Use social media to create business value

The Burberry Group (Burberry Group) has a wealth of heritage that many other companies have admired. For more than more than 150 years, the luxury clothing company's success secret is the brand which can be recognized all of a sudden and the design of timeless and modern. Now, a new determinant is emerging: branding digital and social media experience. Just look at how Burberry has aggressively redesigned its fashion show-a Burberry fashion show that used to actually shut out many of its admirers. Today, Burberry presents the fashion show to its Facebook fans (up to 13.7 million fans by September 2012) and viewers on YouTube (as of September 2012, with no repeat video browsing of 16.49 million, There are about 42,000 subscribers to the Burberry channel. The company also worked with Twitter, a prominent social networking site, to open a "tweet show" (Tweetwalk), a real-time display of new designs on the eve of the catwalk. This gives Burberry's Twitter followers a chance to "sneak peek" at more than 1.25 million by September 2012. Burberry has successfully used these platforms to turn the fashion show into a rich social experience that attracts millions of fans and interested consumers, not a handful of insiders.

Thanks to these initiatives, Burberry is firmly in the forefront of digital and social media. Many other companies are also committed to improving their image in social media and strengthening their capabilities. In the summer and fall of 2011, Buddy Media, a social software provider for Booz & Company, conducted a quantitative survey of 117 leading companies and a series of in-depth interviews with senior marketing and media executives. The results show that 40% of companies surveyed put social media on the CEO's agenda, and about 60% of the respondents said social media was the most important aspect of marketing. 78% of companies surveyed believe that social media efforts can improve marketing, and 95% of companies are expected to increase their commitment to social media.

Now, 2/3 of the respondents are devoting 5% or less of their digital marketing spending to social media. But over the next three years, 56% of companies are expected to devote 10% or more of their digital marketing budgets to social media, and 28% expect the figure to exceed 20% per cent. (see chart).

If the company is to take full advantage of the growing social media spending, three key competencies will be strengthened: community management, content development and real-time analytics. For companies as innovative as Burberry, these capabilities are often combined as a complementary system that operates uniformly under the leadership of the marketing functional department. (in Burberry, for example, the company's creative and design leadership is also involved.) Burberry's focus on nurturing these digital media capabilities has enabled it to build strong, direct, multi-platform relationships with fans and consumers, creating unprecedented opportunities in branding, product marketing and consumer interaction. This strategy, which is dedicated to digitizing and socializing the corporate brand and consumer experience, has profoundly changed the company. "Burberry is not just a design company, it's a media content company," says Christopher Bailey, creative director Christopher Belly. ”

For companies from all walks of life, community management, content development, and real-time analysis provide a new way for them to communicate directly with consumers, thus providing a good opportunity to create business value.

Community Management

As many companies begin to build brands on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google + and, more recently, Pinterest, they quickly realize that creating social media images is just a start. Community Management (the way and skills to summon and host social media fans in the face of multiple platforms) quickly becomes a critical skill.

This skill is critical to building a healthy, active, and growing social media community. In addition, once a visitor becomes a fan, the company has a responsibility to listen to their voice and to give back their efforts with an "online" experience. Managing a live community requires some expertise, it includes listening to the feedback from the fans, organizing and supervising the editorial work, ensuring consistency of the brand's theme and image, evaluating the effectiveness of the brand activities against business objectives and brand objectives, and actively innovating, predicting what the brand's fans will be using next, Tool or digital media platform.

It is not surprising that these new requirements pose problems at the same time. About 50% per cent of respondents said they lacked adequate community management resources, a major obstacle to success in social media, and 55% per cent feared they would lose control of the brand's message. "You want to do 24?" said a senior executive at a well-known clothing brand company. 7 be ' on standby ' at any time. You have to respond to customers at any time. The customer's problem is quickly escalated, and you may be held hostage by someone using social media. ”

As a result, many companies are looking around to recruit people who can help manage the most influential communities. Community management professionals are both brand leaders, the main listener, and the brand's super fans, they are always the "command center", responsible for the use of various skills to practical work. Community management is a dynamic and complex work that requires a large number of people, combining analytical expertise with creative expertise.

