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Likeable Community Management
1. Top 10 Ways Community
Management Can Add Value to Your
Business
June 26 , 2012
Presented by:
Megan McMahon & Dhara Naik
@LikeableCM
2. Agenda
⢠Who is Likeable?
⢠Top 10 ways community management can add value to
your business
⢠Q&A
*TWEET TO @LIKEABLECM with hashtag #LikeableCM
#LikeableCM
-Whether youâre a small brand just getting started or a big brand trying to penetrate a new area or launch a new product, through community management is the perfect way to build brand awareness. -Takes time and effort to reach a new audience; there will be tons of questions to answer when attempting to build brand awareness and a community manager will need to tame the crowd -When done right, building brand awareness through social media can be the key to a new brand or productâs success
-Whether youâre a small brand just getting started or a big brand trying to penetrate a new area or launch a new product, through community management is the perfect way to build brand awareness. -Takes time and effort to reach a new audience; there will be tons of questions to answer when attempting to build brand awareness and a community manager will need to tame the crowd -When done right, building brand awareness through social media can be the key to a new brand or productâs success
-Boloco (Burrito place in Boston) does a great job of offering deals and specials and even freebies to get people in the door at their locations -Most deals are announced via Facebook and aim to get people excited
Even big brands need to keep their awareness alive â Logitech is a perfect example. This global brand launches new products frequently and uses community management to reach out to their fans. Announcing products via social media is an excellent way to build awareness about your brand and the new product and community management can effectively achieve this.
Many companies use community management as an opportunity to develop their brandâs voice, tone, and personality. Brands need to make sure that their voice is relatable to their target audience and an accurate representation of the brandâs core values.
GemsAround is a jewelry business with a heavy focus on customer service: if a customer can dream up a piece, GemsAround will make it. To send this message, GemsAround developed Ruby, who quickly became the voice of the brand and answered all customer service-related inquiries. Ruby posted weekly updates to the page, answered any questions about GemsAround products or services, and made product recommendations to fans. Ruby is girly, fun, and relatable to the GemsAround target demographic.
@DKNY is run by Aliza Lecht (aka DKNY PR girl). Rather than maintaining a general DKNY account, she uses DKNY PR Girl as her avatar, which gives her the flexibility to be herself and use her own voice on behalf of the brand. Positioning herself as âDKNY PR Girlâ rather than âDKNYâ allows her to connect with DKNY followers on a more personal level.
As much as brands want to be heard, itâs just as important for brands to use community management as a listening tool. The more companies listen, the more theyâll understand about their consumers. The more you understand, the better product/service you can provide.
On the Voices Against Brain Cancer FB page, community members are constantly sharing stories and photos of loved ones affected by brain cancer. Everyoneâs story is different: some are personal stories related to the day to day hardships of people living with cancer. Some community members are mourning a loved one. Some are survivors sharing words of encouragement. Everyone has a different reason for being on the page. Since everyoneâs story is different and the topic is so sensitive, itâs important for VABC to read each post, understand why these people are engaging with them, and respond as carefully and appropriately as possible.
When you think of Nickelodeon, who do you think their target demographic is? Automatically, most people would say kids. However, by using community management as a listening tool, Nickelodeon came to realize that nostalgic 20-somethings were a key demographic that they had not previously considered. Nickelodeon searched their communities and found multiple Facebook pages and groups dedicated to bringing back 90s Nickelodeon shows. After listening and understanding consumer desires, Nickelodeon introduced the â90s Are All That.â Each weeknight at midnight, they wouldplaya variety of 90s Nickelodeon shows at Teen Nick in an effort to reach nostalgic 20-somethings, a demographic Nickelodeon would never have known they had if they had neglected community management.  On its first night, each of these shows received higher ratings in the 12-24 year-old demographic than âLate Night with Jimmy Fallon,â âThe Tonight Show with Jay Leno,â âLate Show with David Letterman,â âConan,â âLopez Tonight,â and âJimmy Kimmel Live.â
One of the most valued reasons for a company to seek out Social Media marketing agencies is to grow their fanbase and acquire new customers through strong community management.
Spending only $500, dentist Dr. Bob Wagstaff created his first YouTube video. In less than 3 years that video has been seen more than 16 million times and helped to generate over $1.6 million in sales and contracts with Wal-Mart and CVS Pharmacies. Community management strategies: engaging user videos.
Technorati discovered in their 2011 State of the Blogosphere report that bloggers use photos more than any other type of media (80% use photos, around 50% use videos and many fewer for all other formats). Coconut Bliss makes an effective use of fun and friendly pictures to show customers eating their dessert products. Community management strategies: contests and partnerships.
One of the best things about social media is the easy access to so many people who are fans of your brand already. The socialsphere is the prefect place to show your appreciation for your brand advocates. A goal of CMs should be to set out to find these advocates and REWARD them! With rewarding should also come the element of surprise. *GIVE AWAY SOMETHING* You too can surprise anyone youâd like via social media so long as thereâs strategy behind it!
Sprinkles NYC announces a password to get a free cupcake everyday! This has an element of fun to it for the fans AND gets people in the door of their store.
