Developing Engagement & Relationships for your Brand

David Edmundson-BirdPrincipal Lecturer in Digital Marketing & Enterprise

Manchester Metropolitan University

Who do I think I am?

• David Edmundson-Bird (formerly just “Bird”)– Now a nice “Search Engine-Friendly” name– You’ll find me as “groovegenerator” anywhere

• Principal Lecturer in Digital Marketing at MMU• Opened Manchester’s 2nd Web Design Agency

(Sozo) in 1995• Chief Learning Architect at Academee 1999 – 2002• Background in AI for Strategic

Decision-Making/Military Context

Developing Engagement & Relationships with Brands

• 4 approaches with managing relationships– Personal connections– Brand monitoring– Evangelists (Citizen Marketers)– Improving Customer Support

• Practical activity practices

MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS

Personal Connections in B2B/High Value B2C

• Manage personal connections through a social CRM approach– Traditional (i.e. birthdays/favourite

things/hobbies/family) can stagnate– Integrate with Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter• Tip for sole/freelancer/SME - use Xobni• GetSocial Twitter Pro in SugarCRM

– See clients last 20 tweets– React to a tweet to maintain currency/relevancy – Turn tweets into actual cases

Brand Monitoring

• According to Nielson Buzzmetrics– 25% Search results for top 20 brands link to UGC

• Customers use Social Media for praise/crit/review/feedback

• Companies who interact create more positive impression– Can increase leads into sales funnel– But don’t do this at the expense of other proven

conversion tools (email, SEO)

Evangelist Tracking

• IDing evangelists is a cheap effective way of boosting promotions and marketing– They spread the word unconditionally• Most companies don’t pick up on this yet

• You can easily rank customers based on the activity and positivity of their messaging– Integrate this into CRM to enable management

• Your biggest critics are also sometimes your biggest fans – “squeaky wheels”

Improving Customer Support • Integrating Twitter into CRM allows for monitoring of keywords - see

how a customer views you– Move the posts into customer support

• Pacification• Support pre-sales

• Squeaky wheels– Quickly respond to anger/reduce viral impact

• Pre-sales support– Trial usage where frustration causes abandonment– Customers can post questions

• Monitoring/response enhances likelihood of conversion– Creates a positive impression

• Again an area where the mass of marketers and organisations have yet to make an impression

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY PRACTICE

Professional Activity Practice

• You can implement these practically• Designed to be conducted when you need to

minimise "media spend" but have “prepaid-for” human assets

Send the Right Message to the Right Audience in the Right Channel

• This isn't necessarily a scientific venture• If you "broadcast" (i.e. you don't know your

audience), you waste effort• When you broadcast to everyone, you're

talking to no one– On Twitter, don't just randomly tweet– Time spent understanding who will hear your

message will help

Social Media Engagement = Human Relationship Building

• It takes time• It's like finding the right life partner– You shouldn't be snogging within 3 minutes of

meeting– Trust is important to create• You have to create trust before you get any brand

loyalty

– If you start "selling" before you've built that trust, you'll fail

Quality Engagement over Quantity of Communications

• Customers prefer 1 meaningful tweet than 10 pointless ones– Think "Information Overload”

• Don't tweet things that are irrelevant (unless your culture)

• Think of timing– For consumers, after 20:00h might be too late or

intrusive• Depends on your offering

90/10 Content Rule

• 90% of the content you post should be engaging rather than promotional.

• 10% can be used for promotions– You can only engage if you know who you are

talking to.

Engagement Point Scale for Facebook

• A scale from 1 to 100– Think of a “Share” as being worth 90 points,– A “Comment” being worth 9 points and– A “Like” being worth 1 point.

• Make your FB posts be short & sweet.– Try not to overdo the frequency of posting.– 2/3 posts per day seem optimal depending on

your offering.

Be Consistent & Responsive

• Respond promptly to the comments or suggestions of your followers

• Do not ever delete a critical comment from your Facebook page– This only leads to an even angrier customer

• Other customers will join in

– Respond immediately with courtesy and address the issue in a straightforward manner

• Customers who complain and are then satisfied are up to 8% more loyal than if they had no problem at all

Imagery and Video

• Pictures/Video generate 40% greater engagement than word posts– Consider Pinterest as a tool to share rather than

just another channel to monitor.• Using video?– Make it shorter than 90 seconds.

• Shooting your own video using cheap tools?– Hold the camera vertically– Make sure the audio is spot-on

Keep your Website

• Use your site as an info repository• Don’t use your site to engage and attract but

to covert and retain

Expertise

• Use experts to manage a twitter chat– Become the place to come to– Chats are great for growing a customer base

organically

Engagement Tools

• Loads of people use Hootsuite– Use the add-ons

– Track/Share campaigns– Look for trending content– Hanging in on people’s interests– Answer people’s questions on Twitter

My TopTip for Spring 2013

• Bathrooms, washrooms, toilets are excellent places for Engagement

• Do you use QR codes?– Get a campaign putting QR codes on toilet doors

Get in Touch!

• Where can you find me?• Catch me– Twitter• @groovegenerator

– LinkedIn• davidedmundsonbird