Barriers to entry are very low in public social networks.
Time and again, we see brands put up a Facebook Page, a LinkedIn page, start
Tweeting, and then wonder where the value is. Off-domain social networks are an
important part of an overall social strategy, but presence alone only gets us
part way there. Yes, we should meet our customers where they congregate. But we
must have the ability to guide social customer experience in a way that helps
drives business objectives.
The customer conversations that happen across the
social Web are filled with user generated content that can boost search
results, but only if they happen on our own domain. Social customers are
willing to advocate on our behalf, but without a social customer experience
that motivates the right behavior, they won’t.
Competitive social media strategy today happens in
on-domain customer communities where we can continuously innovate the social
customer experience. We must have the tools to engage and enlist our social
customers, learn what works and what doesn’t, and evolve the social customer
experience to better motivate the right behaviors.
With little control over the way our customers
experience our brand on sites like Facebook, differentiating ourselves becomes
problematic. That’s the problem with social media that we don’t own – its value
is constantly at risk. Unlike Facebook pages, online communities are customer
networks we own and the way our social customers experience them is entirely up
to us.
An online customer community is a central, flexible
social customer experience solution that integrates easily with off-domain
networks. Importantly, we own all the user-generated content it produces. We
can harvest it, analyze it and use it to inform the business. And we can
continue to deliver the right social customer experiences for our brand no
matter how the social media environment changes.
If we expect to remain competitive today, it’s
deeply important that we do more than simply show up on popular social
networks. It’s critical that we build insight into the needs and wants of our
customers and use that insight to build predictable forecasts for our business.
Without the ability to innovate the social customer experience, that insight
remains out of our grasp.
The most cutting-edge B2B and B2C brands are placing
bets on on-domain, owned, social media hubs where they can control the brand,
guide the experience, and drive real business outcomes.
Even brands that have a long track record of success
are beginning to realize that when it comes to social media, a business as
usual approach doesn’t cut it. While 86% of companies today maintain a Facebook
page, many have discovered that simply following the heard isn’t much of a
strategy. The fans and likes may roll in, but meaningful results like improved
customer satisfaction and increased sales revenue remain elusive.
Why? Because the real power of social media lies in
its ability to engage and enlist, not just tally. We must deliver social
customer experiences that entice customers to interact with us, share their
passions, their insights, and their ideas.
When only 2% of consumers ever return to brand pages
they “like” on Facebook, the platform clearly isn’t a tool for engagement. When
the only way our customers can interact with us to “like” us, we aren’t doing
much to enlist their help in making our brand more successful.
The full power of social media lies in its ability
to invite customers to help us meet our business goals. The most successful
social brands have strategies for getting their customers to share passion,
ideas, and service, and they drive real business outcomes in the process. They
entice their social customers to interact and get involved and can accelerate
innovation by tapping their social customers for new product ideas.
When consumers can level-up, collect rewards and
attain community status through their social customer experiences, they engage
with brands in helpful ways and become extensions of sales, support and
marketing teams.
Brands who are winning in social have one very
important thing in common—they know that the full benefit of social media comes
from engaging experiences that enlist social customers to act favorably. And
they know that the best place for those experiences is on-domain.
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