Download The Social experience

The Social
Experience
12 Leading Brands &
Visionaries Explore
the Elements of Great
Social Programs
The Social Experience is brought
to you by Spredfast.
Editors-in-Chief
Courtney Doman
Jordan Slabaugh
Art Director
Amanda Donaldson
Copy Editors
Brittany Edwards
Adrianne Gallman
Contributing Writers
Natanya Anderson
Jay Baer
Sam Decker
Cosmin Ghiurau
Sandeep Gill
Ann Handley
Jackie Huba
Brian Marks
Jon Sander
Andy Sernovitz
Jennifer Stafford
Brian Stokoe
Please send us your comments
and suggestions to @Spredfast
Features Great Social Experiences
16
Going Local with Social: How Whole
Foods Builds Engaged Communities
Does your brand treat customers as
equal partners in social conversations?
Here is why you should
18
U.S. Cellular is Answering the Call
for Social Customer Care
What does it take to make social care
great? Sonny Gill outlines U.S. Cellular’s
approach
20
RadioShack is Giving Customers
what they Like
The electronics retailer is driving in-store
traffic with Facebook Offers, tying loyalty
to business impact
By Natanya Anderson
By Sandeep Gill
By Cosmin Ghiurau
6
Letters to the Editors
Why is your brand social? We asked social
practitioners from today’s top brands—see
what they had to say
7
Ask Jackie: Customer Loyalty is the
Holy Grail
Jackie discusses the importance of
customer loyalty with a marketer making
the case for more social TLC
8
Constructing Content that Drives
Awareness and Loyalty
CAT’s Brian Stokoe reminds readers that
great social content serves both the new
fan and loyal follower
By Jackie Huba
By Brian Stokoe
9
A Cautionary Tale on Authenticity
(Or the Lack Thereof)
Why it isn’t worth it to write fake reviews
online. (And why it is to respond to the
real ones.)
11
Paid, Owned & Earned: Marketing’s
New Triple Threat
Trying to align your converged media
strategy? Take note from these three big
brands
13
5 Ways to Wreck your Content
Marketing
Content is a huge opportunity for brands in
social media—avoid these 5 pitfalls on your
path to success
By Andy Sernovitz
By Sam Decker
By Ann Handley
21
Why Being Helpful is Better than
Being Amazing
The difference between helping and selling
is just two letters—here’s why those two
letters make all the difference
22
Incorporating Social into your Sales
Toolkit
See how IBM and others are using social
media to drive demand and connect with
B2B prospects
24
Would you Like your Own Private
Island?
HomeAway’s approach to testing and
measuring content is maximizing fan
engagement and growing awareness
By Jay Baer
By Jon Sander
By Jennifer Stafford
26
An Inside Look: The 3 Keys to
ARAMARK’s Social Success
Insider tips to turn your social presence
into more of a social business and less of a
social activity
By Brian Marks
2 |
The Social Experience
Contributors
1. Natanya Anderson is the Director of
Social Media and Digital Marketing at Whole
Foods Market. She has been working with
new media for over a decade with a focus
on both strategy and execution, helping
organizations change the way they engage
and communicate with customers. Through
her non-profit work with the Austin Food
Blogger Alliance, Natanya is helping shape
the future of social content creation, as well
as brand/blogger relations.
2. Sandeep Gill is the Social Media
Manager at U.S. Cellular where he helps
lead social business and marketing
strategies. While at U.S. Cellular, he’s
helped develop & implement its social
customer service and customer advocacy
programs. Sonny has been immersed in and
evolving the marketing & social industry
for over eight years, with experience in
telecommunications, higher education, and
automotive.
3. Jackie Huba is the author of Monster
Loyalty : Creating Customer Evangelists, and
Citizen Marketers. Named as one of the 10
most influential online marketers, Jackie
co-authors the award-winning Church of
the Customer blog. Her work has frequently
been featured in the media, such as the
Wall Street Journal, The New York Times,
Businessweek, and Advertising Age. She
was a founding Board Member of the Word
of Mouth Marketing Association.
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The Social Experience
1
2
4. Cosmin Ghiurau leads the Social Media
Practice at RadioShack Corporation with over
6,000 locations and 35,000 employees. Prior
to RadioShack, Cosmin established and led
Samsung Mobile’s Social Media practice that
led to record-breaking profits and standing
for Samsung Mobile within the Mobility
space. Cosmin’s experience spans retail,
telecommunications, automotive, agency,
and non-profit work.
5. Brian Stokoe is the Social Media
Strategist for Caterpillar Inc. With 10+ years
in various traditional and digital marketing
roles for Caterpillar, Brian helps define the
way customers in very diverse industries
perceive and interact with Caterpillar across
Blogs, Forums, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Google+, and many other social networks.
