White Paper Social Media Engagement

8/2/2019 White Paper Social Media Engagement

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Summary

The pressure to be part of the social mediaphenomenon and to manage a clear and positive

social presence is mounting for organizations ofall sizes and industries. While living up to savvy

customers soaring expectations, exploring myriad

possibilities, and responding to the new powerof word of mouth, organizations need to devoteenough thought to the strategy and management

of their social media engagement. All functions inan organization must be aligned with this strategy

to achieve business objectives jointly. Adoptinga more mature and well thought-out approach,

organizations must concentrate on the four pillars ofa successful social media engagement: competent

technology, advanced analytics, faultless execution,and specialized domain expertise.

Anil Modi Rajesh Mallya

Chief Marketing Officer VP - Customer Experience

Taming of the new web be the masterof your social media engagement

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Competenttechnology

Advancedanalytics

Faultlessexecution

Specializeddomain

expertise

Four pillars of a successful social media engagement


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Social media pushing the boundaries of communication

The social media channel has opened up a whole new world of possibilitiesfor organizations in their pursuit of reaching their audience and creating a

strong brand image. Digital branding and marketing is poised for a newavatar and organizations are feverishly preparing themselves to make the

best of it.

Organizations are looking at hiring people to manage their Facebook pagesand Twitter accounts. Brands are gearing up to listen to public opinion in

general and the voice of their customers in particular. Monitoring the socialmedia interaction and responding to comments and customer woes finds

its parallel in the call center phenomenon that started in the late 90s whena very young section of population discovered plentiful job opportunities as

a result of the boom. A similar boom is in the process of setting in ascompanies are looking at hiring young and savvy social media specialists.

The predictions say that in India alone, nearly 10,000 social media

specialists will be needed by 2012. In the West, hiring of social mediaspecialists has matured over the past two to three years. For example,

America's largest airline, Southwest Airlines has a chief Twitter officer whotracks Twitter comments and monitors a Facebook group.

The success of B2B communication can be multiplied when combined with

social media. Including social media links in emails, planning regularupdates to increase social media connections, encouraging prospects to

become part of the email community, putting up follow-up or leading blogs

these can be some of the important areas where social media canfacilitate B2B communication.

For B2C communication, social media is already becoming a standard

element in branding and marketing roadmaps. The growing number ofsavvy customers - who expect companies to have a strong social media

presence - has made it imperative for organizations to include the socialmedia angle in their communication.

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The new mantra of social media engagement

Leveraging the new channel, organizations are experimenting anddiscovering newer ways of extracting value from their social media

engagements. Some of the significant areas where companies see theworth of social media as a channel of communication are:


Engagement focus areas Social media tools Example organizations/people

Showcasing products Blogs, Twitter Zappos, Dell

Responding to customer complaints Comcast

Creating brand loyalty e-newsletters, Facebook, podcasts

Blogs

Twitter

Demonstrating thought leadership Recruiter Lindsay Olson

Skittles, Wine Library

Increasing audience baseReusing existing content on Twitter,

Scribd, SlideShare

Recruiting employees Linkedin Booz Allen Hamilton

The New York Times, FBI, Dell

Managing reputation Wikipedia PepsiCo, Wal-Mart Stores

Issuing news Blogs, Twitter

YouTube

Google

Looking for free advertisingopportunities

Allstate

NetflixImproving algorithms Contests on social media platforms

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Is the engagement model too superficial?

Reacting to the social media phenomenon, organizations are rushing toexpand their online presence. In their eagerness to respond, they are

concentrating more on being part of the bandwagon than on the promise oflimitless creativity and the potential benefits this unique medium holds for

them. Social media engagement is much more than just having Facebookand Twitter accounts. Organizations need to base their social media

strategy on a three-fold approach in order to engage meaningfully on socialmedia platforms:

However, there seems to be an evident gap between the efforts

organizations are putting into their social media engagement and theoutcome they are receiving. This is due to the manifold challenges that the

speed of communication, newness, vastness and the very nature of themedium present. Some of the crucial challenges are:

Tracking various social media channels for relevant threads

Managing the speed of interactions and responding quickly

Participating in and managing conversations spread across the web

Analyzing these conversations and measuring them on parameters like

volume, sentiment, quality, impact on business Engaging the consumer consistently and controlling the conversations

suitably

Identifying and following social media engagement best practices and

improving strategies accordingly

Let us look at some disastrous situations in the social media arena tounderstand what can go wrong and how organizations can curb the wild fire

and avoid bad blood by redefining their approach.

Listen to everyrelevant piece of

conversation tounderstand public

sentiment

Analyze results to

determine business

impact, discoverbusiness

opportunities &arrive at social

media bestpractices

Engage the public

intensely to create

long-lasting positiverelationships and to

controlconversations by

respondingpromptly & directly

Three-fold approach


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An American multinational information technology corporation that

develops, sells and supports computers and services had an unhappy

customer vent his frustration with the companys services on his blog.Thousands of readers responded to this blog post. The company did nothave the mechanism in place to spot and handle this issue on time. The

blog triggered a huge amount of criticism and public complaining about thecompanys service.

