How to: Integrate Social Media in Offline Operations

📕 |

November 24, 2010

“Is online / social media alone the way forward for your business?“

Being a huge believer of the importance of INTEGRATION instead of implementation, my answer to that is NO. Businesses today are too caught up with the ideology of social media but fail to realize the huge potential social media can bring when integrated into traditional marketing efforts.

It is important for businesses to realize that social media integration does not mean that by having social media presence everything will fall into place. If you take a look at same of these real life integrations of social media with Facebook and Twitter, you’ll find that these companies are successful online because they managed to integrate it into existing OFFLINE business operations.

Here are some integration ideas for you to maximize your marketing potential:

#1: EVENTS + SOCIAL MEDIA

Have an event coming up soon? Whether it is an exhibition, launch or a regular meetup / happening, explore how you can spice up your event with available social media tools. You can use Facebook to share photos leading towards the event to build hype and organize giveaways; use Twitter to share real time updates on what’s happening on the scene and behind the scenes, facilitate tweetchats or setup a Twitter wall at the event with a contest mechanism to build followers; rewarding visitors that check in to your venue on Foursquare or even a treasure hunt!

There is a timely article written on Mashable yesterday on this very topic with 5 ideas on how you can enhance your events with social media. Click on the thumbnail to check it out!

#2: ADVERTISING / PROMO + SOCIAL MEDIA

You have a new product or service and is wanting some follower / fan love? Facebook can be used to disseminate information regarding your product or to give out demo units; if you have an existing network, identify strong personas and request for them to review your product and service on blogs; use Twitter to it’s fullest potential by sharing exclusive deals or twouchers (vouchers) to start a string of retweets; perhaps the mayor on Foursquare entitled to a VIP-class treatment of your service?

#3: CUSTOMER SERVICE + SOCIAL MEDIA

I can’t stress the importance and the effectiveness of customer service using social media. The more active channels you make available for your customers and prospects to approach you, the better.

The 2 common mediums are Facebook and Twitter. If you can capitalize on these 2 you should be in the run of something good. Do not leave questions unattended for days, reply to every enquiry within 1-2 hours consistently and your customers will find GREAT value in your service.

One thing to note is that you should never, ever give out inconsistent / inaccurate information on social media as you could cook up a storm in a matter of minutes, especially if you have a huge network.

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even use Twitter to take orders for your business like Coffee Groundz did!

#4: ON-SITE INTERACTIVITY + SOCIAL MEDIA

Who says social media are only limited to virtual interactions? Coca Cola brought the ‘like’ feature on Facebook to life! Check out the video below to see how it happened:

I agree that this setup can be a little too complicated for some to take on but it sure triggers some simpler ideas. A giant photo tagging wall or a mini wall in front of each exhibitor for visitors to ‘post’ on, the only limit is your imagination :)

Have you come across any interesting social media integrations into real life (offline) operations?

Do share them here!

5 Simple Tips on How to Get Yourself Noticed

📕 |

November 12, 2010

| Jan Wong

Recently I’ve managed to talk to a number of business owners and it would seem that each of them have a common situation – they do not know how to get themselves noticed by the consumers. The common solutions discussed often revolves around advertising, advertorials, and social media in general.

Get yourself noticed!

Bear in mind that these are business owners that have been in business for years and yet in the quest of finding (effective) ways to get themselves noticed. Sometimes, getting noticed isn’t even about being unconventional – it’s just about getting yourself seen or heard.

#1: Focus on a Niche

A: What do you do?
B: I provide IT solutions and services
A: Oh, what kind of solutions do you offer?
B: We specialize in every aspect of IT. We are a one-stop solutions centre.

Does the conversation above sound familiar? The lack of a focus often confuse customers on what are you offering in the first place and it puts you in a situation where you cannot afford to spend time highlighting your brand strengths. It’s always easier being a big fish in a small pond and eventually hop into another pond – not otherwise.

