How Brands Should Not “Over”Social Media Themselves!

Sometimes in the race of being the most “liked” brand on a social media network, brands forget what they actually stand for, their purpose of being present on social media and most importantly when to stop being a nuance for their on-line audience.

There are also times when brands who try to be a little too “human” with their audience for.e.g by sharing posts/images which they think might reflect a sympathetic “human” feeling from their end but these end up backfiring into a whiplash from the audience itself, that is when brands starts losing out on their reputation and on-line “persona’s”.

Marketers and brands both need to understand that the internet is a vicious VICIOUS playground, without boundaries and with a “no holes barred” policy when it comes to filtering and content censorship . They might want to start rethinking before posting content which THEY think would earn them a few brownie points with their target audience and might want to think about how an audience which irrespective of being their loyal customer or not is affected by factors influencing their society,economy,politics and their personal lives. So if putting up a picture of impoverished kids playing football in a slum of Taiwan might be Nike’s Idea of promoting a tag line, it might come off as an offensive statement to many of its on-line audience, who might also be human right activists.

point being explained here is that “don’t bite on more than you can chew” keep it( your social media presence) natural and neutral.

here are a few pointers:

• You don’t need to be a mediator in EVERY sort of discussion that is happening on your page:take an action IF a discussion takes on a tone which you wouldn’t want being excessively discussed (politics,religion,profanity).  you Don’t need to take sides and be a part of a discussion involving 2 customers fighting over shoe models or colours. Let them decide,you cant be on both sides!!

 

• DON’T SELL ALL THE TIME! yes you are in the selling business, you need to make profits, that’s the whole point of marketing,promoting and selling products but at the same time do not lose the real meaning of social media,which is to create 2 way conversation, listen to your followers/fans, understand their underlying needs through these conversations, there might be a purchase or brand behaviour pattern which you might come across, something which you ignored as part of your marketing mix perhaps, a new feature, need,complement. You can get an understanding of this through general conversations with your followers/fans.

 

• Do not lose your “cool”: every single consumer on mother earth has been bestowed with one quality or gift which no brand, product,service can ever take away, no doctor can cure, and there are no medicines for it; dissatisfaction. Yes, no matter what you offer to the consumer, no matter how well you package it, price it, promote it, the consumer will ALWAYS be dissatisfied from it. Dissatisfaction occurs on different scales and doesn’t mean that the consumer HAS to NOT like the product in order to be dissatisfied, he/she could love the product but there’s always that ” if only this blue could be a little lighter,it would be perfect than” ” its great but if these patterns would have been vertical, this would be perfect” , ” this is so good, if only they’d make it a bit larger in size” . Followers on a brands social media page will often get into such conversations, sometimes these conversations take a meaner turn and consumers end up bad mouthing the product, a feature, show their annoyance with something in the brand/product or service, this is where the brand /social media team needs to keep their cool, don’t take things personally, you will be humiliated , thrashed and knocked around like a rag doll because of a consumers slight annoyance or dissatisfaction, try to follow up positively, containing the situation and managing the crisis. If you go after customers/followers with all guns blazing, you are pretty much throwing your target market and brand loyals out the window.

 

• Don’t go falling for all social media “trends and Fads”: Social networks are the central points for trends and fads all over the world,be it fashion,news,politics,social actions etc. One thing which brands/brand social teams need to keep in mind is, something might be the ” thing” on social media one day and in a blink of the eye it either fades away,backfires or is overthrown by a bigger better ( not always) thing, point is they die down after a while, your brand however is in for the long haul. Don’t participate or fall for news,trends and fads which can backfire or cause a bad impression on your brand. A good news piece for some followers might be a bad news piece for the others, some fads might be sensitive for certain target groups, your focus should be retaining that “neutrality” .

 

Brands should always keep in mind, especially on social media, that they are there to converse, get to know their loyal market more personally and pick out behaviour patterns from those conversations, selling becomes easy once you have all the right information.

 

 

The Future is Augmented Reality.

