One of the questions that we are asked on a regular basis is, how does one decide if their Social Media program is a success? What are the Key Performance Indicators?Alban D’Sa, the Operations Manager at Quay Appointments in Sydney, Australia asked this in LinkedIn.
The answer is a simple one. You look at what you are trying to achieve with your goals and use the Social Media tools that are most helpful. Then you look at an indicator to tell you if you are succeeding. One of my favorite success stories in City Social Media is Suisun City. It has two Facebook fan pages. One is for the Downtown Waterfront District, the other is for Suisun City in general.
Both give information about the locale. The Waterfront District is more about business. It has over 400 members. That makes sense for a business environment. The city fan page has almost 2,000 fans. It is much more oriented toward the fun going on in the city. Scott Corey says that it’s easy for him to be the Marketing Manager for the city because it has such good stories to tell. The important thing is, he makes sure those stories are told.
Andy Moore, Director at iThnk.com of New Zealand says, “KPIs such as number of followers/fans, amount of traffic to your page or site and the depth of comment threads from your posts are all good ways of keeping tabs on your social media campaigns.
He suggests “choosing the indicators that are most the relevant to your objectives at the outset of your campaign and monitoring these on a regular basis to make sure you’re on track. For example if your goal is to really engage with people I would monitor the amount of comments and responses you’re getting with each new update.”
He wrote a blog post on this subject recently so please check-out the link below if you’re interested…
The comments on branding were very interesting. But there are several aspects of the process that I think if often overlooked.
One is the lifespan of a brand.
Sometimes a brand spans a long period of time. Other branding does not have a long life. In some cases the life span — long or short — is intentional. And with other branding programs, the life span of a branding effort is affected not by management decisions, but by external circumstances. Anticipate how long a branding strategy will be valid, and act accordingly.
Another consideration is how the changing marketplace either strengthens or weakens a branding program.
Over the years one of branding efforts that I have thought to be both appealing and functional has been the Yellow Pages program based on the slogan, “Let your fingers do the walking.” Sadly, the Yellow Pages and your fingers are obsolete sources of information. You could re-brand it based on a new theme such as “Let your search engine do the walking.” But somehow it doesn’t the same ring. Pity. I’m going to miss those fingers.
You can build a case that self-deprecation is a foolish branding strategy. Imagine the planning committee sitting around looking for a branding strategy that focuses on the shortcomings and weaknesses of the company, its products and its services. Ridiculous?
Hardly. AVIS spent large amounts of marketing money successfully pushing the fact that they were a runner up rather than a leader. And the once-small producer of fruit products still announces, “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.
Having said all that, we have two important pieces of advice for branding strategists.
First, don’t forget that timeframe plays a key role in branding.
And second, nearly everyone wants to be a leader. That means there is plenty of room to recognize the silver and bronze medalists.
We hear about ReBranding a lot. That’s a concept that is exciting, especially when people have been either going through a process of Strategic Planning and are enthusiastic about the plan for the next year, or a new leader who thinks that if they change the brand, they can establish their own path.
The problem is, new branding or rebranding hardly ever works. People already know the brand. You can polish it up a little, maybe look at it from a slightly different perspective. The thing you can’t do is just make up a brand. People see right through that. The most famous example is the New Coke disaster, where the leaders of Coca Cola thought that if you have enough money you can convince people that the new brand is reality. I think that what we learned from that is– you don’t EVER have enough money to pull that off.
I’m thinking about this today because I just read a blog post by Mitch Gooze where he talks about what a failure Kentucky Fried Chicken’s ReBranding has been. Here’s how he sets us up at his blog Value Acceleration…
“As you may have noticed, a while back KFC corporate decided to reposition KFC into the grilled chicken market. (I guess they figured if you turned the word Fried into “F” then you could also change the menu and its focus.)
“To put it bluntly, grilled chicken has been a disaster … as far as the franchisees are concerned. Same store sales are off 7% and grilled chicken is only about 16% of chicken “on the bone” sales.”
Catharine P. Taylor brought up a great question in her blog post in the Social Media Insider. Her question is one that we’ve talked about here on a number of occasions. The question is what kind of communication and with whom is appropriate in each form of Social Media? She points out that Twitter and Facebook have very different environments and she’s beginning to see that you communicate differently in each. Here are her observations…
“The problem was that I was concerned my worlds were intermingling too much — more than I, or those in my Twitter and Facebook circles, wanted them to. I do a fair amount of outreach on Twitter for the various projects that constitute my living. My friends on Facebook, though originally made up largely of professional friends — because soccer Moms and college friends hadn’t yet discovered it — had turned more into a place where they ruled the day. And, though no offense is meant to my “professional” Facebook friends, having discussions about why the kids have yet another half day off from school seems much more in context on Facebook to me than ones debating the virtues of the iPhone 4.
“So, as Twitter and Facebook began to evolve, I began to grow uncomfortable with the spillover between the two. Did the professional crowd get tired of my 140-character laments about my almost daily trips to CVS? Did friends and family wonder why I would express any interest in recruiting them for a panel at the Social Media Insider Summit (plug!) or share a story about market share of the Android platform? Fortunately, everyone was too polite to write obnoxious stuff about my confused life on my wall, but still … it was high time that I tried to bring method to my social networking madness.”