#2: Get Involved in Contests

Interesting contests has it’s way among consumers. You can either create one yourself or even sponsor one if that’s too much of a hassle. Social media tools such as Facebook allows contests to be set up rather easily and has the potential to rally up huge responses when done properly. Putting up your products / services as prizes will draw attention to your brand, too! Click here to learn how to setup a Facebook contest the right way.

#3: Get Involved in Events

Participating in events often draw attention to a brand – especially huge ones. Hosting your own event can bring about many advantages since you’re the highlight but it can take up a lot of resources including time and money. Alternatively, you can choose to hop upon events that has similar interests as your brand.

For example, an IT company may participate in a Technology Expo or even to become a sponsor to gain additional millage from the event. Try to explore various opportunities to see how you can tie up closely with the event (e.g. workshops, seminars, etc) to take full advantage of the expected crowd – it’s the least you can do.

#4: Write a Book

If you have interesting thoughts, experiences or techniques to share, this is for you! Most authors do not write to make millions out of it but to receive the exposure and credibility to their brand. With the help of technology, authors are also moving towards producing e-books due to the low production cost involved as compared to a physical book. In fact, this is something I would want to do, too!

To start it off, you may also want to consider starting your own blog as a stepping stone before publishing your own book! Starting up a blog brings great value to your brand especially in this digital age.

#5: Share

Givers gain! Give publicity to others. Take up the opportunity and initiative to spread the good word about other companies, partners and affiliates. Take an additional step by getting close to industry influencers and help them solve their problems by sharing your contacts with them. Many will repay you by sharing YOU with their contacts and to put you in front of their customers as well.

Is That All?

There are tons of other ways to get yourself noticed and the above is just the tip of the iceberg! In a nutshell, to get noticed is all about you being able to look out for opportunities to shine and not so much of the right technique or the right avenue. The more you’re out there grabbing those opportunities, the more you’ll be noticed.

How to: Social Media in Business – Facebook (Part 2)

📕 |

October 8, 2010

| Jan Wong

Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3

As promised, this post reveals some real-life implementation and integration of Facebook into brands and businesses worldwide along with tips on how you can implement them yourself! If you missed out our discussion and tips in using the infamous Facebook as part of your business, you definitely need to look up Part 1 here.

To set the pace of integrating your business in social media, take a look at the video below first (yes, even if you’ve seen it before)!

1. Customer Attraction: Getting the “Likes”

Everyone goes through this humbling phase of starting up. You’ve just created your very first Facebook fan page for your brand / business with only you being a fan of yourself. You turn to your friends in your personal profile and have invited them to “like” you.. and it stops there. Why is that so? You are NOT commanding attention.

Let’s take a look at Redbull. Instead of showing off wall posts, company information and whatnot to non-fans, Redbull implemented a very simple strategy to their page to command attention from the prospect as seen to the left – a simple, straight forward “call-to-action” image, and they are not the only ones doing it: Levi’s is also seen applying a similar strategy as well!

This, is what they call a Fan-only Facebook content – exclusive contents using Facebook’s ‘Tabs’ functionality. It can be inside scoops, special discounts, participate in discussions, take part in contests and more!

The key to a powerful landing page on Facebook is: Less. Yes, less is more! Do not confuse prospects with too many things going on. Consider being like Redbull – You definitely can’t miss what they want you to do; or like Levi’s – indicating the exclusive benefits you receive by ‘liking’ their page!

Writing a sales pitch on the landing page is a big no-no. Do you really want to advertise your product / services to a prospect on Facebook? It doesn’t work that way on social media. How so? People come to you for a reason – to learn / to browse / to connect / to question / to feedback / to suggest / to complain / to win / to receive and NOT to be sold to.

“Understanding the needs and wants of your potential fans is vital. If unsure, start by asking existing followers what would interest them and take it from there. Remember, that’s co-creation.”

Taking a look at an example closer to home, Project One & Only is an online pageant competition in Malaysia using Facebook as their primary platform to screen through participants, communicating with them and the fans that are eager to know of the results. Incepted in June 2010, they managed to break the 5-figure mark within mere 18 days, now close to 30,000 fans and still growing!

