Scooby-Doo solves the mystery of the perfect social media strategy

As Social Media Week comes to a close, it's clear that more companies than ever are paying considerable attention to their social media strategies. Particularly in the B2B space, concerns range from social being exclusively for younger generations to theories that a presence could provoke negativity rather than positivity, and nervousness surrounds the early adoption of creative approaches. This means producing an effective social media strategy is not always straight-forward.

Earlier in the week, we referenced The OC in a post about the importance of using social channels to protect your brand's reputation and to nurture relationships with ambassadors. Now we're merging a childhood passion, Scooby-Doo, with our grown-up passion of social media marketing.

Before considering reputation management and relationship nurturing techniques, tone of voice and an overall social media strategy must be agreed upon. Due to the new and creative nature of social, the options are endless and a variety of social media action plans are constantly being created, some successful and others less so.

But what makes a social media strategy work? According to Social Media Examiner, the burning question for the vast majority (91%) of marketers is, “What social tactics work best?” Some of the most common ones can be personified via the gang of Mystery Inc:

What do Scooby-Doo characters know about social media?

Velma - monitoring and measuring

Velma is a highly-intelligent young woman with various obscure interests, ranging from sophisticated sciences to ancient Viking writing. Consequently, Velma is usually the brains behind figuring out the mystery, with the (often unintentional) help of the others.

Velma represents a pragmatic and structured social media marketing strategy. She would analyse each platform and her competitors' activity, create an editorial calendar for what and when each piece of content will be; produce detailed reporting to measure performance and provide a basis for future strategies. Her geeky nature would ensure every post has a purpose, entering her into the elite 37% of marketers who can measure their social activity by conducting it correctly.

Taking a structured and logical approach to a social strategy is important. Knowing why, when and how to implement your activity is vital, as is confidence in knowing who to target and how to measure success. However, like Velma, this academic and regimented approach will only get you so far in solving the mystery of social media...

Daphne - flexibility, adaptability, resourcefulness

Daphne is the enthusiastic one, always following her intuition and surprising the rest of the gang with her development from damsel in distress to a stronger and more independent, self-defence heroine. She occasionally helps the others capture villains by using some random accessories in her purse.

What does this teach us about our social media strategies? That the ability to be resourceful with the tools you possess, to adapt to events occurring around you, and to constantly build on areas in which you can improve are all key to success with the fast-paced, public nature of social media where activity should be timely, accurate and innovative.

These elements, together with a passion and enthusiasm for the social media journey you are embarking on, are a great basis for rich content generation as well as the frequency and tone of posts. However, these alone would make for a weak and structureless plan, with the included risk or irrelevancy and mistargeting.

Fred - focusing on followers and current trends

Fred is a loveable character, despite his aura of vanity and self-involvement. He is often seen taking the lead on solving mysteries.

Obsessed with his image, Fred's Instagram and Facebook would be full of selfies with hashtags - we imagine #FitFreddie would feature heavily - and his Twitter feed would be an abundance of Tweets about himself. He would be the first to jump on bandwagons of trends such as the #ALSIceBucketChallenge and, being the popular guy he is, would be constantly focused on engaging with and growing his follower base.

While posting about yourself 100% of the time is a no-no, Freddie-style posts are a valuable addition to a company's social activity. Businesses are, at the end of the day, using social platforms to promote themselves. Direct self-promotion should be limited, but we recommend showing off your brand and services in around one third of your posts. Images and videos enhance the engagement with a post. Twitter research shows that videos boost Retweets by 28% and photos generate a 35% increase.

Freddie would be fixated on his quantity of followers, but in the B2B sphere we recommend switching this focus to quality, with the objective to attract relevant followers. Using current trends is also a great way to maximise the benefits from social channels while exhibiting your brand's personality, but only when you can make it relevant to your business and your target market.

So, while it should be toned down, Freddie's social media strategy is also an integral component to the overall approach.

Shaggy - adding personality and not being consumed by the fear of potential mistakes

Ridiculed by the others for being 'useless', Shaggy always attempts to solve mysteries in his own, amusingly unique ways. While there is usually some sort of disaster along the way, Shaggy's methods often somehow lead to a successful diagnosis.

From Shaggy, we learn that it's okay to try out new methods and let your personality shine through to set you apart from your competitors. In B2B sectors, the content available will not always be the most exciting. The challenge is to find your own, individual ways for your brand to present this content in a way that stands out and sparks engagement.

