This post is part of a blog panel discussion I'm having with Meredith Eaton, John Sidline, and Frank Strong. All four of us are blogging on the same topics on the same day. My first post was on the biggest lesson of 2009; this post focuses on how I see marketers reacting to that challenge in 2010.
If 2009 was the year when marketers saw their audiences slip out of their control, 2010 will be the year they begin to reengage them. How? Smart companies will start finding ways to take their brands into social spaces effectively… using the following approaches:
1. Target wisely
In my ongoing effort to make marketing sound as much like bad country music (is there any other kind?), I call this the Love the Ones Who Love You Back Rule. Instead of starting from the traditional marketing premise – “Whom do we most want to reach?” – companies will learn to ask, “Who cares about us today?”
Social media is fueled by passion and value. It is so much easier to start with a community that already feels some degree of connection with your brand, and then nurture and expand that passion outwards to other audiences, than it is to try to go straight to your highest-value audience. Be realistic about your brand - who really has an interest in you today? What can you do to get them to care and interact more? What is it they value, and how can you give them more of it?
2. Enter the right conversations
In 2009, companies discovered how critical it was that they begin to play in social spaces. Typically they stayed pretty close to home, engaging in core-brand (product blogs, executive comms blogs, product-focused viral media, etc.) that tie back closely to current perceptions of their company and brand. And we’ll see much more of this in 2010, as companies get more comfortable and effective in social spaces.
More interesting, however, will be the trend towards engaging in brand-adjacent conversations. This means engaging audiences who might have no interest in your core brand, but who care about a social issue or topic in which your company has both credibility and the ability to contribute. As an example, many tech companies, including Microsoft, have active online communities focused on their work in emerging markets to help improve access to technology and education. This expands their brand concept to a new, broader audience. The key is to pick something that is related in some way to your brand and to offer real contributions – not self-serving PR or marketing content.
3. Understand what's really "social" about your brand
In 2010, I think companies will realize how limited their traditional expressions of brand have been, and start sharing the real, more compellingly social aspects of their company.
Here’s what your brand isn’t: your logo, taglines, brand statement, corporate boilerplate, product positioning, or anything with the words “framework,” “guideline,” or “policy” in it. Here’s what your brand is: your people, ideas, innovations, contributions, and motivations. Chances are, none of those are expressed in your current brand concept… or at least not expressed well.
The hardest thing for companies will be understanding that this brand shift isn't like those of the past – it can't be engineered in a conference room by your brand experts. It is more about discovering the real personality and value of your company, and figuring out how to communicate through non-intrusive interaction with your audiences. On the most fundamental level, companies are about ideas, products and people. The challenge of 2010, indeed of the next decade, will be for marketers to design and manage social experiences that express this more complex brand identity.
4. Unlock the gate
And leave it unlocked. In fact, it's time to take this gate completely off of its hinges. This is the gate that you are carefully shutting on your customers every time they interact with your company.
Take a quick pass through a few corporate blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages. Count the number of times you see:
- Links to sites and social networks outside of the company's control
- Mention of the ideas and products of other companies and ideas
- Acknowledgment and discussion of anything negative or challenging about the company.
We're still a lot better about paying lip service to the need to interact honestly with our customers, than we are at actually doing it. Most corporate social presences are carefully controlled and filtered, and they suffer for it.
To change this, we'll have to get past two mental blocks. First, the idea in PR and marketing that you spin away from negatives, rather than either challenge them head-on or acknowledge and apologize for them. Second, the notion that the customers who visit our emerging social presences might desert us if we discuss and link to other ideas and resources – even those of our competitors.
The gate's not working. It's not holding back our customers from discovering what we would rather ignore, and it's certainly not helping us build valuable social presences by thinking of our "user communities" as private fiefdoms.
Check out the other panelists:
- Meredith L. Eaton, Blog Panel – Part 2: How Social Media Will Shape 2010
- Frank Strong, Blog Panel Part II: How Adaptation Will Shape PR Thinking in 2010
- John Sidline, link coming soon