The secret behind this campaign? Attraction. Project O&O’s target are college / university students and they created something that would appeal to them by “making them famous” through this ongoing search in which the winner will undergo makeover sessions, participate in fashion shoots, special features on magazines and more.

In short, they hit the spot among their target market and results were generated instantly.

Not to forget, the Malaysia’s Online Fashion Entrepreneurs’ Weekend, a first-time offline event with over 90% of marketing done through social media alone, utilizing Facebook as their primary engagement platform. MOFEW recognized a niche and a need among the local online fashion scene and proceeded to put together an occasion for like minded individuals to gather and to highlight their entrepreneurial insights to the mass public starting on Facebook, then to an on-ground event. With over 10,000 fans gathered within less than 6 weeks, MOFEW manage to draw 0.5 million hits on the official site, ranked #1 on Google and successfully ran a 3-day offline event with 40,000 attendees from Malaysia and beyond (see official report here).

2. Customer Engagement: From “Likes” to Action

“Your fans are with you for a reason. Keep your focus on them, show them some brand love!“

You may have a very big fan base but with a low engagement rate, your fans may just be sitting there and some may have even forgot about your existence. Apart from feeding them with contents and getting to respond, here are some businesses did to ‘kick’ their fans into action:

Starbucks in the US launched a “Free Pastry Day” campaign, an event page on Facebook and there were more than 600,000 confirmed ‘attendees’ to the event! The news were spread all over Facebook through sharing and automatically triggered co-promotion for the brand / event. How did that happen? They started with their fans – Since the “Free Pastry Day” was first made known through Facebook, their immediate fans were the first to know about the news. At that time, Starbucks had about 3.6 million fans and the news were automatically shared across the network, because the fans were excited.

“Starbucks gave their fans a reason to follow them. The reward? In this case, free pastries for those that came by. How’s that for customer engagement?“

Another F&B brand in the US – Dunkin Donuts is often seen throwing co-creation opportunities to it’s fans. Dunkin Donuts launched the “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” competition in 2009 and managed to generate more than 130,000 donut submissions at 174,000 votes! Fans were asked to create their own virtual donut with the available ingredients, complete with a donut name and story behind the creation. The grand prize winner will have their donut sold in stores for a limited time! What did Dunkin Donuts achieve? An avenue for their brand to get their fans involved; and from the business aspect, they saw positive response in donut sales during the promotion period.

The competition was so successful that they did it again in 2010 and here is the winner:

“Having freebies and contests are one of the simplest form of customer engagement with a huge response potential. In fact, Dunkin Donuts continues to get fans involved as we speak through a video contest here. How’s THAT for customer engagement?“

This is NOT the end!

The above examples are just some of the many out there that has made it on Facebook on different levels. Not everyone can make it to the Starbucks level, but one can definitely make it somewhere. Once again, remember Co-Creation and Co-Promotion – strategize your Facebook presence around that with some effort and commitment, and you’ll be on your way to a good start.

What’s Next?

We will continue to look at more integrations of social media into your business / brand BUT BEFORE THAT, stay tuned to Part 3, the final yet VERY IMPORTANT bit of integrating Facebook in your business!

We will be looking at:

The risk of having your fan page shut down by Facebook
The rules and regulations you may not have read that prohibits promotions (e.g. contests and promotions) on Facebook
How to go about doing it the RIGHT way!

See you in Part 3! :)

How to: Social Media in Business – Facebook (Part 1)

📕 |

October 6, 2010

| Jan Wong

Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3

A week ago we looked at what social media means to businesses, why social media is the way forward for businesses and also ways on how social media can be integrated into your business. Having read all that, you may begin to have a little something for social media, wanting to get started but know nothing about it? This post explores one of the many tools of Social Media that you could very well apply in your business / brand – the infamous Facebook.

Why Facebook?

Most people today have a personal Facebook account and spend loads of time on it, be it on games or merely page / profile hopping, engaging with other users online. Millions of users access Facebook on a daily basis and this also means that Facebook has a potential ready market of millions to be accessed by your brand and you just need to be a part of this huge global network. What you need to do is to merely find ways to tap into it.