In social media as well as in Scooby-Doo, mistakes are sometimes made. While this can be unnerving, the worst that can happen is you will provide yourself with an opportunity to gain respect through your recovery, just as Greggs did in the recent Google search information issue. Contrastingly, when Shaggy messes up, he's potentially letting a terrifying ghost loose to haunt innocent victims, so repercussions of mistakes could always be worse than yours!

Scooby - utilising your main character/asset

Scooby-Doo is, of course, the main protagonist. Scooby-Doo is a unique dog who is able to speak English. In a potentially controversial analogy, we pronounce that Scooby is similar to the CEO of a company (a comparison we're sure Hanna-Barbera never thought they'd hear).

Scooby is the centrepiece of the group, but when it comes to the crucial moment of solving a mystery, or adopting a social media strategy, he becomes afraid. Nervous and unsure of what to do in this uncomfortable situation, he looks to the others for guidance (and Scooby Snacks).

While the team could easily solve crimes without Scooby, the result would be nowhere near the same. Scooby provides entertainment, as well as the occasional, albeit accidental, valuable insight. This translates to corporate social media strategy too. Sure, your company could develop and deploy a strategy without input from your senior people, but would it lack vital pieces of content and insights? Yes. Would it miss valuable opportunities to be seen by important and relevant people in the market? Definitely.

No doubt some are highly tech-savvy, but many of those in senior roles are often wary at the first mention of social media. Only 28% of Fortune 500 company CEOs are on LinkedIn, 7% on Facebook and 5.6% on Twitter. By ignoring social media, CEOs risk missing out on important conversations, crisis management opportunities and the opportunity to extend their brand's reach to their extensive network of valuable and relevant contacts.

One of the tasks we regularly find ourselves addressing is how to get buy-in from senior staff or unsure employees. We offer companies a 'Scooby Snack' in the form of social media introduction and training sessions, using our expertise and experience to reassure them along the way.

All aboard the Mystery Machine!

Each of these characters individually represents great social media strategy qualities but, in order to optimise the effectiveness of a strategy, a combination of all of the above should be included in your plan.

First, you must accept that mistakes and negativity can occur. However, this can happen whether you choose to have a presence or not. Being present, actively listening, and knowing how to respond will give you the power to quickly turn any problem into a positive.

Reflecting your brand's unique personality with carefully-planned content and analysis of performance is a must, along with the application of popular trends to communicate your message, utilisation of available tools, news and ideas, and input from senior levels.

Applying a balance of Velma, Daphne, Fred, Shaggy and Scooby into your plan will form the perfect, integrated mix of the necessary components of a successful social media marketing strategy.

So with the help of these meddling kids, for once, you just might get away with it...

For our advice on how to be more like the gang, get in touch: info@lambinthecity.com or Tweet us @Lambinthecity

SCOOBY-DOO and all related characters and elements are trademarks of © Hanna-Barbera

Happy Social Media Week!

You could be missing more than just great talks if you weren't aware of Social Media Week…  It is Social Media Week this week. If you knew that, great. If you are attending one of the free or paid for events, even better. But, if you are in a marketing role and this is news to you then consider this a wake up call.

Every marketing team in every industry needs to be actively monitoring social media, even if they are not themselves proactive in social channels. This is because your customers, whoever that might include, use social media and have the potential to post about you. It is not just for protection though that you should pay attention. Opportunities can occur via social media. I gain something new almost everyday from someone in my network. It might just be a good pub fact or an unexpected smile at a great photo that snaps me out of a grump, but it just as easily might be a new business lead or some insight that helps me be better at my job.

That's why Social Media Week should not be passing you by. Just search for #SMW14 or #SMWLDN on Twitter and you will pick out something helpful, I'm sure.

I want to share a recent example to reinforce my point, and I do have a point I promise.

We started working with a niche broker recently to generate content and distribute it across Twitter and LinkedIn. While researching and developing the strategy for them, we discovered that a Tweet had been published about them back in 2010 saying how great they were. This Tweet went unnoticed for four years until we ran a simple search on the platform for brand mentions.

Now, it has obviously not caused any harm to their brand having this post floating around the World Wide Web, but there were a number of opportunities missed because this wasn't picked up.

1. Make them feel special - if someone compliments you, it is courteous to return the sentiment. When Ryan in the OC told Marisa he loved her and she replied with "Um, thanks" how do you think that made him feel? Rubbish, that's what! (Yes I did just reference the OC...is that bad?!) So our client missed out on the chance to appreciate their customer's comments and further strengthen their relationship.

