Conversation Management » Facebook

Think like Zuck!

Steven Van Belleghem — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:11:59 +0000

A few weeks ago, a new business book caught my attention. The title almostpulled me to the book. The book is called ‘Think like Zuck’. The author of the book is Ekaterina Walter. She is one of the social media strategists at Intel. Next to that, she is seen as one of the leading business women in the US. And now she wrote this bestselling book. So, I was happy I could interview her for my blog

What is the key principle behind this book and what are the 5Ps of success described in it?

“Think Like Zuck” is an analogy of a leader who follows his/her passion, leads with purpose, builds great teams, and strives for continued excellence in his/her product (or services). It is a mentality that drives great leaders to building successful business and the approach they use to doing so.

Hence, the 5 Ps described in the book are:

PASSION—Keep your energy and commitment fully charged at all times by pursuing something you believe in

PURPOSE—Don’t just create a great product, drive a meaningful movement

PEOPLE—Build powerful teams that can execute your vision

PRODUCT —Create a product that is innovative, that breaks all the rules, that changes everything

PARTNERSHIPS—Build powerful partnerships with people who fuel imagination and energize execution

But this isn’t the exhaustive list by any means. There are a number of different factors that need to align to drive success. For example, timing is import – are the customers ready to embrace your product? Even a little bit of luck is needed every now and then. Discussion of all of them would probably not fit in one book. So I chose to focus on the ones that I’ve witnessed to be more impactful over the years in anyone’s success and growth.

Who should read Think Like Zuck? What should a reader expect to get from the book?

Anyone who has a passion for innovation and disruption. Those who have an entrepreneurial streak, whether they are an intrapreneur (a person who drives change within a large company) or an entrepreneur (someone who owns his/her own business). And just anyone who wants to learn from other successful leaders.

Packed with examples of Facebook’s success principles in action—as well as those of Zappos, TOMS, Threadless, Dyson, and other companies—Think Like Zuck gives you the inspiration, knowledge, and insight to make your own mark in the world, to build a business that makes a difference, and to lead your organization to long-term profitability and growth.

You talk about both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs (someone with the entrepreneurial streak who alights their talent in a large company). Do you think this mindset is critical for every employee to have?

It is very important, yes. But it isn’t always present because we don’t do great job aligning peoples’ passions with the jobs we give them or projects we align them with. Those who are passionate about something are the ones who will lead true change (within a company or beyond). I talk about the fact that there are more entrepreneurs out there than we think there are. You might not think about yourself as one unless you encounter something you care about, your true purpose, then watch out – you will become an entrepreneur, you will make your vision happen and you will probably do it creatively and with the limited resources.

So yes, I believe that every one of us has a hidden entrepreneur within him/her. And it is our responsibility as organizations, as leaders to create an environment where people’s internal entrepreneur would thrive.

What makes Mark Zuckerberg such a unique leader?

Long-term strategic outlook and the courage to stand up to the pressures (both internal and external) that would veer him away from his vision. For example, everyone was saying NewsFeed was a bad idea and now it is the feature we can’t live without. People were saying Facebook becoming a platform is not the right strategic and business decision and now 24.3 percent of the top 10,000 websites in the world have some form of official Facebook integration on their home pages. It isn’t easy (especially when you are in your early twenties) to withstand those pressures. It is even harder to walk away from a billion dollar buy-out offer. But Zuck has a clear long-term vision of where he wants to go and where he wants to take this company and he is executing on that vision.

What is your role as a social media strategist and innovator at Intel?

Over the past 5 years my role has evolved. It started with ensuring that all the basics were in place for social media adoption within our company globally. Then I shifted my attention to establishing global strategies for building, growing and engaging our social communities on multiple social networks. We not only needed to establish those strategies, but to scale them globally. We put tools in place that allowed up to listen, engage, measure, and learn in real-time. We trained a large number of social media practitioners internally. Nowadays I am focusing more on innovation, looking forward to figure out what we need to do next.

How is Facebook changing the face of marketing?