The good news? Facebook is nowhere near in pulling their brakes. They are here to stay, continually innovating their services and recently seen wanting to integrate deeper into the mobile devices, tying in with Android operating systems. Just so you know, Facebook’s actual value is reported to be a whooping $23 billion (Forbes) and $33 billion by The Financial Times!
The bad news? Having a Facebook page alone isn’t going to get you anywhere – it is only the beginning.

To start things off, take a look at the video below:

1. You’ll need a plan.

Yes, social media IS business thus requiring a strategy to truly succeed. Start by setting goals for your Facebook page followed by specific tasks on how to achieve them. You may want to look at:

1. How many ‘likes’ to gain by end of the year?
2. How often will you be able to contribute to the page? (e.g. at least 3 days a week / videos / images)
3. How would you want your followers to interact with you? (e.g. share your contents / provide feedback)
4. What is the final outcome for your page? (e.g. to drive traffic to your site / to receive suggestions)
5. Do you need a team to manage the page or an individual?
6. What do you need to do to achieve your goals?

2. Command attention.

Like it or not, in most situations, even the most valuable content you can ever provide will be ignored – yes, despite the traffic. How so? Simple: they are NOT paying attention to you. There are so many things happening on the screen: instant messaging, emails, Skype, daily news and if that’s nothing, do not forget the various happenings inside Facebook itself (e.g. wall posts, photos, videos, games and etc)!

Already sounding impossible? Not quite.

You’ll need a PULL, something that draws their attention to you. No, definitely not advertising because consumers today are immune to advertising. They know when to turn away when an ad starts playing and even the most annoying popups can deliberately be ignored without being seen! It has to be something that RELATES to them. This PULL can be exclusive contents, benefits, giveaways, outrageous offers and more!

Think of ways that will excite them. Some marketeers cleverly pack information into video presentations and aesthetically pleasing images – why? They know what relates and excites their followers: Videos and images definitely captures attention better than text. When it excites them, consumers are likely to share it across the social media. Once again, this is Co-Promotion through WORLD-of-mouth.

“Know what your customers are looking for. In social media, your followers comes first! Forget about getting new prospects – you’ll get stronger conversions with your followers on your side”

3. Stick to it!

Consistency is the key and this is perhaps the difficult part and determines the initial make or break. Most brand pages fail because they are unable to stick with what they have in mind. Either the management team is too bogged up with other work or they’ve given up after weeks of trying to no avail.

“Pages fail due to lack of commitment. Lack of commitment to the page is simply telling your customers – We don’t care“

Social media takes time, just like traditional businesses. You may hear stories of people making big money with social media over night but the truth is, most businesses can’t. This is where you may want to utilize your contacts, publicize your page on your official site, name cards, pamphlets, brochures, ads and etc to make use of your Facebook presence. You can hold discussions, get feedback, throw special promotions, contests and more to drive interest, traffic and participation to your page.

What’s in Part 2?

Real life implementation and integration examples of Facebook in businesses worldwide! You do not want to miss this! Stay tuned!

[UPDATE: Click here for Part 2]

Sa Sa Fragrance Award 2010

📕 |

October 5, 2010

| Jan Wong

On 1st October 2010 I was invited to attend the Sa Sa Fragrance Award Presentation held at Sunway Pyramid. The event had a pretty interesting concept as awards are given to popular fragrances, voted by Malaysian consumers throughout a 38-day duration via a microsite.

If you’ve never came across the brand before, Sa Sa is a one-stop cosmetic specialty store with over 29 outlets throughout Malaysia. Sa Sa originated from Hong Kong has been in the Asian market since 1978, carrying a variety of beauty products from skincare, makeup, haircare, fragrances, health food and even beauty accessories.

What captured my attention in this event is that Sa Sa managed to find a specific area in their business operations and used it as an opportunity to engage consumers, to get their customers involved and be rewarded for their support. They transformed their stores nationwide into an engagement platform instead of mere sales outlet. The outcome? They managed to gather 38,436 votes which also means they successfully engaged close to 40,000 customers through this campaign alone – just by leveraging on their day-to-day operations.