That’s what each of us has to understand. There’s a different feel to the communication depending on where you are communicating. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter—they are each a different platform with a distinct atmosphere. On Facebook, you control (or at least you have more control) over who reads your posts, in Twitter everybody can read your posts.
The great thing about PR is what happens after the story comes out. We all get excited when a newspaper or magazine does a story about us or our company. And you kind of just enjoy the moment. But, that should just be the start.
Send the story to all of your clients and prospects. You can’t just think that, because the story came out, everyone will read it. Lot’s of people will, butyou want EVERYBODY you are trying to influence to read it. So, get permission and send it to your entire list. Don’t feel that you are being a pest. Think that they’ll be glad to read it!
Make sure your keywords are in your answers to the reporter, it helps Search Engine Optimization for people to find your website. Robin and her crew did an excellent job of that. When we tracked the results of the story tothe McRoskey websitefor just Sunday, we were delighted to find that there was an 8X spike for that day, just from Google, with 11,000 page views above the normal day. This is just from people searching for McRoskey because of the story!
So, don’t rest when you get a story written about you. The work is just beginning!
Emilly Savage of Coventry, United Kingdom asked, ” What are some good rebranding theories and models?”
The one that we at Placemaking Group use is the concept that rebranding is really just uncovering the brand as it exists today.
We always want to know what differentiates them from their colleagues and competitors. We want to know what their goals are for the next year and fro the next five years. We want to know who they should be talking to and influencing.
We talk to present clients/customers and get an idea of how they view our rebranding client. we also talk to current employees and management of the company. Sometimes they don’t even realize they have the rebranding answer.
And as we get to know our client through this process we eventually come up with the brand message; what we want everyone to remember about our client, even if those specific words are never said.
After that we can begin things like deciding if a new logo is necessary. Sometimes we even recommend a new company name, though, that is rare because it’s so expensive to get the brand awareness up again.
Another rebranding project we did included a name change, Availigent, because the original name, Eternal Systems, suggested a funeral home, rather than cutting-edge technology!
Our session dealt with heritage tourism. Several subjects that were covered in our meetings provide a useful framework for communities seeking to strengthen local economies. By definition, heritage tourism uses historic and cultural resources to attract visitors. Heritage programs can be developed just about anywhere. Every community has a history.
Following are some important elements for an effective heritage tourism program.
Conduct an unbiased tourism-asset census. Realistically, what assets will attract visitors. How can they be packaged to be an appealing attraction.
Preserve the authenticity of historic assets. Let people experience the real thing.
Encourage interaction. Determine how can visitors participate in historic events, rather than just observe them?
Look for ways that local residents can take part in heritage tourism programs. Make it a community event.
Over the past several years, heritage tourism has grown rapidly as people have become increasingly interested in local history, traditions and culture. There is even a new word that has been added to the vocabulary of tourism. It’s “staycations,” which describes-close in travel. Instead of deciding whether to travel to Mexico or Hawaii, travelers are asking “Should we go to Carmel or Yosemite”. That new thinking benefits close-in destinations which can offer easily accessible, inexpensive, and historically significant places to visit. Think about the possibilities for your town or city.
Our client Catherine Athans, Ph.D. is an author and life coach who often works with entrepreneurs and C-level executives. Very successful with a devoted following, Dr. Athans’ goal was to become better known for her unique expertise and attract more clients.
We worked with Dr. Athans to devise a strategy to get recognition for her, including a steady stream of TV interviews and stories. What made her different? Her strong belief in the power of imagination.
Tips and strategies to use to cut through the clutter and get noticed.
1.Know your goal. For Dr. Athans it was to increase awareness of her consulting practice and become an expert as a way to attract clients.
2. Take time to discover what makes you different. With Dr. Athans we interviewed her several times to learn what differentiated her from the crowded field of consultants and life coaches.
3. Get media training.Whether a veteran with the media or new to interviews, an investment in training by experts on how to work with the media and get your message across will pay off.
4. Use video. Having a video is essential to secure speaking placements and media interviews. Also videos help your search engine optimization.
Is printed paper communication totally old-school? Is the only way to go on marketing and communications outreach to do it digitally? I was talking toJeff Rubin, The Newsletter Guy, today. He’s been producing newsletters for companies for years. Many of his clients switched to digital in the last few years, often to save money on postage. And I’ve been on that side.
On many occasions I’ve reminded you that you have to know who you’re talking to with publicity and marketing. If you have a message that resonates to your audience, you have a good chance to achieve your goals. Here’s a post from a delightful new blog by Jerry Seltzer. His father and then he ran Roller Derby. Later on he started BASS Tickets, one of the first computer based ticketing agencies.
He has been giving great stories about his time with Roller Derby. Here’s part of a post about PR.
Here’s what Jerry wrote… Our publicist was a great guy named Herb Michelson. Herb was moonlighting with us, as he was a columnist for the Oakland Tribune and covered the Giants for AP. Both he and I would try to figure how we could present things in a different light, and I think the sportswriters appreciated it because the other sports took themselves so seriously. Read the rest of this entry »