Facebook provides an amazing platform for brands to connect with their customers and fans. Obviously it is a rented land, so brands need to be mindful of that. But the opportunity to connect with your fans around the world is unprecedented. Intel, for example, is able to connect with over 24 million people around the world in over 50 countries on a daily basis. Even if not every single person engages with the brand, that’s still a terrific opportunity for companies to start building relationships with their advocates that hasn’t existed before.

That totally shifts marketing from one-way to a two-way conversation. It is more about building relationships vs. pushing a message; more about listening and participating vs. posting a banner; more about real-time response vs. a six-month campaign. Facebook humanized the way we do marketing.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone wanting to emulate this success?

Act! There is an entrepreneur in every single one of us. Our passions fuel our purpose and give us energy and motivation to grow. But if we don’t take that first step and act, our dreams will stay just that – dreams.

Make your social media channels more effective in 4 steps

Steven Van Belleghem — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:25:50 +0000

A large number of companies are thinking about their next steps in social media. One of the key factors in any social media strategy is the channel/content debate. Companies are struggling to capitalize on their use of social media channels. By means of a hands-on paper, we want to share our approach on how to make effective use of social media channels in order to spread content. This blog post gives a short summary of the paper. The full paper can be downloaded at the end of the post.

The paper is based upon a series of research projects conducted over the last two years, the experience gained from numerous workshops with our clients and an in-depth discussions with social media experts Erik Van Roekel (@evr) and Matthijs Van Den Broeck (@mgvandenbroek).

4 steps to effective social channel use

Evolving from a checklist approach to social media towards an effective social channel use requires a different mindset. To build this mindset you need to go through 4 distinct phases:

1. Channel & content strategy
The first step consists in formulating a clear vision on the role of each of the online touch points. Apart from defining the goals and content of each of the individual channels, this phase is also about deciding how those channels interrelate. In this phase, you define which touch points are most likely to reach the social media (and broader business) objectives. Instead of creating social silos you are going for an integrated approach where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Most managers think of social media channels as stand-alone silos. Content is spread through each of these channels without a clear plan on how to reach business objectives. The truth is that all online channels are interrelated. Consumers can even be routed from channel A to channel B. In this phase, companies should create a ‘content-conversion’ plan.

A content-conversion plan includes every touch point where a (potential) customer can come into contact with your content. Then you need to determine at which of these touch points conversion to your objectives (reputation management, community building, lead generation…) is likely to occur. All other social channels support traffic generation towards these conversion points. Instead of having a set of silo channels, this creates a set of interrelated online channels.

For example, the converting touch point might be the corporate website or blog. A corporate blog can be the touch point that leads people from the content area to the sales area. Your other social media accounts ensure that sufficient traffic is channeled to the blog every day.

For companies working in the knowledge sector, SlideShare can serve as a useful converting touch point. SlideShare is a social network site where people can share presentations (PowerPoint, etc.). This is the ideal place to showcase what you can do and what you have to offer. On this platform, it is easy to directly convert a reader into a sales lead. In case your key objective is community building, your Facebook page may be the best content-conversion point. When mapping out your conversion touch-point plan, define the trigger for each touch point that makes it possible to move on to the next. Furthermore, try to keep the lines as short as possible. The more steps are necessary in order to reach the touch point where your business goals are realized, the harder it is to achieve high conversion rates.

2. Build reach

To increase the return on content creation, it is advisable to build reach in the early phase of your online plan. In this phase, the hard part is maintaining a balance between relevant content on the one hand and being able to attract a large set of likes & followers on the other hand.

There are two ways to build reach: the slow approach and the fast approach. The slow approach builds reach over time by investing in quality content that spreads naturally. To succeed in the slow approach, you need three things: good content, a fixed rhythm and a lot of patience. Big brands usually lack the last ingredient, which is why we recommend choosing the fast approach. Our research has shown the following seven approaches to be successful reach builders:

Conversation worthy campaigns: invest in social campaigns to boost the reach of your social channel activities
Rhythm: a one-time campaign won’t do it. You need a certain rhythm to share great content
Contests & free stuff: giving away some of your products is still an effective way to build reach in the short run (although there’s no guarantee of quality). Many companies are afraid to attract ‘low quality’ followers with this strategy. This is indeed a risk: once they are on board, the challenge consists in convincing such followers to stay with your content (step 3)
Social advertising: to grab the attention of your audience, you need to advertise your campaigns and content on social channels.
Employee activation: a company should always have more fans than employees. If your own employees don’t follow your content, how can you expect your customers to be interested? Train and facilitate employees to become active ambassadors of your social channel activities.
Offline communication channels: building reach goes beyond online channels. Try to mention online channels in all your communications: TV commercials, print advertising, banners, point of sales material…
Partner up with other major brands: if you have a good relationship with brands that have a large social reach, you can always ask them to share your brand content (or a competition) with their fan base.

3. Persuasion through content & interaction

Once you’ve attracted a significant number of followers and fans, you need engaging content to keep them interested. The threshold to follow a brand is very low but it takes a huge effort to keep your audience engaged.

Research conducted by InSites Consulting has shown that the average consumer actively interacts with no more than 5 brands on social media. This means your brand needs to be part of this select little group. Also, recent research has shown that fans won’t dislike your page if they don’t like the content; instead they will ‘hide’ your page. This means competing for the attention of your own followers with big love brands like Apple, Coca Cola and Disney. And let’s not forget, your toughest adversaries when competing for the attention of your followers comes are those followers’ friends and families.

The conclusion is obvious: this evolution is raising the bar for companies to be able to engage with consumers on social media.

Three elements are key in this particular phase:

An editorial calendar: make sure you know what your content updates will look like at least three months in advance. Our previous research paper, ‘a six-step content marketing plan’, outlines how to set up an effective editorial calendar. In fact, content planning consists of three layers: big campaigns (very intense), projects (recurring thematic themes) and content updates (small content sparks).
Creative content: drawing up the perfect content plan is probably the easiest part of the long road to success on social media channels. Coming up with creative and talked-about content is the real challenge. It’s not an exact science and there’s no such thing as a foolproof plan. It’s really quite simple: building content that conquers the hearts of your followers and friends requires highly creative people.
Operational conversation management : in this phase, consumer engagement is one of your key objectives. To succeed, you need top operational conversation management. Have a person or a team ready to interact and engage with your audience. Be fast, empathic and listen to your fans so they will commit to your brand. Follow the conversations in real time and be ready to respond.

4. From likes to ambassadors

The final phase is the most difficult part. In this phase you are looking to create a small army of active ambassadors. The previous steps focused on winning people’s hearts through great content. In this phase, the challenge is to create ambassadors: people who promote your brand to their friends and family. Here the question is: ‘What do we want our fans to say about us and how can we facilitate this?’. Succeed in this challenge and you will be rewarded with positive and impactful conversation about your brand.

In this stage, you need to convert your likes into ambassadors. The following factors are essential:

Broad consumer involvement: if you involve your customers in your decision-making flows, they will be more committed to your brand. People are more emotionally involved when they feel they are part of the team and that’s how you create ambassadors. So content planning is not just about sharing cool content or asking evident questions. It’s also about asking your customers for feedback on your performance. Ask people’s opinion on all things related to your company and remember to thank them for the input they provide.
Consumer consultants: if you have in-depth questions concerning a new project or product, you should turn to your die-hard fans on social channels and invite them to join a closed community to discuss these topics. This makes them feel like they are really part of the team and essentially you’re hiring employees that are not actually on the payroll.
Questions and answers: put meaningful questions to your audience as we explained in the first bullet point. Once your fans start giving you inspiring feedback, be sure to return the favor and keep them in the loop. Let them know what you did with the feedback and why certain remarks were used and others were not. Be open about what use you make of their feedback. Gain their trust be being honest.
Branded utility: think of applications that bring added value to your fans. Look for content that is both highly relevant to your audience and in line with your business. Once again, you need top creative people to invent these applications. Once fans start using the utility apps, it is a great way for them to talk about your brand through the application.

From four steps to an everlasting loop

These four phases are obviously not entirely sequential; there is an overlap between phases 2, 3 and 4. In our strategy, it’s not that hard to define the necessary actions for the various steps. In real life, though, we need to be flexible enough to adapt to consumer needs in a moment’s notice. Once a certain stage is reached, phases 2, 3 and 4 become iterative steps in an eternal loop designed to build reach and create more ambassadors.