2. Share the love - a public thumbs up can be retweeted and shared so other customers and prospects can see it. It can also be sent around employees to show they are doing a good job. Any extra benefit was lost by this tweet not being picked up.

3. Ambassadors are hard to come by - to have a customer actively praise you is rare, especially for a financial services brand. Therefore, you need to grasp these moments with both hands and shout it from the rooftops. Many of your 'fans' on social media are passive. Once you find an ambassador, it is essential that they are nurtured to maintain the relationship. A recommendation from them costs nothing. Advertising, marketing, PR and sales activity, however, definitely cost more than nothing.

Yesterday, I attended Five Ways to Drive Social Value Across the Customer Journey, a Social Media Week event run by Rob Blackie, Director of Social at OgilvyOne. I found it reassuring that much of Rob's content confirmed the theories and processes that my team and I already apply on a daily basis. However, this notion of the fan to ambassador ratio within followers was something that got me thinking. With 22% of fans being ambassadors and 55% of ambassadors not even following your social media, the time to start thinking about the importance of these relationships is now.

So my point is...if you work in marketing, you simply have to be more active on social media even if you do not want to post content. Become one of the +300 million active LinkedIn users,  +270 million monthly active Twitter users and +200 million Instagram users. That’s quite a lot of people…they must be onto something! It is only by taking more of an active interest in social media that you will get more comfortable with the channels, spot opportunities and protect the reputation of your brand.

If you have totally missed Social Media Week, don't worry - every week is social media week for us and we'd be happy to meet up for a coffee to talk about how your business could make use of the various channels.

Does anyone actually read your tweets?

Twitter has just released its Twitter analytics dashboard to all users (as long as you've had an account for at least 14 days) and we love it! Unlike some more complicated and in-depth analytics tools, Twitter's dashboard is very basic and easy to use.

Log in to your Twitter account and go to:

http://analytics.twitter.com/.

A dashboard will then display the "performance" of your recent tweets.

Because the Twitter timeline moves so fast with constant updates and interactions, it's often said that a tweet has a "life" of just a few minutes and hardly anyone sees it unless you're lucky enough to get retweeted by a celeb or influential tweeter.

With Twitter Analytics, you can now find out how far the lifespan of your tweet has actually reached.

The dashboard shows you how many impressions your tweets have earned over the last 28 days, including a breakdown per tweet of impressions (how many times users saw the tweet), engagement (how many times a user has interacted with the tweet) and the engagement rate (engagement divided by impressions).

If you want a high level of engagement on Twitter, here's what you have to do:

Find out the real reasons that your followers find you interesting. If you start to notice a pattern in the types of tweets that spark a lot of engagement compared to those that don't, adjust the content you share accordingly.

Here's Twitter's official guide on how it works.

For further advice or info on social media analytics, get in touch: @LambintheCity or 020 7264 7880

photo credit: opensourceway

Dough-nut start a digital battle with Greggs - they will win!

Greggs this week provided a glowing example of how to handle a social media nightmare after an offensive version of their logo appeared on Google on Tuesday.

On 19th August, Britain's biggest bakery chain was inundated with thousands of tweets after a fake company logo appeared in Google searches, insinuating that Greggs has been supplying faeces to the less classy end of society for over 70 years.

The spoof image, pulled in from uncyclopedia.wikia.com, appeared on the right hand-side of Google when users typed the company name into the search engine.

Thousands of people were quick to point out the error to the company’s social media team who reacted brilliantly to the unexpected busy day at the office.

 

^{The infamous fake logo. Photo: uncyclopedia}

A common reservation of starting up a social media presence is often the fear that it will encourage negative messaging.

With their response to this nightmare, Greggs proved that PR disasters can occur even without the adoption of social media networks, and goes even further to show that using platforms like Twitter can be fundamental in very quickly turning a negative into a positive.

Here's how the social media team at Greggs cleverly used Twitter to control the situation, whilst using it to their advantage to portray their fun personality through light-hearted responses to tweets received and jovial interactions with Google:

Greggs' intelligent, witty and timely handling of this incident via Twitter has resulted in huge positive feedback and buzz around the brand. 'Greggs' was trending on Twitter and stories have been published surrounding the baker's reactions to the event in the likes of the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Guardian.