Content Development

To build strong content development capabilities, companies often rethink customer communication and marketing practices. According to a well-known beverage marketer: "The former brand manager only cares about television, and now the brand manager has to think about everything from social media." Do they have enough content to share with the community? ”

Traditional advertising content, its purpose is often directed at brand awareness or brand reproduction, and social media attention is shareable, participatory content, this content can promote consumer interaction, let consumers participate in the brand narrative (brand storytelling), and associated with it. A vivid example is Nike's Green race ("the Chance"), an international competition centered on Facebook and YouTube, planned by AKQA, a well-known advertising firm. Over a 8-month period, 75,000 young footballers from 40 countries have competed with each other to sign a life-changing contract with the Nike Football Academy. Nike encourages aspiring players to sign up for the competition and to advertise themselves online through videos and photos to attract a wide range of fans. Nike and cool are focused on the consumer insights that apply to every sport: athletes want to have the opportunity to compete with their most powerful rivals. Social media has allowed Nike to expand its reach around the world, creating a compelling digital media experience for millions of of its athletes. As Ajaz Ahmed, chairman and founder of Agiaz Amed, explains, "There is no better way to convey the meaning of ' want to do ' (ethically doing It) than to make a player better and give the best reward." ”

The leading social media team is taking steps to build the capacity of publishers, like media companies, to compete for consumer attention, interaction and loyalty through high-value content. Many marketers say they intend to spare no effort to increase content development staff. The survey found that 49% of companies with specialized social media staff had creative talent and 35% were actively building content development teams. Of those companies that are planning to hire social media talent for a year, 72% think recruiting creative talent (production and editorial staff) is a priority, more important than recruiting other talent.

Real-time analysis

Marketers increasingly need to be aware of the impact of their audiences and content in real time to see if the work done on social media is in the right direction. To understand this information, mature, reliable, well-designed analytical tools and metrics are critical.

The real-time capabilities of social media analytics tools are typically experienced in four stages, and each phase becomes more complex. The first stage is to evaluate the brand coverage. At this stage, marketers understand the scale of the brand in the social sphere, and how many fans, followers, users, visitors, and their views. The second stage is to track customer interaction. Marketers can't just be content with simple statistics, but also analyze what factors motivate customers to participate in online communities and build momentum; analyze which kinds of content can be shared best. For example, they have a great concentration of research on message comments, shared content, video playback, registration, and other user activity patterns. The third stage is to analyze brand customer support. Here, marketers need to figure out what their fans are doing with brand commitment, brand relevance, brand authority, and social capital, such as writing some recommended reviews. The goal here is to know which users are promoting brand interaction and brand awareness, and which users are brand "advocates", which can attract other fans and users to participate in brand interaction and have a positive impact on brand behavior.

Finally, the fourth phase is the calculation of ROI. The most advanced companies try to use social media analytics tools to achieve strategic business goals. Only about 40% of companies now implement metrics to measure key performance indicators that focus on ROI, such as buying intentions, clues, conversion rates or actual sales, according to the survey. Several pioneers in the business community have proved this: social media can have a significant impact on business – in other words, they are turning "likes" and "fans" into real value. For example, Wendy Clark, senior vice president of integrated marketing and communications at the Coca-Cola Company, publicly disclosed that the beverage giant's social media analysis is Windy Clark, suggesting that Coca-Cola's social media fans are twice times more likely to consume than their fans, Coca-Cola is 10 times times more likely to buy it.

Social media provides a great opportunity for us to get to know consumer information firsthand, thereby helping to build brand, customer service and product development. As 56% of the companies surveyed are investing aggressively to improve the quality and quantity of these consumer information from social media, the analytical power should only grow stronger.

As more companies improve their use of social media, this more dynamic approach to marketing can dramatically change the way they connect brands to consumers. By creating these unique capabilities, the company will not only be able to create a rich and innovative social media experience for its customers, but also, as Burberry does, to successfully transform its organization and explore its leading market capabilities.

(Ms. Baishinghui is president of Greater China, Shen Jianmio translation)