Download the full paper

To read all details about this philosophy, feel free to download the entire paper here:

Make your social media channels more effective in 4 steps from steven van belleghem

And of course, I’m looking forward to reading your comments and your feedback in the comment section. Thanks!

We are not perfect

Steven Van Belleghem — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:07:09 +0000

Do you know of a perfect company? Where all employees collaborate perfectly? Where nothing ever goes wrong? Where the customer satisfaction is astronomically high? Can you quote one such a company? Or five?

Everybody probably agrees with me that there is not one or barely such a company. A company is about people, and people are far from being perfect. Each and every one of us has strengths and weaknesses. These (in)competences obviously have an impact on a company’s results.

Nobody is perfect

Nobody is perfect, yet as marketers we were trained in the past to create an illusion of “perfection”. Errors have to be kept under wraps. All successes must be proclaimed from the rooftops. Promises should even be exaggerated slightly in order to further reinforce the image of perfection.

Last week I had a captivating conversation on the subject with several company leaders. We mainly talked about the role of employees in the determination of the perception. We all agreed: the perception consumers have of a given company is determined increasingly by employees, and decreasingly by classic advertising.

A minor explosion had occurred in the laboratory of one of these companies recently. One of the employees immediately took a picture of the incident and shared it with his Facebook friends. The company management was not too happy about that. They concluded that the perfect image had been slightly blurred.

Everybody agreed with the man. It was indeed an annoying situation, so concluded the group. At a given moment I made a comment: “I can imagine that this is something a company would prefer not to happen, but is this really so bad?’. Will the company have suffered any damages because of this Facebook status update? I doubt it.

Employees have always talked, and will always talk

Many companies worry about the communication of their employees on social media. But these communications have always happened, ever since people started working for companies. However since the rise of social media company managers are confronted with communications or reflections made by their staff. Ten years ago these same reflections also existed, of course. This confrontation leads to the realisation that the perception of their company is probably not perfect. And that is exactly what comes across as painful to some of them.

I think this stream of thoughts is a paradox. Everybody knows that companies and people are not perfect. This has been acknowledged by all. Yet we still want to maintain the illusion of a perfect image in our communication. We are even willing to gag our employees in order to keep the illusion of perfection.

Accept our humanity

I wonder whether we should not change our approach. Life will probably be easier if we learn to deal with the thought that we are not perfect. Let’s accept that employees will sometimes say something wrong. Some will even share something stupid with their online friends. As long as these are minor types of imperfection, it will actually make a company more human. And that is exactly what most consumers are looking for in these times of transparency: human and honest companies.

6 ways of thanking Facebook fans

Steven Van Belleghem — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:24:56 +0000

It is becoming a sort of tradition, isn’t it? When a brand reaches a given symbolic Facebook fan number, they look into original ways to thank these fans. Every brand tries to be as creative as possible in doing so. When checking out a lot of examples, I noticed a recurrent pattern of some 6 approaches. I listed these helped by the excellent job done by Paul Van Veenendaal and presented on his blog.

Giving existing fans an extra financial advantage: all fans can win a unique discount, to celebrate together that a symbolic number of Facebook fans has been reached.
A thank you from the management: fans love knowing that a company’s management appreciates their loyalty. When someone from the top of the company expresses the gratitude, this is appreciated.
Giving extra background information on the company: loyal fans love taking a peek behind the scenes. They often want to know more than the general news. That is why they appreciate learning more. A one millionth fan can be a nice occasion of doing so.
Trying to thank the fans as personally as possible: social media are about connections between people. The more personal the communication between a brand and its customers, the better. Some companies manage to personally thank millions of people, which is always great.
Making a unique product linked to the Facebook fans: fans love the brands and products they become a friend of. To thank them, certain brands develop a special product for their fans or they build a unique and once-off product.
Giving a nice prize to the fan who reaches the symbolic number: “Our 1 millionth fan will get a great trip to the Bahamas” could be an example. One single person gets a great prize. This is the most dangerous of all tactics, as existing fans might be very disappointed. If you give a new fan a prize, it is recommended to also do something for the existing fans (or for the first one ever).