GrubHub has the ultimate surprise and delight factor as they choose a fan of the week randomly each week. All a person has to do to enter to be fan of the week is simply mention GrubHub in FB status update, write on their wall, or even mention them in a tweet. Fans of the week get physical prizes mailed to them as well so that they in turn can become everlasting brand advocates. GrubHub is a great example of surprise and delight for brand that doesnât even have an actual location.
GrubHub has the ultimate surprise and delight factor as they choose a fan of the week randomly each week. All a person has to do to enter to be fan of the week is simply mention GrubHub in FB status update, write on their wall, or even mention them in a tweet. Fans of the week get physical prizes mailed to them as well so that they in turn can become everlasting brand advocates. GrubHub is a great example of surprise and delight for brand that doesnât even have an actual location.
Fan feedback is important to community managers because it allows them to hear exactly what the customer is saying. It also creates a relationship that emotionally attaches the customer with the brand.
Marriott says it leads the hospitality industry in Twitter followers and is on pace to make it to the top in Facebook "likes" soon. Its new My Marriott Hotel social game allows users to manage different elements of a Marriott hotel. Community management strategies: Facebook likes, My Marriott social game, âDid You Think of Thisâ internal website video contest for hiring applicants. Marriott is also extremely responsive to each and every person that tweets at them. They have a lot of followers but treat each as an important as anyone else.
Hpnotiq has their own recipes, but they also encourage fans to create and post their own recipes. Hpnotiq listens and shares out to its larger community giving each fan who creates a recipe the opportunity to be heard and feel important.
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-One of the many ways community management can add value to your business is through its capacity to develop long-term relationships with your biggest brand ambassadors. -People trust other people more than they trust brands, and they relate better to a consumerâs story than they do to a brandâs story. It makes sense, then, to have real people who are out and about, sharing their love of your brand to the world. You can find and develop relationships with these individuals through community management. -Once youâve identified your brand ambassadors, you should develop a social framework or some kind of program to bring them all together to share their love of your brand on a regular basis.
-Restaurant.com identified their biggest brand advocates through a survey that asked customers to share their Restaurant.com experience. The ones who rated their experience the highest and shared their stories were then asked to join an exclusive Facebook group, called The Food Family. -Nearly 4,000 members strong, these brand ambassadors share stories, provide feedback, and receive star treatment, special deals and an inside scoop on Restaurant.com news. -These customers feel particularly valued, and as a result are the first line of defense on the Facebook page. Theyâre quick to defend anyone attacking RDC, and theyâre also more than willing to share their positive experiences with the rest of the Restaurant.com community.
Ritani VIP Network: After Ritani met a bunch of bloggers at the Blissdom blogger conference in Nashville, Ritani sent them a survey to become a part of the Ritani VIP Network, which basically means that they would have exclusive access the latest Ritani news, contests and giveaways for VIP members only, etc. (see group description for more info.). They post updates about once per week to keep the bloggers engaged and talking about Ritani. The Finks Insiders group is a group of salespeople at Finks retail stores. Ritani posts in this group about twice per week and retailers constantly post about when they sell Ritani rings. They select one winner each month based on how many likes and comments the retailers leave in the group (everyone who leaves 6 or more is entered into a sweeps). They also get exclusive, behind the scenes info.
-One of the greatest features of community management is its capacity to change consumer perception about your brand. By taking the right steps, you can turn an angry customer into a happy one, sometimes even converting them to a lifelong brand advocate. -These steps include publicly acknowledging the customerâs complaint, taking their complaint offline to determine how best to resolve the issue, and then taking action to actually resolve the issue in an efficient manner.
One McDonaldâs customer, Fadra, had taken her son on the last day of that particular Happy Meal promotion to get the final missing Marvel hero, but got the Littlest Pet Shop instead. She sent an angry tweet to the fast food restaurant. As a result, McDonaldâs sent the missing Marvel figurine with a handwritten note to Fadra. People love to feel valued, and a great way of doing that is through handwritten notes and real, non-electronic mail. They get excited, they take pictures, they post to twitter, etc⌠all because a brand proves there are real people behind the brand who care about them. The result? A happy boy with his completed set of figurines from McDonaldâs. Oh yeah, and Fadra happened to have a popular blog where she shared the story. The result for McDonaldâs from an offline good-will gesture was a positive blog that receives 50,000 views a month. She went from upset customer to one of McDonaldâs best brand advocates, and sheâs online all the time, defending McDonaldâs From one gesture, there is a ton of positive sentiment for McDonald's. The social media team was quick to point out that while it wasnât a crisis â effectively they were dealing with an upset four-year-old and a mother who had to deal with an upset four-year-old â it was an opportunity to go the extra mile.
One weekend, ordr.in caught a tweet that came in from a very unhappy customer. Through a series of well-executed and immediate actions by the CEO and CTO (outlined below), within an hourâs time, the company changed the consumerâs opinon of their brand. They publicly acknowledged his frustration, moved to private communication to obtain his contact info, and then solved the problem by feeding the customer at no charge. Customers love to see that a brand will go above and beyond for them , and feel that they are valued and special