Yu Yu Din tells The Strategist that companies with a sound social media strategy are better equipped to handle negativity
Which of the following three is priority for marketers using social media in India — awareness, engagement or sales?
These three priorities are not mutually exclusive, but instead represent a process through which social media is increasing its function as a key channel of communication. Social media has become a priority because it represents an opportunity for dialogue, not just a way to broadcast a message. For a company to be able to reach its target audience and actually engage them in dialogue or a unique activity, that represents an opportunity for real-time feedback and customer response. The increased awareness and consumer engagement that follows leads to more purchase consideration and sales — whether it’s a service or a product the company is promoting.
Internal capability of companies to handle social media strategy has always been frowned upon. Share your experience.
First thing we tell our clients is to listen carefully to what’s being said about them on social media platforms. Every company does not have the resources to build internal digital capabilities and so it’s right for them to look for consultants to devise their social media strategies. Social media in India at this point is mostly run by marketing or digital marketing agencies. There are a few SMBs and startups who engage with their own customers online. These are folks who grew up as ‘digital natives’, who now own businesses.
How do you deal with the negativity prevalent on all social media platforms? Is it possible to offer customer service online?
Companies with a social media strategy in place are much better equipped to handle the negativity. Having a sound strategy in place will guide team members toward a unified response and will save time and resources once a crisis hits. Companies will be able to communicate their message much more quickly and gauge response in real time. It is also very important to have an ongoing listening mechanism that gives companies an early warning on potential issues before they become a crisis. We often see companies ramp up their social media engagement in response to negative messages going viral, and we all know many crises start online. Genesis B-M advises clients on how best to leverage social media to help mitigate the negativity, and move past it when it comes. Essential to this is flexibility and an experienced team. All social media channels are not the same and require specially tailored content to best reach those key audiences.
A recent Pitney Bowes Software research established how there are gaps between what marketers think work on social media and what consumers expect. Please comment
Social media is evolving very fast. My first exposure to it dates back to 2001 with an account on bolt.com. Since then a plethora of social media websites have come into the scene including Friendster, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. As a marketer it’s important to understand where your target audience is and how social media strategy is a combined function of communications, marketing and customer service. Let us not forget that we are talking about a growing medium where benchmarks are not set. For instance, in e-mail marketing you know about open rates, click rates, what’s driving traffic and what’s not. In the case of social media, we are still figuring out engagement and awareness.
As an industry, we are still struggling on what works eventually. Analytics is very important in India where more than 140 million people are online. You need a right person to understand, slice and dice this data so that it becomes useful for a brand. Many players from India and abroad are doing some great work in this space already.
Yu Yu Din,
Digital strategist, Genesis Burson-Marsteller