How so? Sa Sa first identified 6 award categories for the fragrances in which the consumers will have to cast their votes accordingly, namely: Best Women’s Fragrance, Best Men’s Fragrance, Best Couple Fragrance, Fragrance of the Year 2010, Special Colorscentsations Award and the Online People’s Choice Award. To create an engagement opportunity, Sa Sa threw in a PULL mechanism in which voting customers, in return, will stand a chance to win prizes including a Designer Diamond Necklace worth over RM8,000 + RM2,000 Colors & Fragrance product hamper as the grand prize! If that isn’t much of a PULL to you, Sa Sa also donated RM 1 from each bottle of fragrance sold during the campaign to the Breast Cancer Welfare Association (BCWA) amounting to RM13,389 in total!

“A PULL creates attraction among consumers. It can be freebies, special offers, discounts, upgrades, additional services and yes, even charity – anything that captures and commands attention. Remember, your promotion means nothing if it does not captures attention.”

Back to the event! Invited guests were given the privilege to place an autograph on the entrance arch which was a pretty cool idea as it is a subtle way of appreciating the guests. However, such privilege can easily be abused by the guests, minimizing the brand’s appeal thus brand precautions should have been taken into consideration. Take a look at the picture towards the left (click to enlarge) – as you can see, there are a number of autographs already on the arch coupled with a grand red carpet entrance. Just above the arch sits Sa Sa’s logo, and it has obtained a ‘new tagline’ (i.e. guest autographs). From a branding perspective, that may not be the best thing to portray to the public as the brand should always have a ‘breathing space’ to avoid congestion and misinterpretation of the brand image.

Putting that aside, the event progressed very smoothly with constant flow of juices and finger food (yet another hospitality plus point!). Hosted by Xandria Ooi, the nominated fragrances were introduced and brought to the floor by individual models, each representing the look and feel of the fragrance that they carry, after which the results were announced, leading to the prize giving ceremony. The event eventually drew to a close with a mock cheque presentation to the charity body. Oh, in case you were wondering, the below are the winning fragrances voted by Malaysian consumers:

Best Women’s Fragrance – Flora by Gucci from P&G PRESTIGE
Best Men’s Fragrance – Boss Bottled Night from P&G PRESTIGE
Best Couple Fragrance – Dsquared2 He Wood & She Wood from ITF
Fragrance Of The Year 2010 – DKNY Be Delicious Fresh Blossom from ADF
Special Colorscentsations Award – Free Spirit : Anna Sui Rock Me, Summer Love by P&G PRESTIGE
Online People’s Choice Award – Anna Sui Rock Me, Summer Love by P&G PRESTIGE

It is interesting to note that there are many areas we are able to learn from this simple event – from the concept to the execution. Hopefully you were able to spot and pick up some ideas from it too! Start looking into your own brand and business, is there something you could convert and command attention with it? I’m sure there is ;)

Why Online Social Media?

📕 |

September 18, 2010

| Jan Wong

How often have you wanted to harness the potential of social media but been too unwilling to commit to the changes required (i.e. still holding on to your previous mindset)? I managed to come across this Dilbert comic strip that somewhat resembles what we looked at previously about the mindset of today’s business owners and entrepreneurs in Malaysia regarding social media:

Although the comic strip may seem to have exaggerated things a little (especially when we now know most people associate social media with Facebook and Twitter) but it does carry some truth in it. Perhaps it may happen like this instead in Malaysia (adapted from above):

True, isn’t it? Most traditional businesses sees social media as merely a trend that they wish to participate in but yet unwilling to accept it fully. Little did they know that social media has grown beyond just a trend or a technology – but a lifestyle, an integral part in consumer engagement, extension of networks, and it is here to stay.

