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.
DIGITARIUM 