Socializing the corporation, event in review
I want to share what I learned at an event that was organized by Bruce Jensen through Calgary Web Communications Strategy Group on meetup.com. The key difference of this event was that attendees were either from communications departments inside major companies or from associations within energy sector in Calgary. The only person I knew was Doug Lacombe, who MC’d the event and did an amazing job.
The event was a mix of a panel discussion and short presentations by social media practitioners. Presenters shared their experiences of managing social media for both small and large companies. The three featured companies were: More than Mangos by Belinda de Wolde, TVI Pacific by Rhonda Bennetto and Encana by Belinda de Wolde. Here are my takeaways from this event. I hope it’ll help you see how different companies deal with social media.
Social media lessons
- Simplify the way your customers connect with your brand. Connect, connect, connect. Create a separate page on the website: Connect with Us. For example, TVI Pacific page features three different ways to connect with the company.
- Social media can fix the trust issue. Transparency is the key, social media can help gain trust through making your company transparent. Engaging into conversations with your customers can help energy sector companies to regain trust.
- Always consider your audience. Explaining social technology in human terms helps a lot. Speak in the language of your audience. Blogging, tweetting and socializing on the web should be done considering the age and background of the audience you’re talking to.
- Engage with your audience through conversations. Create a discussion board on Facebook page. Moderation is, of course, one of the biggest challenges but having a please where people can share opinions and ask questions about your company is extremely useful. TVI Pacific’s practical application: every time a press release is issued, a new Facebook discussion topic is created, and Page Fans are invited to discuss the matter.
- Social media helps general awareness. Social media is not about a new opportunity to broadcast, but a new way to engage with your clients, vendors, partners, investors. Engagement with various parties is the key in distributing information through social media. Encana’s practical application: Encana’s helps community organizations. These organizations help Encana by linking back and talking about it in the social space.
- Ensure consistent messaging. Regardless of how many social media properties / network profiles you have, make sure the information is consistent across all of them. Ensure the information is consistent between traditional and digital space too. Create ways for your customers to connect with your company through press releases and other traditional marketing channels.
- It’s worth hiring an expert. To train you or even take part in expanding your social media presence. For example, hash-tagging of messages on Twitter helps syndicate the messages through the web. This is not obvious when you first start with social media, but an expert, Doug Lacombe in this case, helped Rhonda a lot.
- Blogs are not always necessary. If you don’t plan to update it at least weekly, don’t start it.
- Be a champion inside your organization. Teach everyone inside your company by doing it and showing results. Dealing with social media you always have to be prepared for controversy and criticism from both inside and outside of your organization.
- Experiment. Test. Flirt. Track. Measure. And be consistent. Have been at observing, flirting stage of social media engagement. Haven’t we all?
Thanks again to organizers and participants! Were you there too? Feel free to contribute in the comments section.
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