Social #media #marketing is about individuals – so how does it scale? Marketers talk about people engaging with brands, but the reality is that people engage with other people, and brand engagement comes via that human channel. Smaller companies that use social media successfully get this easily. Take Fetcham Park, for example, a wedding venue business. When I launched the business, I had absolutely no budget for advertising – all of my initial contacts were made through social media and the buzz that that has created is what has carried us along, says director Laura Caudery. My Instagram feed seems to be popular because its an inside view into my style and perspective on the wedding world, as well as a deluge of images of our houses because theyre just too beautiful not to snap! Another example is Bath Ales, a small brewery and pub chain, which appoints one person from each pub as social media manager. We include our Twitter and Facebook handles on all of our point of sale and marketing materials, from leaflets to the side of trucks. In much the same way we would include our website or phone details, says marketing manager Moussa Clarke. The central accounts echo posts from each venue, encouraging local interaction. We are just talking to our customers, in much the same way as we would behind the counter in our brewery shop, says Clarke. These companies have a meaningful and effective social media presence because of individual communicators who are not only marketers, but offer a direct human channel into the business. How does that translate to larger companies whose senior executives may lack the time and energy for social media interaction, or for whom it is simply not their style? During 2005 and 2006, irrepressible blogger – at the time there was no Twitter or Facebook - Robert Scoble was technology evangelist at Microsoft. He succeeded where small armies of more conventional public-relations types have been failing abjectly for years: he has made Microsoft, with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally but noticeably less evil to the outside world, said The Economist. Scoble moved on long ago, and Microsoft has yet to find a communicator so capable, but the example shows that it is individuals with the right personality and ability that make or break social media engagement in large companies as well as small. This kind of interaction cannot be entirely delegated to agencies or marketing departments, because even the best slogans or the cleverest campaigns cannot deliver the human face to which customers respond. Scoble would not have had the same impact had he worked for an agency rather than for Microsoft itself. Finding people who will communicate so effectively is not easy, but even large businesses can take a tip from Bath Ales and break down their business into the units or departments that make sense for them when forming their social media strategy.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 08:40:00 +0000
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