Social-ability
Some businesses and brands lend themselves better to identifying social media opportunities than others.
These are typically those with existing strong and medium-long term customer relationships such as banks, building societies, loan, finance and insurance companies. Regular repeat customers of various FMCG brands are also good news (think tomato sauce and toothpaste). These examples offer pretty good ready-made bases for developing social communities around their product or service.
Car brands also have good ‘social’ potential as there are always plenty of Jeremy Clarksons out there ready, willing and able to publish their considered opinions and join in alpha male car stuff debates.
On the other hand, the property sector appears to be a bit more difficult as the relationship between seller, agent and purchaser or tenant is typically short-lived and not oft repeated and housebuilders, second-hand sellers and agents are all notoriously ‘sensitive’ when it comes to possible negative comment about their product.
Social and real estate
And yet the property market is actually ripe for ‘social’ with plenty of opportunity for housebuilders and commercial developers to establish ongoing early relationships with potential customers and e.g. solicit feedback on new proposed designs, specs and features. The secondhand market and your average estate agency re-seller might struggle a bit more difficult to find an opportunity for ‘social’ however.
(I’ll be blogging in more detail about social and real estate in the near future…)
Social and traditional
Even more of a challenge are products that traditionally don’t appear to have much in the way of an obvious direct B2C interface and where the traditional relationship is e.g. solely between producer and supplier – at least in terms of the supply chain. And yet these are some of the ones I find most enjoyable to analyse and look for innovative angles.
I’ve always had a seeming natural disposition towards wondering what goes on behind the scenes with products. As a sad child, I was always drawn to product labels on the back of things like shampoo bottles which typically had the name of Jane someone-or-other to write to in the consumer department and then there was Tom Champagne and his prize draws (‘Oooh vicar!’) at Readers Digest – great name – but did he or Jane ever really exist I wondered? I’ve always since thought of these people a bit like ‘Room 101’ or ‘The Cones Hotline’ – just sitting in some dark and dusty room hoping noone would actually phone.
Now, it’s social media and it supporting desktop, mobile and ‘pad’ technologies that are making true B2C and B2B community dialogue possible.
Social – enabling novel engagement
I guess, in a way, that in a B2C capacity this is really rather like an extranet and I do like the idea of being able to look for interesting angles in relation to engaging end customers with product originators and using social media to educate, enlighten and entertain by e.g. providing YouTube video clips that document and track the product journey through it’s various stages.
Only last night in fact I was watching a TV programme about Eddie Stobart and at one point one of their truck drivers was attempting to negotiate an extremely narrow lane to pick-up strawberries from a fruit farm and then deliver them to a Tesco depot – and because of the contract with Tesco there was only a half hour window for delivery.
The stop-go trials and tribulations of the transport leg of the journey made for compelling viewing and at one point caused the driver to remark on the fact that little did Wimbledon goers appreciate the complexities and difficulties in relation to the strawberry-to-bowl process. But they would if they had also seen the same programme or – more importantly and pertinently – were able to access the clip via YouTube as part of a social media campaign and then discuss it on Facebook – and maybe then be offered a special promotion via their mobile for a Tesco strawberry discount or a visit to an ‘Eddie’ depot (of which there are 40 apparently and a truck fleet of 2000 – all which have female names – blimey I didn’t know there even were 2000 female names…..)
Find the angle and implement
Brand identity, acquisition, engagement, conversion, retention and cross-selling (and the rest) are all now able to be bolstered, supported and elevated by social media. There is probably no business or organisation that could not benefit from social media.
The real challenge is finding the appropriate angle and implementing it.
Mark Wilderspin 