Prepping for a social media content marketing workshop I am delivering at the Social Media Strategies Summit in Las Vegas in February, I was going back through questions raised at recent workshops.
Three Great Social Media Strategy Tips
These three social media strategy questions stood out because they were not only raised by workshop attendees, but other attendees provided wonderful answers for them.
Challenge 1. Should a sub-brand in your organization get its own social media presence?
This question came up in a social media strategy workshop with the Nebraska Healthcare Marketers. Our answer is to take an outside-in look at the organization to determine if a social media audience cares to affiliate with a sub-brand independent of its affiliation to an overall brand. No matter how much a brand or product manager thinks a sub-brand needs its own social media presence, whether the audience wants to "like" or "follow" it is the critical question.
One attendee went further to suggest agreeing to an expected content update frequency with the sub-brand’s leadership. If they can deliver the expected content to the brand’s main page consistently, they then get a shot at having a sub-brand social media presence.
Challenge 2. How can you get a compliance group on board with a social media strategy?
A marketing communications director at the Frost and Sullivan Marketing World social media strategy workshop in Boston asked about getting a compliance group on board with social media in a risk-averse environment.
Another participant let us know her company put the compliance person in charge of social media. She reported that in this rather unusual role, the compliance person suddenly started “getting” social media strategy. She did a fantastic job balancing the firm’s risk aversion with a new understanding of the need to participate actively on social networks.
Challenge 3. How do you respond more quickly to customer service questions on social media when you cannot be at it full time?
One social media strategy challenge for risk-averse organizations (and even ones that are not THAT risk averse) is the timely handling of customer service issues on social media channels. While the preference may be to check and double-check responses coming from customer service, that means the response won't happen with the speed customers expect.
An attendee at the Frost and Sullivan session shared that her company drafted responses to typical customer service questions to enable faster responses. Instead of running the risk of someone getting the same answer on multiple occasions, however, they drafted multiple variations of answers to their typical questions. In this way, they paired up speedy response and a sense of message variation consistent with a more personal response.
What are your social media challenges with multiple brand presences, compliance, and customer service?
These are familiar social media challenges for organizations. What questions do you have in these areas? Or alternatively, what answers have you found for them? - Mike Brown
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