendtec.com, www.willitblend.com, www.youtube.com/blendtec
The Blendtec blender is the brainchild of Tom Dickson, a curious and inventive man who tirelessly demonstrates his product (while always working to improve it). This flair for show-and-tell is a natural fit for his company’s foray into social media: YouTube. (It also engages heavily on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.) The Will It Blend series — which showcases the marvel of his blender devouring products from crowbars to iPads and from glow sticks to golf balls — has garnered more than 80 million views (counting only the top ten blends!). A series of Blendtec recipes on YouTube has branched into other platforms featuring an entire social media team. On Pinterest, its recipes drive people to the company’s website, and its Twitter feed offers product-support articles and recipe tips and tricks. The team’s philosophy is to provide fans and customers with what they want, when they want it, and how they want it.
Tips
Provide the content that your audience wants — and can use. By showing your community how your product works — and how well — you encourage them not only to buy, but to come back to your channels for inspiration. Think recipes and new products.
Provide excellent customer service. In the age of social media, people often forego phone calls to ask questions on Facebook or Twitter.
Strategize your engagement based on the platform you’re using. For example, because Facebook posts reportedly have a longer life span than tweets do, try to post there twice a day; on Twitter, tweet between four and ten times a day.
Avoid this pitfall: Not finding out what your community wants from you. Blendtec gives customers more of what they want by listening to their feedback. They go the extra mile by allowing their fans on social media to evaluate new ideas. Blendtec then gains a sense of what its community believes will be awesome content.
Gauge positive results: The Blendtec team looks at the goals they have for the specific platforms. They know that its fans on Facebook are more likely to click a link and purchase a product from the site than its Twitter followers, so its Facebook strategy includes support and additional links; on Twitter, on the other hand, it focuses on providing information and support for customers and potential customers, including supplying links to its blog. For Blendtec, success means providing customers and potential customers with the content they want.
Chobani
http://chobani.com, http://instagram.com/chobani
Though Chobani, an American brand that makes Greek-style yogurt from natural ingredients, is active on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Vine, Tumblr, Foursquare, Yelp, and LinkedIn, the company uses Instagram to capture snapshots of followers using its products, for sharing sneak peeks into new products, and for looking behind the scenes at Chobani. They like to show that the company focuses on more than yogurt.
Tips
Monitor hashtags. Chobani monitors several hashtags, including #chobani, #nothingbutgood, #greekyogurt, and #tastereal to ensure that it stays on top of relevant conversation.
Engage, engage, engage. To show fans that the company is listening, Chobani engages with every post as it relates to the brand by liking or commenting on fan photos that mention @chobani or that use a relevant hashtag. Fans feel special when the company likes the images they post.
Plan content for engagement. Chobani invests a significant amount of time and thought in its online content. The digital team makes unique Chobani creations and parfaits at its regular “creation hour” so that fans can see unique ways to spice up their Chobani yogurt. The company often reposts great-looking fan images and holds regular, Chobani-branded gear giveaways to give back to the community and increase engagement.
Avoid this pitfall: Being disingenuous in social networks. The best lesson Chobani learned on Instagram (and it applies to all social media platforms) is to be personable and genuine and show fans that you’re human. Engage in conversations that are the most relevant to you and your brand so they match your brand’s image and personality.
Gauge positive results: Chobani’s best successes happen when it engages with unhappy customers. Its immediate, intimate responses keep fans coming back for more — and quickly clear up concerns or misconceptions while possibly building fans for life.
AJ Bombers
http://ajbombers.com, http://foursquare.com/ajbombers
AJ Bombers, a family-style burger restaurant with locations in Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, uses many of the major social networks (primarily, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, YouTube, and Tumblr) to engage with its guests — connecting with them even while they’re dining at the restaurant and promoting to them when they’re nearby.
Tips
Speak your customers’ language. Know your audience.
Focus on the community. Keep the community of your customers in mind when building your customer base. AJ Bombers thinks of itself as “one of the crowd,” and invites customers to be part of their crowd.
Highlight the actions of your biggest fans. Cultivate engagement from your most enthusiastic customers, and recognize them publicly.
Avoid this pitfall: Assuming that everyone knows about a particular social network. In its first large-scale Foursquare promotion, four staff members were placed in a “Foursquare training area,” where any customer who wanted to load the app to a mobile device could do so and learn the basics of how to check in. This effort was the key to the enthusiastic participation of many other guests.
Gauge positive results: AJ Bombers creates events incorporating Foursquare badges and then entices customers to its restaurant to gain access to the badges on their own Foursquare accounts. One Sunday event was centered around the Foursquare Swarm badge. Promoting the event in its social networks and restaurant location drew 161 people to check in and earn the badge. And, sales for the day increased by 110 percent.