How much time do your colleagues spend chatting with friends on Facebook, brushing up their résumé on LinkedIn, perusing photos of last night’s party on Flickr or just tweeting t-shirt slogans at Twitter whilst wiling away the hours on YouTube?
Social media. It’s a business bane, a time-bandit guaranteed to suck productivity and focus from your organization. Remember that first rule of corporate survival? Don’t make me responsible for what I can’t control. You can’t control what happens on social media (content sharing) or social networking (contact and information sharing) sites, so just don’t go there. And forget any upside; if Google can’t make money from it’s social media video sharing megasite YouTube (it can’t), what hope do the rest of us have. Better block those sites.
Sure, a healthy dose of business skepticism is advised in the faddish world of social media and social networking (remember MySpace or Friendster anyone?). But by donning our Net Promoter goggles, a viable and sustainable business model for social media begins to emerge.
From a Net Promoter perspective, business success is driven by delivering expectation-beating experiences that result in increased loyalty and referral value of customers. So if social media can either help deliver remarkable expectation-beating experiences, or help customers share those experiences, then there is real commercial value in social media.
So, here, for your inspiration and delectation, are 10 brands that are walking the social media talk in what I believe are remarkable - and commercially savvy - ways:
1. Amazon: Boosts sales with a deal of the day tweet on Twitter that, when remarkable, gets re-tweeted around the people-powered twittersphere. Combine this with allowing buying advice for customers by customers on their site, you have a veritable social media sales engine. Now head over to DellSwarm to see where this social media powered ecommerce is going.
2. Accenture: Value. Delivered. Lead generation, social media style. By posting free business advice in a useful presentation format on presentation sharing site slideshare.net, the consultancy establishes expertise and draw prospects to their sales funnel.
3. Nike: Boosting loyalty by offering runner support for runners by runners, Nike+ is the place for runners from around the world can come together to share performance stats, aching limbs and running tips. All under the Nike brand. In the words of Wired Magazine’s Jeff Howe, the key to social media is to ask not what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community.
4. Charmin: Out in town and you need a bathroom, and you need it clean. Charmin to the rescue, the tissue brand sponsors sitorsquat.com, a user-powered information sharing site and mobile social app of public convenience locations - with reviews - around the world. If a toilet tissue brand can make social media work...
5. Hyatt: Customer Service for free for guests by guests through Hyatt’s opinion sharing user-review site Yattit. Guests offer each other concierge services on local places to dine and drink. Hyatt saves on bills. Smart.
6. Blendtec: Utility value is not the only social media game in town, entertainment value can work too. This small blender manufacturer tripled sales by posting homemade and highly entertaining “will it blend” ads on video sharing site YouTube
7. P&G: Teen support for teens by teens. By hosting a subtly branded forum BeingGirl where teen girls can connect, discuss and share girl stuff with each other P&G reach a difficult-to-reach demographic - and measure the results to be 4x as effective as TV advertising.
8. Starbucks: Business improvement ideas for free through opinion sharing open idea blog, mystarbucksidea where users can post, vote and comment on each others ideas for how to make the coffee brand better. Coffee ice cubes and free wifi anyone? (Dell, Bestbuy, Asus, and Microsoft are doing the social media idea blog thing too).
9. Threadless: Outsourcing. The hipster apparel brand uses social media to outsource t-shirt design. Site visitors submit designs, share opinions and vote in monthly open outsourcing competitions. Winning designs go into production - and sell out, every time.
10. Apple: eCommerce. The future of social media is mobile, and Apple is profiting today by hosting a social marketplace (App Store) where third party developers can post mobile applications for the iPhone, get them rated by customers, and sell them. Apple of course takes a healthy cut, whilst cutting its own application development costs to a healthy zero. Forget eCommerce, welcome to the world of social commerce - WeCommerce.
So forget ignored ads on social networking and social media sites, undiscovered and unused branded widgets, and ghost town groups haunted only by the desperate, lonely and compulsive (cat litter community anyone?). The real commercial value of social media is as a value delivery channel powered by user contributions and facilitated by you.