6. Andy Sernovitz teaches word of mouth
marketing and social media. He is the
New York Times bestselling author of
Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart
Companies Get People Talking. He leads
SocialMedia.org, the community for social
media leaders at the world’s greatest
brands, and WordofMouth.org, where
marketers and entrepreneurs learn to be
great at word of mouth marketing.
3
4
5
6
1 Natanya Anderson | Director of Social Media and Digital Marketing, Whole Foods @NatanyaP
2 Sandeep Gill | Social Media Manager, U.S. Cellular @sonnygill
3 Jackie Huba | Author, Monster Loyalty @jackiehuba
4 Cosmin Ghiurau | Director Social Media & Digital Strategy, RadioShack @cosguru
5 Brian Stokoe | Social Media Strategist, Caterpillar Inc @Brian_Stokoe
6 Andy Sernovitz | CEO, SocialMedia.org @sernovitz
Contributors continued
A digital marketing pioneer, Jay has
consulted with more than 700 companies
since 1994, including Caterpillar, Nike,
Visit California, Allstate, Petco, Columbia
Sportswear, and 29 of the Fortune 500.
9
10. Jon Sander is the Digital Strategy
Director at Mason Zimbler, a Harte-Hanks
company, an international creative demand
generation agency. He is responsible for
leading the overall digital strategy and
social media plans for a B2B client-base that
includes the likes of IBM, Sage Software,
and CenturyLink Business.
8
7
12
11
10
7 Sam Decker | CEO, Mass Relevance @samdecker
8 Ann Handley | Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs @MarketingProfs
9 Jay Baer | President, Convince & Convert @jaybaer 10 Jon Sander | Digital Strategy Director, Mason Zimbler @thejonsander
11 Jennifer Stafford | Social Media Manager, HomeAway @jennstafford
12 Brian Marks | Senior Manager, Social Strategy, ARAMARK @bmarks
7. Sam Decker is Co-Founder and CEO of
Mass Relevance, a social engagement
platform that discovers, filters, and displays
real-time content anywhere. Prior to
Mass Relevance, Sam was founding Chief
Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice, the leader
in Software as a Service (SaaS) social
commerce technologies serving over 1,000
brands, where he was responsible for
building the company’s brand, products, and
platform.
8. Ann Handley is a veteran of creating
and managing digital content to build
relationships for organizations and
individuals. Ann is co-author of the bestselling Content Rules: How to Create Killer
Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars
(and More) That Engage Customers and
Ignite Your Business.
9. Jay Baer is a hype-free marketing
strategist, speaker, and author and
President of the social media and content
marketing consultancy Convince & Convert.
4 |
The Social Experience
11. Jennifer Stafford is the Social Media
Manager at HomeAway.com. She has
worked at HomeAway since 2007 in both
SEO and social media, and managed social
media efforts for the 2010 and 2011 Super
Bowl ad campaigns. She manages social
media strategy, advertising, analytics,
vendor and social network partnerships,
global corporate communications for social
media, and the employee social advocate
program.
12. Brian Marks has over a decade of
experience working with businesses to find
solutions for their web, digital, and social
media efforts, using these channels to
help meet business goals and objectives.
Brian leads a digital center of excellence
at ARAMARK for social media, sharing and
building resources, designing strategies
and success measures, and developing
scalable tools and rules of engagement for
the company’s businesses. He also builds
and executes live and online social media
training sessions for the enterprise.
Letter from the Editors
Great social experiences build lasting relationships.
This belief is foundational to
everything we do at Spredfast. We
are energized to be in an industry
where the nature of communication
between brands and their
customers is fundamentally
changing. And we see a huge
opportunity for brands to create
social experiences that are useful,
unique, fun, touching, or otherwise
meaningful, because we believe
the sum of these individual social
interactions is greater than its parts.
It’s about better relationships—more
open, more loyal, and with more
value—for both your customers and
for your business.
There are a seemingly endless
number of questions that brands
face as they continue to expand
their social programs. Where
are we going to build presences?
On what channels should we
engage? What are our campaigns
going to look like? Who inside
of our organization is going to
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The Social Experience
work on social? How do we stand
out creatively in a sea of social
conversations? How do we measure
success?
In the pages of this eBook, we
have gathered opinions and insights
from today’s leading social brand
strategists and visionaries that
address many of these questions.
Like Natanya Anderson’s feature
on how Whole Foods Market is
thinking about engagement at the
brand and local level that discusses
not only where the brand is present,
but how messaging changes at
these touchpoints. Or Jay Baer’s
passionate argument on why
marketing that is useful is better
than marketing that is amazing.