In the meantime plenty of cases are available on how Facebook fans have been thanked. Below I am quoting one example for each of the tactics.

Case 1: Southwest Airlines gives a 50% discount

A few weeks back Southwest Airlines reached the symbolic 3 millionth Facebook fan. To celebrate this and to thank the existing fans, the company gave 50% discounts. When booking a flight via the fan page to a large number of destinations, the ticket could be purchased at half price.

Case 2: A Burberry‘s top manager sent a message

Did you know that about 60% of the Burberry marketing budget is spent on digital media? Social media are at the centre of this fashion brand’s marketing mix. At the end of 2011 the brand welcomed its 10 millionth fan. By means of celebration they made a video message, the main character being Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer at Burberry.

Case 3: Disney tells the story of its Facebook page

In December 2010 Disney reached its 100 millionth fan (!) across its 200 official Facebook pages. Early on in the process Disney started posting unique content. The brand is consciously searching for interaction with its fans via its numerous pages. And it appears this strategy works. To celebrate the 100 millionth fan, Disney made a video on the unique story behind its Facebook pages, in order to show the fans how this success grew. Furthermore the film contains a lot of great facts about the fans.

Case 4: Kraft personally thanks its fans

Is it possible to thank thousands of fans personally? Kraft proves it is. In a jolly song they mention the names of more than 4000 fans, in writing or in singing. I think this is simply a very funny and charming way to involve people in your marketing. Quoting people’s names will do the trick. Ever noticed how people tend to look the longest at pictures they themselves are in?

Case 5: Porsche puts the fans’ pictures on a car

This Porsche case has already been used twice in detail by Leo Verdonck on Marketingfacts. By putting the pictures of the fans on a real Porsche, you obviously give an ego-boost to the fans of such a brand. Porsche did it a first time when they welcomed the one millionth fan and they repeated it when they reached 2 million. Curious to see what will happen when they get to 5 million!

Case 6: easyJet gives its 50.000^th fan a phenomenal prize

Another strategy is giving a large prize to the person who reaches the symbolic number. When airline easyJet wanted to celebrate their 50.000th fan in March, they decided to give that person an impressive prize: 2 tickets allowing him/her to fly 50.000 km together with a friend or a family member. Winning such a prize must be wonderful, but I can imagine that a lot of the early-days fans are disappointed that they are not getting anything.

These are 6 examples and tactics that I noticed. Do you know of other fun ways of thanking Facebook fans for their loyalty?

62% of Fortune 500 companies have active corporate Twitter accounts [Infographic]

Matthijs van den Broek — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:22:14 +0000

Social media can and maybe should be seen as the greatest platforms to use to bring consumers into the boardroom on your road to becoming a conversation company (see: “Social Media as a perfect partner for the Conversation Company“). Search results are these days highly influenced by social media content, blogs still rank high in search engines because of their dynamic content. The question that the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth asked was: How are all these developments affecting the marketing strategies of Fortune 500 companies? The infographic we share below, made by GoGolf, covers the latest social media presence data of Fortune 500 companies (2011 list, 2012 coming up).

Key points

23% already have a corporate blog.
58% have an active corporate Facebook account.
62% have an active corporate Twitter account and have tweeted from in the past 30 days.
The biggest number of blogs is in specialist retail industry.
The insurance industry gets the highest number of Facebook pages.

Infographic

Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com Web Design Company.

Follow Company Button for Brands on LinkedIn

Stefanie Van Durme — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:01:17 +0000

Attracting customers’ attention is what we all want to do and LinkedIn has always kept this in mind. LinkedIn became a large social network with millions of members and is an obvious tool for business nowadays. Different buttons are already introduced in the last years, the “share” button and the “recommend” button are good examples. The new “share” button gives us the opportunity to share different articles with our network, the “recommend” button was, as we see it now, a first step in the direction of the new “Follow” button (see: TechCruch).

