Be successful in social media

As many of you, I assume, I have attended various seminars on how to succeed in marketing using social media, however, without getting much out of them. Hence, I didn’t have very high expectations on the seminar that was given by Albert Lannerstad either. I was wrong. In addition to sharing great tips, he presented several examples on successful, and some less successful, use of social media as a channel for marketing communication:

Social media should be used as an invitation to communication, so one thing to consider is if you are prepared for a dialogue. Two organizations that have managed to create a dialogue with their customers are Vingresor and Idre fjäll. One less good example is the Facebook initiative ”We call ourselves...” where a company asks for suggestions on what to call the people working there, and got several negative suggestions such as ”slaves”, etc.

Another thing to consider is the aim with the presence in a particular forum or medium. With a clear aim with their presence on Facebook, Skövde University College provides tips and good to know information to their followers. A less good example is Wikiairport by Swedavia that lacked vision, and eventually had to close down web site. 


What to write about needs to be sorted out. Skövde University College, for example, got 12 ”likes” when informing about a price they won, 20 ”likes” when wishing everyone a happy Easter, and 40 ”likes” when informing about that the sun shining on campus and invited everyone to come and socialize. Hallonlakritsskalle also puts a lot of effort on what they are writing about and have more than 300 000 followers. What to offer one’s followers and the benefits with following you in your digital forum need to be obvious. The ”costs” with your presence are user benefits, creativity, and how the content is presented. Gröna Lund ”launched” their opening hours with the call ” Print it out! Frame it! Use it as background on your cell phone! Laminate and put it up on the fridge! Do what you want really – anyway, this is an overview of our opening times 2012!”.

Another way of using social media is in customer support, giving you the possibility to turn difficult situations. Assistancia provides a forum for discussing their services, Dustin allows product ratings on their web site, and SEB answers customer questions on their Facebook site.

Customers want acknowledgement and somewhere to socialize. To meet this, Scania and Fiskars provide communities where their customers can show themselves off.

Key to a successful use of social media in your marketing communication is to focus on customer incentive.