How can I get social?
Are social media really that important?
Do I have to take part in the online development?
Questions like this have been on my mind before attending the Get Social conference. Never knowing a lot about social media, I was excited to gain an insight into that subject.
Opening
The Get Social Conference on October 16th was opened by Dr Theo Lynn. He used the music video “Gangnam Style” to illustrate the power of social platforms. Due to social media, this video spread around the world in a very short period of time.
Edelman Trust Barometer
Our first guest speaker of the day was Mark Cahalane, Managing Director for Edelman Europe,
world’s largest independent public relations firm.
Since 12 years the Trust Barometer, the largest study worldwide, is carried out in 25 countries. Business, government, media and NGOs are the 4 key institutions that are examined.
In Ireland the trust in business is not the same in every sector. Whereas the trust in biotechnology, technology and the food sector is high, the bank sector scored the lowest number (9%) ever ranked. Overall 3 out of 4 institutions lost trust compared to 2011/12. The media is the only institution which increased. Within the sector, especially, the impact of social media is rising. I think an increase of 75% clearly underlines the importance of social media nowadays.
Meanwhile, business is blamed for not meeting consumers’ expectations. Therefore, social media are a powerful tool to shape the perceptions of a brand by engaging with consumers in everyday life. According to Mr. Cahalane public engagement, business competence and social purpose need to be balanced to be successful.
Anyone can be a Dog on the Internet
Claire Wardle, Director of News Services at Storyful, was the next speaker with the intention to get us social. Storyful is a platform designed by journalists for journalists.
In our offline life everyone has different personalities. As we can manage them at ease in our daily life, they are hard to balance online. The good message is, however, that online we can be anyone we want to be. Immediately, I started to wonder what my personality in the social media is like…
There are 4 different voices on the internet: core services, corporate branded accounts,
corporate individual accounts, personal individual accounts. However, there are
no guidelines about right or wrong ways of tweeting. Brands often find themselves in a challenging situation, trying to find out which voice is right for them. Either they are represented too impersonal, so that announcements sound like radio advertisement, or they behave as a person which tends to be strange as well.
When things go wrong brands have two choices, either to go for a formal apology or to laugh about the own mistake and react in a humorous way. As long as you make people laugh, you have them on your side.
Twitter for Business
Jane White, a DCU graduate of 2007, talked about the way Twitter can be used by businesses. Special about her presentation was that she kept the focus on the business use of Twitter and did not give us advice for our personal lives. Jane presented her company as a platform which brings brands closer to the customer. It allows direct communication between brands and consumer which gives brands a personality. Promoted Accounts allow companies to build a social community and to gain followers. Furthermore, Promoted Tweets and Trends can represent the brand on Twitter. E.g. brands can unlock a sale by a certain number of retweets and consequently get their followers engaged. Furthermore, Twitter is beneficial for marketing purposes since it does not interrupt the customer as commercials on radio/TV.
Electric Ireland’s Experience of Social Media
The Digital Marketing Executive of Electric Ireland, Philip Kelly, Philip Kelly, was the next speaker. His presentation was about the experiences his company gained by trying out different social media. Therefore, his presentation differs from the previous ones and I enjoyed hearing some firsthand experiences. After being privatised in 2011, Electric Ireland had to compete in the market. Knowing that they are not a highly interesting brand, they started to use social media to gain awareness. Electric Ireland’s social media journey started with creating a WordPress-blog and was soon followed by a boards.ie, Twitter and Facebook account. While they use Twitter primarily for brand engagement, partnership support and customer service, Facebook is used for digital campaigns. The Tweet Hunt 2012 got a lot followers engaged and is a perfect example how companies can create campaigns by using multiple social media.
This year the Tweet Café at Dublin Web Summit will be run for the second time due to popular demand. The slogan “Tweet for a Treat” sums up the whole concept of this customer engaging activity. If that is not enough for you, watch the movie below to see how it works.
There’s never been a better Time to be online
Darragh Doyle’s presentation was without doubt the funniest one. Representing the World Irish in his position as a Community Manager he gave us an insight into his job.
Do you want to google funny pictures all day long? Do you want to make crazy ideas come true?
Than his job is the best one to do so. For me it was really enjoyable to see how much he likes his job and how much he is into it. Click on the link above and take a look at what he does!
According to him social media is easy, but it needs a lot of time since the online world has no opening hours, it takes place 24/7.
“The State of Social Media in Ireland”
The following panel discussion was held by 4 people who got experienced in different fields of social media.
For me the main outcome is that we should look out for the tools available and use them to make us famous. Not all of us will end up famous, but by chance one of us will. Secondly, it is not about just using the available social media, it is about using them right. Instead of having several accounts on different platforms, we should focus on one and keep this one up-to-date, remembering there are no closing times in the online world.
Facebook for Business
Now it was Catherine Flynn, Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook (UK), turn to get us social. Using Facebook myself, I have been excited about her presentation from the beginning on. Facebook has a lot of influence since it has 1 Billion active users a month (2 Million in Ireland) and 2.5 Million pieces of content are shared every day.
According to her, there are 4 simple steps to use Facebook for your business:
- Create a page
- Connect to people with ads
- Get your audience engaged (high quality and exclusive content, news)
- Influence the friends of friends
Catherine named prospering Irish companies that use Facebook successfully such as “The Cupcake Bakery” in Galway where cupcakes are sold out one hour after a post.
Standing out Online
Brien Herron, Community Manager at Google+, talked about how to become a Community Manager since “there is no such job as social media”.
Social networking is really important because the marketing, the PR and the costumer service work together. He uses the skills he picked up at previous workplaces to bring everyone together. Therefore, he had several hints for us what we have to do in order to become a community manager.
- Do the job before being hired (show them what you can do)
- Have passion (have it, fake it, copy it)
- Have a blog
Everyone who was scared about what possibly could go wrong got an answer as well: “It is okay to fail but fail with style”.
IPG Brand
Our last speaker of the day was Eric Weaver of the Spring Greek Group. After 4 hours of highly interesting presentation we started to run out of time, so we got a short version of his originally planned presentation.
Social media is tough business because no one knows a lot about it and it is permanently moving on. “Like/Add us on Facebook” is already old-fashioned in Eric’s eyes. The future challenge is to take a look at the entire business, to focus on business goals and not just on marketing ones before getting social. Although, we cannot forecast the development of social media yet, according to him, the companies which do not socialise have no chance to survive in a highly competitive market.
Conclusion
Especially, I liked that not all of the speaker agreed on the way the online tools should be used. Whereas some think that “like us on Facebook” is overused and old-fashioned others talked about increasing your likes. I believe that this comes back to the statement, that what might work for one company, will not necessary work for another one. Even though people around me have been talking about the importance of social media, I did not know before ahead what they actually meant by it. I have been wondering earlier on whether social media are important and whether I have to take part in the online development. Thanks to the Get Social conference I learned how the great potential of social media can be used by companies. Now, I never will question the importance of social media again!
Let’s GET SOCIAL!
DICE - Get Series - DCU 