The new LinkedIn “Follow” button tries to increase awareness about different brands and companies that are now on LinkedIn. Followers can receive updates and get more information by one click on the “follow” button; following a company gives you also the opportunity to get into contact with a certain company. This new option is already known by Facebook and Twitter so it’s not THAT surprising, but it’s another step in the “socializing” of LinkedIn. Check the video below for more information!

The business impact of social media [Infographic]

Matthijs van den Broek — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:42:59 +0000

“Social media is no longer a stop-and-go investment, but rather a long term strategic channel that, when integrated with other marketing efforts, allows brands to connect with users over time.” Yes, that’s true, the people at WildFire are getting the idea, we adhere to this heavily from a conversation management perspective. Results from a recent survey the people at Wildfire (via: MC) conducted among 700 marketers finds “social media efforts valuable in their ability to grow brand awareness and increase dialogue with customers. In addition to spending more time thinking about how to engage audiences, marketers will soon begin to measure social media’s impact on the business through a more traditional ROI definition: attributable sales and costs.”

The survey found that Facebook ranked as the top social media marketing channel (94%) among social media marketers , followed by Twitter (74%), blogs (41%), LinkedIn (32%), and YouTube (30%).97% of the respondents believe social media marketing benefits their business, and three-quarters intend to increase their spending this year.

Social Media Benefits

Valuing Facebook fans

Measuring ROI

Full infographic here at Wilfire Blog.

“Liking” on Facebook becomes less popular, study says

Lisa Derycke — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:53:20 +0000

Crowd Science conducted a survey around the “Like” button on Facebook. 21% of the owners of a Facebook account “like” a brand on the social network website. When it comes to wall posts and pictures, people are more likely to “like” those elements than they like actual brands, about one third of the respondents. Almost 20% claim they don’t use the “Like” button at all. 32% say they simply don’t use Facebook to show their appreciation towards a brand.

The younger we are, the more we hit that “Like” button. 27% of the people between 18-34 “like” branded pages more than people of age 45-64, only 18%. The education level is also an important factor: those with a high school degree (20%) say they don’t use the “Like” button, while graduate degrees (25%) “like” brands even less.

The most important reason to like something is to show support or because people enjoy what is being said or shown, which rather makes sense. 6% of the surveyed internet users like a brand, only to get a discount or to win a prize. Therefore, brands must reflect on the reasons why people like your brand. There must be made a distinction between people who want to benefit from the advantages when liking a page, and people who simply love your brand.

Forget the six degrees of separation!

Erik van Roekel — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:28:37 +0000

Remember the idea of Six degrees of separation the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth? Well forget it! Earlier this year Facebook examined all 721 million active Facebook users (more than 10% of the global population) with 69 billion friendships among them. And came up with a new calculation.

This graph shows the cumulative degree distribution of Facebook. The percentages of people that have a given their number of friends; 50% of the people on Facebook have more than 100 friends. And the average Facebook user has 190 friends.

With the help of the Università degli Studi di Milano they’ve found that 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops). The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops but decreased with the grow of Facebook to 4.74 hops.

And when they limited the research to a single country the world became even smaller. We are clustered locally. We tend to have friends with almost the same age and 84% of all connections are between users in the same country. So most pairs of people in the same country are only separated by 3 degrees. In 2010 Sysomos did a similar study and found out that on twitter the average distance between two users is 4.67 steps.

It’s a small world!

Taking customer’s complaints seriously

Lisa Derycke — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 07:31:56 +0000

When a customer wants to express how they feel about a product or brand, the easiest and fastest way to do so is to put it on Twitter or Facebook (check out how Vodafone is managing these social customer contact channels in a 24/7 way). Although a company’s answer is necessary, 25 % of the companies do not respond to the complaints or comments of customers, made on Twitter (14% on Facebook). This has been investigated by feedback management software provider MarketTools.

Losing a customer’s trust is mostly due to ignorance. Some companies (22%) don’t have a clue whether or not their customers use social media to share their feedback with other people. And almost 50% of the respondents don’t believe that their customers complain online. Still, it is very important for B2C companies in particular, to give the consumer the attention and interaction they need. Sometimes that already can be enough to remove negative comments from a social platform.