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.