An independent global campaigning organization that acts to protect and

conserve the environment launched a campaign against a food andbeverage company. The campaign claimed that the company procured a

certain ingredient from non environment friendly suppliers who destroyedforests, its flora and fauna and robbed the locals of their livelihood. The

company failed to control this campaign and it went on to YouTube,

Facebook and Twitter in full swing, damaging the companys reputation.

These and similar incidents stress the importance of a systematic approachand a well thought-out strategy backed by competent technology and

specialized expertise.

Securing all fronts technology and specialists can bringit all together

Organizations need to step back and rethink their social media strategy and

its execution. Technology and specialized expertise can play a crucial partin determining this.

An ideal social media management solution can provide a common platformwith integrated framework and built-in workflows that can streamline the

entire ecosystem, present a complete picture of the brands public imageand customers assessments as well as prompt the organization to be quick

and agile in its responses. Providing maximum awareness, enabling thebrand influencer to be at the right place at the right time, facilitating

quickness in response and providing a robust mechanism to handleadverse situations like social floods or conversation blasts are some of the

most desirable requisites for a social media management solution.

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A technology platform can collate relevant discussion threads about the

brand from all the target social media channels into a single work

environment, tag each one with a sentiment type, classify them based ontopics, products or areas, assign them to appropriate brand influencer orsubject matter expert and enable a queue-up system for the approving

authority for final approval. This entire workflow can be mapped to timezones in various geographies and availability of responsible personnel to

ensure timely responses. Tracking these sites individually and manuallyinvolves the danger of missing out important conversation threads or

noticing them late when the damage is already done.

Providing customer support:

Many times, the customer satisfaction quotient depends largely on the

quickness and sustainability with which the support is offered.Following up various requests, answering customer queries, clarifying

doubts, handling criticism, providing appropriate information allthese tasks demand constant tracking and monitoring of relevant

channels, the bandwidth and mechanism to respond quickly within aspecific turnaround time.

Managing brand reputation:

Watching the cyber space to track every comment or conversationabout the brand needs a kind of vigilance and meticulousness that is

possible only with technology support. A technology solution can

prepare the organization to control unpleasant situations like socialfloods and include workflows to facilitate successful disaster recovery.

Monitoring the competition:

Social media channel offers organizations a unique opportunity toobserve their competitors, monitor what they are doing, and learn from

their mistakes. It also places organizations themselves undermicroscope for their rivals. A competent technology solution can help

companies watch every move of their competitors on an ongoing basisand plan own strategies accordingly. Competitive intelligence in the

form of detailed analytics and granular reports can help companiesplan their strategies more effectively.

Benchmarking and best practices:

A technology solution that includes analytical capabilities can compareparameters such as volume, sentiment, sources with those of

competitors and provide benchmarking capability. It can also provideindustry best practices for successful strategizing.


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Running successful campaigns:

Online marketing campaigns can be a complete disaster and they havethe potential to make the company a laughing stock of the entire onlineaudience when they go wrong and fail to achieve the objectives.

Technology can help identify the right concept and focus, select anexecution methodology, plan assessment and map other parameters

based on analytics.

Managing the speed of social communication and responding to

conversations quickly:

Social conversations can be to the brand queries, requests for

information or about the brand - customer woes, discussions aboutthe product, comparisons with other products, comments on related

articles in newspapers, magazines. Listening to all these voices andresponding to them appropriately and quickly is something technology

can help organizations with.

Moderating responses:

If conversations are not moderated and responses are not monitored

and approved by an appointed authority, tempers can flare,conversations can get personal and fights can get ugly, tarnishing the

brand reputation, for example, an offending tweet was posted onChrysler Twitter account and Twitter users re-tweeted the post before

Chrysler caught it. Technology solutions can facilitate and streamline

the system of routing responses through an approving authority,reducing the chances of out-of-control situations.

As digital marketing and communication evolves, it becomes

increasingly evident that companies need to adopt a more mature andcohesive approach to social media engagement and connect it with

technology and domain expertise for complete success.


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About Aegis

Founded almost 30 years ago in the US, Aegis is a global business services& experience management company committed to impacting clients

business outcomes by focusing on end user brand experience across alltouch points & channels. With a presence in 12 countries, 50 locations, &

with more than 55,000 employees, Aegis manages over a billion customerinteractions every year for over 300 clients across verticals such as BFSI,

Telecom, Healthcare, Travel & Hospitality, Consumer Goods, Retail, &Technology. Aegis manages, enables, extends, & enhances business

experiences for its clients & their customers across consulting, technology,outsourcing, & training & education.

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