‘Grownup social isn’t just tactical’

Jamshed Wadia, head of social media for Apac and Japan, Intel; Thomas Crampton, global managing director, Social@Ogilvy; and Ken Mandel, MD, Apac, Hootsuite, came together to share insights from their roles in helping companies become social operators, at a webinar hosted on 26 August.

 

The webcast sponsored by Hootsuite was hosted in association with Top 1000 Brands, and leading the discussion was Campaign Asia-Pacific managing editor Jason Wincuinas.

 

Beyond promotions, brands use social media to recruit new staff, listen for consumer insights and handle complaints. But getting to that level has a learning curve and can be a daunting task if you don’t know where to begin. So the panel focused on how brands can dovetail social media into operational activities to boost effectiveness and at the same time enhance the overall brand impression.

 

Companies that turn every customer touchpoint into an experience that lives up to a brand promise typically make it into the upper ranks of the annual Asia's Top 1000 Brands study from Campaign and Nielsen. Panelists on the #hastagsyndrome webinar all shared advice for expanding the social role from plain promotion to operational integration to help drive a robust brand reputation.

 

Here are some highlights from an edited transcript of the discussion:

 

Wincuinas: Can social media be used for more than a marketing megaphone?

 

Wadia: Most brands and organisations are just scratching the surface of social media if they are only looking at it from just the perspective of marketing. It can be used to manage leadership, manage talent, used as part of internal collaboration. What’s really important to achieve this is integrating social media across your operations. Not just making cosmetic changes by using it as a marketing medium but changing organisational behaviour. Social is a great platform for insights and trends that will form distinctions across marketing and the future of the company.

 

Mandel: With social it goes far beyond the social-media team or the marketing department. Cuts across. Not just social customer care but in HR recruitment, customer care and selling. IBM saw a 400 per cent increase in ROI from social selling. You’re starting to see Salesforce using it to create warm leads that were once cold. That’s how you become a social organisation. You empower employees to post on your behalf. Businesses who use social have 21 per cent more revenue than businesses that do not. If you do not have a social media tech platform it’s impossible to get everyone on the same page and all your analytics on the same place.

 

Crampton: Every single one of our clients is executing a social-media strategy at different levels and stages of development. Companies, whether they’re starting from zero or moving to a higher level, are going through a similar change in mindset. Social media does not respect the verticals that most companies have. In a hotel, if you’re complaining about the quality of the food, you don’t care if the marketing department is monitoring. You want to get to the chef. As companies develop a more agile approach to social, you’ll see a tremendous impact on how brands are perceived and the impact they have with the consumer. It is, however, a huge challenge for any company looking to undertake it. I’ve always said that unless we’re causing enough problems [with a social-media strategy] to involve the CEO, you’re not doing enough. If it’s not at that level, you’re not dealing with it at a fundamental level.

 

Wincuinas: What sort of cultural change did you have to take on to incorporate social media across an organisation?

 

Wadia: It boils down to behavioural change, and the way you change behaviour is to get everyone on the same page. It starts with a great content strategy. If the social platform is the container then the content is the coffee. The good stuff. At Intel we’ve worked hard to have a great content strategy that’s consistent across communities. It’s been well documented. We opened our social to everybody in the organisation. Anybody can be something which is called a social media practitioner. It’s very simple. You take training for 45 minutes, get added to a distribution list and get added to a platform that will inform you of everything going on. You may have an area of expertise in HR or technical. Engage with any of them as partners or recruits. People like to engage in social organisations, if you reach out, immediately the expectation rises and people are happy to join you. We help employees across the organisation and across the world to get in and engage on behalf of Intel. We have very simple guidelines and policies.

 

Crampton: In terms of companies that get it at a very fundamental level... Here’s a full disclosure. We work with Intel. They’re a client. And grownup social isn’t just tactical. Social can be used for recruitment and for product development, it just goes throughout the company. Most of what you see in the market is very tactical. Many assume that if you just get the platform out there the problem is solved. Even Ken [Mandel] would agree that just having Hootsuite is not the answer. It’s not about making your video go viral. Do you really need to? Would that achieve your objectives? You need to have your social-media strategy align with real brand and business objectives.

 

Wincuinas: So social should not just be in one department or another. It should be spread across the whole piece of toast?

 

Mandel: That’s how we see it. Social has to start somewhere, but what’s happening is that as companies evolve their strategy they’re seeing the use of social beyond the marketing department. Virgin is an example of how everyone’s involved. From Richard Branson throughout. They’re using social across the board. What some companies are comfortable with, however, others are not. Virgin’s strategy may not work for everyone. That’s why we have training programmes such as Hootsuite University. The tool isn’t enough, it’s the people around it that make a social strategy work.

 

Wincuinas: Here are the results of a poll we just did with our audience members on who manages social media in their departments. As you can see the bulk resides with the marketing department, followed by the PR department.