JitterJam® Social CRM

Social media is increasingly becoming an influential force in business and on the Internet. It has had an irrevocable impact on marketing and has led to positive changes in corporate culture, including increased levels of brand transparency and accountability and, as a result, a heightened sense of corporate social responsibility. This corporate social responsibility has opened the door for a number of brands trying to change the world for the better while still turning a profit.

The social web makes it easier for these companies to spread their social messages, to generate issue awareness and to build their brands, and blogging has become a critical component to driving and delivering that social message. Blog content helps strengthen connections with people that may have originated on Facebook, Twitter or even at a retail store. A blog creates an informal “voice” that the organization can use to build trust and engage people who care for and support specific social causes. Two brands that I’ve seen doing this particularly well, are Impact Foods and Seventh Generation.

Impact Foods – This granola company has an ambitious mission, ending hunger. For each bag of granola they sell, they promise to feed a hungry child for one day. Impact’s blog strategy is narrating their mission, describing the company’s journey as they travel and deliver on their promise to help feed children. This builds trust with consumers because it shows Impact’s credibility, and demonstrates their commitment to the issue at hand.

Seventh Generation – One of the leading brands in green household and personal care products, Seventh Generation strives to make their products from plants and not petroleum, while operating as one of the most environmentally friendly companies. Over the past few years, their blog has become a resource for consumers covering everything from green household tips to advice on cleaning showers. This blogging strategy helps extend Seventh Generation’s mission to consumers, providing people with the information they need to make a difference whether or not they’ve purchased Seventh Generation products. By pushing information that advances their cause and not their product, Seventh Generation shows that the issue is just as important as the brand.

These are two unique blogging strategies, but they are both successful because they build trust and credibility with consumers. Brands that strive to change the world and impact a global issue have to first show they are trustworthy and transparent. A company blog is the perfect platform to accomplish this, while simultaneously building brand awareness and developing a following.

Have you seen other socially responsible corporate blogs that are changing the world? How does their blog strategy help advance their cause, their brand, or both?

Photo Credit: LittleMan

Thanks to a blog post by @econsultancy, I discovered this slideshare presentation by Izzie Zahorian, a graphic design student from Cincinnati. There are some great insights and truths here, and I suggest you take time to go through it. It’s worth the read.

Are your company’s values reflected in your brand?

Happy Fun Stuff Friday!

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

In our past discussions, we have talked about how individual initiatives are the genesis of the use of social media / social marketing within a business or a brand, and that these initiatives are usually driven by a single purpose—a use case. We identified a number of use cases hat drive ownership and implementation of social marketing within a business. Our last Creativity Coffee topic—Using Social Marketing for Lead Generation—was the first in a series of roundtable discussions focusing on use cases. We talked about how Lead Generation is a very B2B (or high-ticket B2C) concept that centers around having a sales force or team, and how companies can utilize social marketing to accomplish this task.

This week’s discussion centers around Building Brand Awareness. Many companies jumping on the social marketing bandwagon are doing so with the goal to build brand awareness. From local businesses to multi-national brands, social marketing can provide new ways for the brand to get closer to their current customers and to reach new consumers otherwise unaware of or disengaged from their business. Today’s discussion surrounded how businesses go about developing brand awareness with social marketing. Here are the ideas sparked during our discussion.