Marketing,promotions, communications and ultimately the technology used for these communications has come a long way since the inception of the internet and online brand management/marketing. It started with emails; sending out mass emails related to products and promotions in order to entice and capture customer minds and trickled down towards the phenomenon of SMS marketing, when companies started sending out mass cellphone texts to customer databases hence trying to get their attention through that. Then came the era of  “the Social Network”, marketing took a huge leap and brands set on the journey of social media and viral marketing, creating fans,tweeting,uploading viral videos. When all this became a norm marketers started towards the use of codes and QRs integrating QR images with products, using it in their BTLs and so on.

Enter Augmented Reality

According to its precise definition; Augmented Reality is a live,direct,or indirect view of a physical,real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer generated sensory input such as sound,video,graphics or GPS data. 

in simple words, Augmented Reality allowed marketers to bring the actual brand alive, available virtually right in the palm of your hand..literally. You can view the product from all dimensions, see the product in actual use,size and shape and experience just what it would feel like to own it.

Many companies have so far used AR for promotion, you could search what Appshaker did with National Geographic in London. They took AR and made people experience what it would be like being a part of National Geogrpahic :

similarly many people have started using AR quite creatively;

using it in furniture design and architecture:

Creating Business cards out of Augmented Reality;

Many other uses of Augmented Reality have surfaced, like using it for Medical lectures, Character creation,GPS systems, etc.

Are we ready for AR?

after seeing all this you would probably want to just get up an get your self a Phd in AR, but honestly its not just about the code, there’s design,content and video involved behind it but i am sure its nothing you creatives cant handle :).

We have yet to see a full blown use of AR integrated with brands, here locally, AR has hatched from its first phase in many western countries but its use is still limited, its any ones game right now to bring a solid AR based brand campaign. so saddle up.

 

Handle your Negative Online Customer Comments Positively.

Some call it a blessing,some are irritated by it,others just downright don’t want it in their lives, this is how social media has impacted people ever since it grew in popularity and use.

However, brands and products have reaped more than a few benefits in terms of promotion and marketing on the online/digital frontier,taking their brand names to new heights. Along with this it has also given customers/target audiences a greater sense of attachment with the brand, through social media the customer now can simply say if he likes or doesn’t like a product right on the brands Facebook/Twitter/Google+ page . He can vent out his complaints,he can praise the brand, and he can provide opinions on what he like and what he doesn’t with regards to the brand.

With this comes the bad part,if interactions,complaints and opinions are left unattended on the social media, it starts planting a seed of doubt in the mind of the audience that the brand doesn’t pay much head to whatever the target market is saying. So how do  you deal with maintaining a positive relationship with your audiences online, and manage your interactions with them while mitigating their complains. Try this:

• Listen to what your audiences are saying to you and about you- if a customer is dissatisfied, try and talk to him,answer his query. Handle with care 🙂
• THINK before you SPEAK- never be in your “angry” mode when replying to customers/ or your online fans, because in that intense moment you could end up saying things which might not have good repercussions later on.Take your time in thinking just what to say to your online customer,how to craft an answer so that you/your brand remain in the “good books” while the customer is also left satisfied.
• Know the details- if you are running a brand, with a team of staff under you, you need to know what they are up to or how they are dealing with their side of customer interaction, once you know whats going on behind then you will be able to devise your answers in a better way.
• See how others are doing it – its always a good idea to look around other brand pages and learn to see how they are handling their customer interactions, this helps you in realizing the tone of interaction they are using, how customers are responding on their page to their updates and answers.
• Policies do work – social media interaction never follows a set pattern it could peak up negatives responses as well as positive ones, so having a set “rules of engagement” in terms of online responses helps if not completely erasing the negativity. If you do not define rules and policies for online engagement then you really don’t know where your online interaction is headed, and then it runs all over the place hence in the end deeming to be ineffective.

As social media progresses at such an exponential pace, online business managers or social media support teams are advised to be best prepared and skilled with handling such queries, complains, and concerns as soon as possible.

Always remember if a customer experience with your brand goes to the dung can, the online world with its tremendous capability to spread news and experiences in a viral shape can completely ruin your brand.