Still skeptical? Apart from just pumping you up with the potential reach of people you can be connected with, here are 5 simple reasons on why you should get started with social media for your business if you haven’t already:

1. Public Engagement

Now before you turn around click away saying that you’ve heard of this a million times already, listen to this once more: engagement builds trust, a bridge towards your brand, it creates a perception and an emotion towards it. This can become your brand’s distinguishing factor against your competitors. Like it or not, people already have perceptions towards your brand regardless.

If they’ve never heard of you before, chances are, you have to give it double the effort to convince them as compared to a brand that is already well engaged with the public and this is something traditional marketing (or advertising) can’t do.

“Traditional advertising is a 1-to-many, one-way relationship while social media is a 1-to-[1]-to-many, two-way relationship. It takes two hands for a brand to clap and that [1] makes a difference. That [1] is your tie to the mass, and also your brand advocate, your key for an applause.”

2. Earned Media vs Paid Media

Which do you prefer? People talking about you or paid to talk about you. Don’t get me wrong, paid media isn’t wrong by all means as advertorials, reviews and the likes DO WORK, even better if you have a strong influencer on your side but some business owners or entrepreneurs do have their hands tied when it comes to budgets, especially for a startup and earned media is well, free!

A little bit of time and effort will get you a long way. Think about it, where else do you have the opportunity to share your knowledge, thoughts and expertise in articles or in any other media form at no cost, with a huge base of potential non-geographically constrained readers? That’s the World Wide Web for you and all you need is just a little dedication to maintain and to promote your masterpieces!

“It is beyond just a ‘following’ online, but the credibility you build for yourself / brand / business along with it.”

3. Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Apart from just communicating with consumers, receiving feedbacks, support, sales and promotions, social media can also be used as an avenue for your customers to tell their story i.e. testimonials. Nothing beats a first-hand story, whether good or bad that comes from your existing customers as it will be able to attract new customers along the way!

Yes, this also means that your existing customers will be ‘selling’ your brand to their networks on your behalf, without having you to spend extra time and money to try convince everyone on the street on how good you are. It will now be customer-get-customer rather than brand-get-customer. Sharing – that’s how information travel on the social media, and it happens with just a click.

“They say sharing is caring. On social media, sharing is business.”

[PAUSE:] If at this point you’ve still been wondering:

1. On how this social media ‘thingy’ can actually do ALL of the above, or
2. Is the social media ‘idea’ too confusing? or
3. You find that I’m no longer speaking in English, then:

Check out this video I found on YouTube – explaining social media in plain, simple English and how social media can benefit you, your brand, your customers AND your prospects!

Hopefully that cleared things up better!
Okay, back to business: On to the fourth!

4. Measurable

Unlike traditional advertising, results can easily be measured on social media. With the availability and free access to various tools such as Google Analytics, Feed Burner, number of fans / followers / friends / likes and more, one can generate a detailed report about their reach as compared to traditional means.

For example, Google Analytics (to the left) will be able to indicate the amount of page views, average time spent on your site, where they are from, how did they managed to land on your site and other information that helps you understand your readers more. This is definitely one thing you’ll never be able to obtain out of traditional means. In other words, ‘success’ is now determined based on your influence rather than reach, quality over quantity (but then again, quantity is also achievable on social media).

5. It Works

Yes. It works! Businesses all over the world have implemented and integrated social media into their business modal do have results to show! Whether it is sales, higher traffic, enquiries or feedback, it worked for them. No reason for it to fail, if you’re committed in making it happen. And no, they did not pump cash to make it work. Social media made it work for them.

Want to know how others implemented social media in their business? Hang in there as I’ll be revealing some of them right here, at janwong.my in the coming days! You may be surprised to see how these brands and businesses used social media to drive results up their doorstep – powerful yet simple. Chances are, you may just be able to replicate their success in your business!

Conclusion..

There you go, 5 simple reasons on why social media should be implemented in business operations and marketing efforts. There are of course, even more reasons on implementing social media but in the end, the key is your mindset, perception and how far a brand is willing to go with it.
Remember, only you can determine whether social media makes or breaks your business… why go with the latter? :)

… many have made it, what say you?

How else do you see social media impacting your business / life?