Change we can believe in

In a country disillusioned by economic crisis, more unpopular around the world during the 8-year Bush administration than ever before, sometimes all people have is hope… hope that things can change and that these changes can be driven by the people. Barack Obama became an icon for such change by becoming America’s first black president. By doing so, he proved to the American people, and the world, that anything is possible.

One of the key factors in Obama’s campaign was his willingness to engage with his audience, not just preaching to them… but listening and taking in the views of people that would truly bring about change. He did this on a large scale by adopting Social Media as a major part of his presidential campaign.

As with everything in life, you get out what you put in. Obama used Social Media to it’s full potential; listening, engaging and responding and this helped secure him the presidency.

Over 2.3 million Facebook supporters
Over 800,000 MySpace friends
Nearly 110,000 followers on Twitter
With over 1700 videos uploaded to YouTube, the Obama channel had over 110,000 subscribers with over 18 million channel views

Indeed, the fact that Obama brought in Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to develop his social media campaign shows how seriously he believed in it's power as a marketing tool.

So what does all this mean for you as a business owner, brand or marketing manager? It's simple really - follow Obama’s lead and embrace the change. People are no longer willing to blindly follow advertisements and aggressive marketing campaigns. According to a Nielsen study of trust in advertising, consumers trust other consumers above all else, with 78% of respondents saying they trust the recommendation of other consumers. With the emergence of huge online communities in recent years, people now expect brands to listen to them… and that’s exactly what brands should do!

Listen, engage, and adapt

1 Listen.
By listening to your customers you can find out what is being said about your brand online. Good or bad, it’s good to know what is being said. Some of the simplest and best ways to find out include:

Facebook groups - join any groups dedicated to your brand and listen to what people are saying.

Twitter – join twitter and follow people who you feel may be interested/affected by your brand. Without intruding, take in all that's being said about your brand.

Google Alerts – This is a great service from Google that allows you to sign up to receive email updates of the latest search results related to your brand.

2. Engage
Once you feel you know what is being said about your brand, the next step is engaging with these online communities. This does not mean intrusively gate crashing a community and bombarding it’s members with unsolicited sales pitches. This does mean actively taking part in a give and take environment. Offering something for nothing can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool.

Once the community begins to trust you and feels you are contributing rather than detracting from the community spirit, then you can begin to give information about your products or services without directly trying to sell to them. If people feel you are listening to them and care about their opinions, they will be more likely to trust your opinions.

3. Adapt
Steps 1 and 2 are a complete waste of time if you're not prepared to change as a result of the feedback you receive. Remember that these are the people who buy your goods or services and ignoring their opinions will have a direct negative effect on your sales and reputation.

If you take negative feedback from a consumer onboard and use it to make improvements to your service, not only will that person buy your improved product or service but they will also tell all their friends to – the power of change! By involving your customers you are creating brand ambassadors who will not only buy your products but will actively promote them, thus increasing your sales potential exponentially.

Examples of good use of Social Media

EA Sports responds to Tiger Woods glitch
A fan of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 video game stumbled across a glitch where Tiger walks on water and takes a shot from inside a pond. He made a video about it, uploaded it to YouTube and got over 600,000 views.

EA Sports heard the buzz and responded to it by making their own video featuring the real Tiger Woods walking on water. The strapline was ‘It’s not a glitch. He’s just that good.’ In turn, their video received more than 2.7 million views.



Dell respond to consumer backlash


In 2005, blogger Jeff Jarvis used the term ‘Dell Hell’ to describe customer service issues that had become infamous with Dell in online communities. Within a couple of days of the blog post, an article was written by The New York Times, publishing these issues.

Dell reacted by engaging the blogger, along with the wider social media sphere. They monitored blog posts, talked to people about their issues and eventually won back some of the respect of the community by showing they were willing to listen. As a result, negative blog posts dropped from about 50% to about 20%. Jarvis himself wrote:

“Dell realized that engaging in the conversation wasn’t just a way to stop blogging customers like me from harming the brand. We, the customers, bring them great value besides our money: We alert them to problem. We will tell them what products we want. We share our knowledge about their products. We help fellow customers solve problems. We will sell their products. But this happens only if you have a decent product and service and only if you listen to us.”

The moral of the story... Listen, engage and adapt to what your customers say... Or get left behind!