What we can learn from this is that to be absent on social media is to lack a powerful crisis management tool. The risks of negativity resulting from being active on networks such as Twitter are far lower than the likelihood of such activity generating positive and impressive engagement, which would otherwise be unattainable when relying purely on traditional forms of media and communication.

If you'd like to chat to one of our social media gurus, contact the office on 020 72657 880 or tweet us @Lambinthecity

How to 'handle' Twitter

Do you make this 'Twitter handle' mistake? Gone is the belief that Twitter is a platform exclusively for celebs.

Everyone these days seems to be on Twitter - are you? If so, are you aware of all of the mistakes people make on this platform?

You have probably spotted the following examples:

• Those who haven’t quite grasped the concept of Hashtags:

• Those who don’t pay attention to the character limit:

• Those who don’t shorten links:

But there’s one important mistake you could be repeatedly missing, especially if you use Twitter for your company's marketing communications..

You may know that to ensure a tweet includes another tweeter's account and is alerted to them as a notification, you must tag or 'mention' their Twitter handle by typing an '@' followed by their username. However, many people are unaware of the implication of placing these mentions at the start of a tweet.

Did you know that by starting a tweet with someone’s Twitter handle, you are limiting who will see it?

When using Twitter as part of an integrated social media marketing strategy, you probably spend ages crafting the perfect tweet. We know we do.

When wording a tweet, front-of-mind are your efforts to show your clients and followers all of the impressive tweeters you interact with, and the goal to ensure that your communications are exposed to as many relevant and influential people as possible.

All of this hard work can be wasted if you are unaware of this widely unknown Twitter rule.

Unless you have a word/character before the @ symbol, ONLY the followers of BOTH you and the person you have mentioned will see the tweet on their feed.

To guarantee that you are not one of the millions of Twitter users making this mistake, you should always avoid starting a tweet with a mention.

Sometimes, however, this may alter the effectiveness of your message, or take up valuable character space. Here’s a sneaky tip: begin your tweet with a full stop.

Simply inserting this (or any) character before the handle will remove the rule which restricts who the tweet is visible to, and will no doubt go unnoticed by most people who are unaware of this catch.

Had you noticed it before?

What other Twitter mistakes have you come across?

photo credit: mkhmarketing

Facebook @ Work - Like or Dislike?

Making work more fun “Facebook at work” usually refers to people wasting the day stalking frenemies from their desks instead of doing their jobs, but apparently this is about to change.

According to an anonymous source inside the company, Facebook is currently working on a way to position the social network as having a rightful place in the office.

“We are making work more fun and efficient by building an at-work version of Facebook,” says the source, who refers to it as “FB@Work” and says the effort is based in London.

What’s not clear is whether FB@Work is being built as an internal communication platform, or  as a way for companies to leverage Facebook to drive new business.

Everyone at Facebook is doing it...

“Everyone at Facebook uses [it] for work,” explains one ex-Facebook employee. “Most of their communication and planning is done though Messages and Groups. It would be a pretty natural thing to try to expose this way of using Facebook to get things done at the office to the rest of the world.”

External companies are already using Facebook for work, too.

“Facebook Groups and Messaging have already [transformed] how we communicate,” Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social told Ingrid Lunden. “We know 100% of our employees are on Facebook. Rather than...ask employees to login to yet another system, we [created a Facebook Group] to house many of our real-time company chats and conversations.”

But this project is not a new venture. Facebook has supposedly been stopping and starting the idea for 3 years, due to the battle between the potential opportunities and challenges of doing so.

Stopping and starting

“This is one of two projects that constantly get started and come close to being launched but have been cancelled at the last minute,” reveals another ex-Facebooker.

The other? A controversial version of Facebook for under-13s.

With the latter, privacy is the obstacle. Enterprise presents a different problem: “Facebook employees find using [it] for work communication really useful, but it wasn’t clear whether it would serve a broader demand.”

It as also been hinted at that Facebook has wider plans for an enterprise product aimed more at competing with LinkedIn.

“Facebook is thought of as a community and place for friends, and LinkedIn feels more transactional,” the source says. “Facebook has to be careful not to lose that community appeal.”

Obvious opportunities

Regardless of the challenges, there are obvious opportunities if Facebook did ever launch “FB@Work.”

“[The] blurring of personal/professional online identity creates opportunities for Facebook to play a role in enterprise services,” says Shih.

What do you think - would you 'add' or 'ignore' FB@Work?

photo credit: FACEBOOK(LET)