1. The initial Brand Awareness use case is to get out there!
• Many brands just jump in with a Twitter account and a Facebook page. But without some sort of ongoing commitment, policies and goals, the accounts become dormant and whatever effort was put into the accounts turn into negative impressions. It’s estimated that only 25% of brands with Twitter accounts are active!
• Some brands who haven’t jumped in may be suffering from analysis/paralysis—the need to get every policy and procedure in place before embarking on social marketing. Policies NEED to be in place; you don’t want employees representing your company or brand’s voice in an unfavorable way; but you also need to not let fear keep you from getting engaged in social marketing.
2. Brand awareness, impressions and mentions are used as core metrics.
• Brand awareness is a metric that has grown out of traditional media and has been applied to new/digital media. Brand impressions are a key metric and is usually equated to predicted sales based upon prior campaign performance. For example, X media will provide Y impressions and will generate (on average) Z sales.
• Companies use brand mentions on social networks as a core metric not only for measuring social media but general brand awareness. Counting brand mentions over time shows how much buzz there is about a brand and how that buzz changes over time, correlates with other media buys, etc.
• Brand mentions are often used to see how new messaging has spread through the social public. For instance, brands may track how many people have been using their old messaging to discuss or describe their product, how many are using the new messaging and how the conversation shifts over time.
• In some cases, agencies are driving these metrics as part of their overall branding strategy for a company. But are agencies prohibiting companies from doing more? Traditional agencies AND their brand customers know and rely upon standard metrics; how can they move towards using new media metrics to show value? And SHOULD they manage their clients’ social “voice;” does it matter to consumers that an agency is the “man behind the curtain” for a brand’s social account? Food for thought.
3. The use case for Building Brand Awareness = Consumer Engagement.
• Social marketing should be about engaging people; the ‘awareness’ starts with that initial light touch; for instance, following someone on Twitter who mentions an interest that pertains to your market, a competitive brand, the use of a product in your category, etc.
• Brands can take that initial awareness further and engage consumers more deeply. Social networks provide so much more opportunity than just brand awareness and impressions. Brand awareness is a good start as a use case, but social marketing affords so much more. We’ll talk about other use cases in driving consumer engagement in a later discussion.
4. There ARE solid proof points, but direct ROI is still elusive.
• Bank example: An agency’s bank customer saw the average age of their customer drop by 4 years after they launched their Facebook page. Since there was no way to track “clicks” through to account sign-ups, there was little direct ROI data. But that demographic data was very telling.
• How do you measure goodwill? Social marketing helps to build goodwill between the brand and current and potential customers. Sentiment analysis and brand mentions can help showcase more positive attitudes amongst consumers…but can a business measure the ROI for goodwill?
• Engagement CAN be viral. Traditionally, if a consumer had a positive experience with a brand, he/she would tell people on a one-to-one basis. With social media, that positive experience can turn into a viral brand bonanza. If brands are NOT engaged in social marketing to build/monitor brand awareness (and conversation) that can turn into a brand nightmare as well (look at United Breaks Guitars, for example).
5. Social marketing is not a lone channel. The use of social marketing for brand awareness works in conjunction with all other channels, media and messaging.
• Social marketing should be used in coordinated way to drive brand awareness. It is not the only available method to drive awareness, nor is it the RIGHT channel for EVERY situation. E.g. email is a primary preferred channel for receiving deals/offers/promotions today while social is seen as “conversational”. Both have their value–and their place in a brand strategy.
• One last thought: Make sure you understand individual consumer preferences for communication with your brand and strictly adhere to them!

How is your brand using social marketing to drive awareness? Let us know!

The company mascot is a well-established tradition, as evidenced by Wikipedia’s fairly exhaustive list of them. And the tradition seems to be picking up steam in the social media age. Beginning with Twitter’s bird—not to mention its notorious fail whale—we seem to have entered into a sort of corporate mascot renaissance. Everywhere you turn there are owls and monkeys and bears—oh my!

Customers grow to care about these icons, too. Just last year, Stonyfield Farm floated the idea of removing their mascot, Gurt the Cow, from their logo. To quote Stonyfield CE-Yo Gary Hirshberg, they got “a real earful” from their community about that.

Response to mascots can vary—most of us remember Clippy, the Microsoft Office paperclip—but the best mascots are charming enough that, even when they occasionally annoy us, we can’t help but like them. And, if they’re not charming your customer base, makeovers and retirement are always an option. For an in-depth look at how Freddie the MailChimp monkey got himself a fresh new face back in 2008, check out this post by CEO Ben Chestnut.

Who are your favorite corporate mascots? What do they give or takeaway from the brands you love? Leave a comment below, then go out and have yourself a Fun Stuff Friday!

We have a tradition here at JitterJam. It’s Fun Stuff Friday. Our team always does something fun on Fridays, whether it be a tasty snack, a frosty beverage (Jim’s favorite), or squishball dodgeball…we relax a bit to wind down our week. (Thanks Katie!)

Fridays on the JitterJam blog will follow in that tradition! So here’s our first installation of Fun Stuff Friday on the new JitterJam blog–Twitter Backgrounds!

Have you played with your Twitter background? It’s a way to further brand your social identity, and it’s fun!

Here’s the @jittergram Twitter page before the new background:

Before...

I just wanted to do something simple for the time being as I’m working to determine a style for new collateral and branding, so I took some colors from the website and created a simple background.

After...(link opens our live Twitter page)

It makes it easy for potential customers to see my brand and my URL. There are some tricks to size of the left bar, size of the background, etc. Here are some “how to” resources for you to learn how to make your own!

• Mashable’s How To Create Twitter Backgrounds
• Croncast Twitter Background Guidelines
• Interactive Insights Group Blog (lots of links to other resources and tutorials)

Now go and have some fun on Fun Stuff Friday!