Developing Engagement & Relationships for your Brand David Edmundson-Bird Principal Lecturer in Digital Marketing & Enterprise Manchester Metropolitan University
Developing Engagement & Relationships for your Brand
David Edmundson-BirdPrincipal Lecturer in Digital Marketing & Enterprise
Manchester Metropolitan University
Who do I think I am?
• David Edmundson-Bird (formerly just “Bird”)– Now a nice “Search Engine-Friendly” name– You’ll find me as “groovegenerator” anywhere
• Principal Lecturer in Digital Marketing at MMU• Opened Manchester’s 2nd Web Design Agency
(Sozo) in 1995• Chief Learning Architect at Academee 1999 – 2002• Background in AI for Strategic
Decision-Making/Military Context
Developing Engagement & Relationships with Brands
• 4 approaches with managing relationships– Personal connections– Brand monitoring– Evangelists (Citizen Marketers)– Improving Customer Support
• Practical activity practices
MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS
Personal Connections in B2B/High Value B2C
• Manage personal connections through a social CRM approach– Traditional (i.e. birthdays/favourite
things/hobbies/family) can stagnate– Integrate with Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter• Tip for sole/freelancer/SME - use Xobni• GetSocial Twitter Pro in SugarCRM
– See clients last 20 tweets– React to a tweet to maintain currency/relevancy – Turn tweets into actual cases
Brand Monitoring
• According to Nielson Buzzmetrics– 25% Search results for top 20 brands link to UGC
• Customers use Social Media for praise/crit/review/feedback
• Companies who interact create more positive impression– Can increase leads into sales funnel– But don’t do this at the expense of other proven
conversion tools (email, SEO)
Evangelist Tracking
• IDing evangelists is a cheap effective way of boosting promotions and marketing– They spread the word unconditionally• Most companies don’t pick up on this yet
• You can easily rank customers based on the activity and positivity of their messaging– Integrate this into CRM to enable management
• Your biggest critics are also sometimes your biggest fans – “squeaky wheels”
Improving Customer Support • Integrating Twitter into CRM allows for monitoring of keywords - see
how a customer views you– Move the posts into customer support
• Pacification• Support pre-sales
• Squeaky wheels– Quickly respond to anger/reduce viral impact
• Pre-sales support– Trial usage where frustration causes abandonment– Customers can post questions
• Monitoring/response enhances likelihood of conversion– Creates a positive impression
• Again an area where the mass of marketers and organisations have yet to make an impression
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY PRACTICE
Professional Activity Practice
• You can implement these practically• Designed to be conducted when you need to
minimise "media spend" but have “prepaid-for” human assets
Send the Right Message to the Right Audience in the Right Channel
• This isn't necessarily a scientific venture• If you "broadcast" (i.e. you don't know your
audience), you waste effort• When you broadcast to everyone, you're
talking to no one– On Twitter, don't just randomly tweet– Time spent understanding who will hear your
message will help
Social Media Engagement = Human Relationship Building
• It takes time• It's like finding the right life partner– You shouldn't be snogging within 3 minutes of
meeting– Trust is important to create• You have to create trust before you get any brand
loyalty
– If you start "selling" before you've built that trust, you'll fail
Quality Engagement over Quantity of Communications
• Customers prefer 1 meaningful tweet than 10 pointless ones– Think "Information Overload”
• Don't tweet things that are irrelevant (unless your culture)
• Think of timing– For consumers, after 20:00h might be too late or
intrusive• Depends on your offering
90/10 Content Rule
• 90% of the content you post should be engaging rather than promotional.
• 10% can be used for promotions– You can only engage if you know who you are
talking to.
Engagement Point Scale for Facebook
• A scale from 1 to 100– Think of a “Share” as being worth 90 points,– A “Comment” being worth 9 points and– A “Like” being worth 1 point.
• Make your FB posts be short & sweet.– Try not to overdo the frequency of posting.– 2/3 posts per day seem optimal depending on
your offering.
Be Consistent & Responsive
• Respond promptly to the comments or suggestions of your followers
• Do not ever delete a critical comment from your Facebook page– This only leads to an even angrier customer
• Other customers will join in
– Respond immediately with courtesy and address the issue in a straightforward manner
• Customers who complain and are then satisfied are up to 8% more loyal than if they had no problem at all
Imagery and Video
• Pictures/Video generate 40% greater engagement than word posts– Consider Pinterest as a tool to share rather than
just another channel to monitor.• Using video?– Make it shorter than 90 seconds.
• Shooting your own video using cheap tools?– Hold the camera vertically– Make sure the audio is spot-on
Keep your Website
• Use your site as an info repository• Don’t use your site to engage and attract but
to covert and retain
Expertise
• Use experts to manage a twitter chat– Become the place to come to– Chats are great for growing a customer base
organically
Engagement Tools
• Loads of people use Hootsuite– Use the add-ons
– Track/Share campaigns– Look for trending content– Hanging in on people’s interests– Answer people’s questions on Twitter
My TopTip for Spring 2013
• Bathrooms, washrooms, toilets are excellent places for Engagement
• Do you use QR codes?– Get a campaign putting QR codes on toilet doors
Get in Touch!
• Where can you find me?• Catch me– Twitter• @groovegenerator
– LinkedIn• davidedmundsonbird