Tag Archives: Twitter

Does Offline engagement equal Online engagement?

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At lunch today I paused to reflect on how offline engagement with customers relates to the online experience. This was largely due to an experience I had at a certain fast food outlet whilst getting a burger (looking at YOU McDonalds!). Cruised through drive-through, had a warm welcome when placing the order and paying and then onto the pickup window. This is where the experience changed. The team member, as I believe they are called, asked how my day was, almost as though he was reading off a script. No eye contact or interest in the reply. Now this doesn’t bother me, I tend not to engage with the operator but it did get me thinking… is this how McDonalds also act online?

I looked them up on Facebook. Only one account that I can see of note, a global one that has limited content but it looked so pretty! This seemed to compare to the real-world experience; nice store front but poor follow-through. So off to Twitter. A lot of accounts to choose from, found the New Zealand one (@MaccasNZ). Really impressed with the profile page, easy access to other contact information on the left, bright red branding and best of all a lot of conversations with customers. And conversations that were not just about pushing products but about talking to people. This is obviously different from the Facebook experience which in fairness is a global page.

So I am now interested to investigate more local businesses and see if there is a link between their offline engagement and their online personas. My initial thoughts are there will be no real difference; poor service offline will equal poor service online.

Anybody have any examples already of where this is the case, or where it is the total opposite?

The value of Social Media

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Mark Zuckerberg is about to join the billionaires club when Facebook floats in a couple of weeks at an estimated value of US$77 billion to US$96 billion. This is after he purchased Instagram for US$1 billion dollars the other week. and after Microsoft bought Skype for US$8.5 billion (which arguably isn’t a social media platform but let’s not split hairs…).

No matter which way you look at it, there is some serious coin being thrown about. Which got me thinking about why. Why is Facebook worth more than the total national debit of New Zealand? Why is the modern day equivalent of a Polaroid camera worth, well US$1 billion more than Polaroid? At the end of the day they are just lines of code sitting on a server somewhere right? And then I though about Niall Cooks 4C’s of Social media, you know the ones about communication, connection, collaboration, cooperation. These purchases have now, for me at least, put a value on these four points. Which then got me thinking, magazines & newspapers communicate, why is no-one buying APN for some obscene amount?

Can it really be as simple as allowing people to talk to people and share ‘stuff’ (the other three C’s) or is there more to it? If that is the secret then why are we not seeing more start-ups being sold? I don’t know the answer to those questions, wish I did.. as I am sure the thousands of developers sitting in garages and bedrooms creating ‘the next big thing’ right now would.

What I have learnt about Social Media in business

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Over the past few months I have been immersed in the world of Social Media, with a leaning towards its use in the business and enterprise space. This has been driven by two key factors. Firstly I am studying a Social Media in Business paper at Massey University. The second is the organisation I work for has a desire to explore Social Media for engaging with families. From all the literature I have had to read for my studies, plus the optional books I have digested there are several themes or key points that keep coming up for me.

1. ROI. Two definite schools of thought on ROI seem to have developed. One says Social Media is all about engagement and ROI should be considered as a nice bonus. The other says it is all about ROI and it needs to be treated like any other marketing tool. I personally sit somewhere in the middle, but leaning more towards the engagement side. Why? Well for me Social Media allows multi-directional conversations to take part. The risk as I see it of focusing on the return on investment in the first instance is that it will become just another way for the sales & marketing teams to push their message out. I think that if you take part in the conversations and build up relationships that the sales side will look after itself in the longer term. And that’s the key. Longer term. You cannot jump into social media and expect immediate returns. You have to commit for the long haul.

2. Keep it real! Keep it authentic. The online world will sniff out a phoney and you will be roasted! If you start making comments posing as a consumer expect back-lash. And remember to be human. Your consumers and followers are human, treat them as such. Don’t try & be someone or something that you aren’t. And if someone posts a comment that you don’t like, don’t remove it. Respond to it, engage the poster and help them. Who knows, they could end up being your greatest advocate.

3. Park the sales talk. One immediate turn-off for me is companies that push the bog-standard sales pitch through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all the other social mediums. I want you to be my partner. Woo me. Seduce me. Don’t force yourself onto me. I used to follow a number of travel companies. One used to send sales and promo information and that was all. The other sent me information about the destinations I could go to, and what I could do there and encouraged people to share their experiences. One forced themselves on me. The other made an emotional connection. Guess which I still follow and click through to find out how they can get me there!

4. Everyone’s an expert. Okay so that isn’t exactly true, but it seems everywhere I turn there is someone else proclaiming to be the leading light in Social Media. Yet to see any real evidence to back up these claim’s. In fairness there are a number of people that are recognised as ‘experts’, are accepted as such by the general population and appear in numerous articles, white papers and the like, but I still smile when I see a random person that I have never heard of pop up and declare they are a Social Media god! They may use the tools, but that doesn’t make them a craftsman!

Am I way off the mark or does this pretty much sum it up?