And Brian Marks’ recap of three
ways ARAMARK has made social
impactful to its business.
We believe great social
experiences build lasting
relationships. It’s our mission at
Spredfast to provide products
and services to our customers
that help them achieve this with
their customers, as well as living
out this pursuit in all we do as
a brand and a business. We are
focused on creating those great
social experiences with our
communities, which we believe
drives lasting relationships as we
move our business forward with
our customers.
We are thrilled to share the
perspectives of our customers and
friends with you in this eBook and
hope your reading experience will
be both great and social. We’d also
love to hear your thoughts on the
ideas presented here and why your
brand stays social.
We’re only a tweet away.
Courtney Doman & Jordan Slabaugh
@cjdoman, @jordanv
Why is your
Brand Social?
We asked social practitioners from today’s
top brands to tell us why their brand is social.
Here is what they had to say:
“We believe in standing for
something beyond a product.
We believe in cultivating a fuller
relationship that consumers can
trust outside of the snack aisle and
in their everyday lives.”
“We believe that engaging our
investors, clients, and potential
clients inspires money management
and helps informed clients to meet
their goals.”
“We believe that social builds
community with our customers and
“We believe the next generation of
friends around values we share with
scientists and engineers will use
them as a brand—thus increasing
social to share and collaborate—
and we want to add to this dialogue.” trust and interest and adding value to
the customer experience.”
Engineering Technology Company
Natural and Organic Grocer
Leading Automobile Manufacturer
“We believe that providing relevant
information in social media
increases the likelihood of renewal
and builds loyalty to the brand.”
National Insurance Provider
“We believe that social informs,
involves, and empowers our
viewers.”
TV News Network
6 |
The Social Experience
Outdoor Consumer Cooperative
Global Investment Management Organization
Global CPG Food Brand
“We believe that we can enhance
the ownership experience of our
customers. In addition, social
allows us to create brand advocates
and can persuade aspirational
owners to buy our products.”
“We believe that we can inspire
outdoor recreation and member
loyalty through digital engagement.”
“We believe our customers want to
engage in a dialogue to co-create
a better dining experience. Social
allows us to meet them where
they are and build something
meaningful.”
American Foodservice, Facilities, and Clothing
Provider
“We’ve proven that the more active
& engaged customers are in our
social communities, the more likely
they are to purchase new products,
repeat purchase, and refer us to
their colleagues.”
Engineering Software & Hardware Provider
“We believe that our mission
in social is to be the best sales
associate, in the best store, on the
best day of the year. We’re the next
generation of service.”
Iconic American Clothing Retailer
“We believe that food is an integral
part of the community. Using social
allows us to sit at the table with our
customers and understand them
better.”
university foodservice provider
dear jackie Q & A
Customer Loyalty is the Holy Grail
dear jackie, I am working to grow social programs
at my company and my CMO is hung up on Fan and
Follower metrics above all other things. I am trying to
explain to her that while (network) size matters, it is just
one important measurement of social program success.
I am pushing to invest more in providing great social
experiences for our existing Fans and Followers, but I
think she is too focused on the size of the forest and not
the individual trees. How can I help her understand the
importance of building relationships for our existing
customers on social channels? Smart Marketer in ATX
dear smart marketer,
It’s really easy for someone
to “like” or “follow” your brand
on social media. What’s much
harder is developing an emotional
connection with that customer
such that they keep buying your
stuff, give it as gifts, and tell
everyone they know about you.
That’s called customer loyalty, and
it’s the holy grail (or it should be)
for all marketers. I say “should
be” because many marketers are
too focused on acquiring new
7 |
The Social Experience
customers to worry about the ones
they already have.
In a 2011 study by Forrester
Research and Heidrick & Struggles,
CMOs were asked to name their
current top three marketing
objectives. Fifty-nine percent
of CMOs said acquiring new
customers was one of their top
priorities. What about current
customers? Only 30 percent of
CMO respondents said they were
focused on retaining customers as
a top priority. Just over a quarter
Jackie Huba
@jackiehuba
of respondents, at 26 percent, said
better customer lifetime value and
customer satisfaction/advocacy was
a key objective.
I believe these CMOs have
gotten it wrong. According to the
tried and true research from TARP
Worldwide, it is five times cheaper
to keep a customer than to get
a new one. The CMO priorities
heavily focused on new customers
don’t add up. And this focus is
often at the expense of existing
It is five times
cheaper to keep a
customer than to
get a new one
customers—customers who, if you
retained them, would help bring
in new customers just on the basis
of customer satisfaction and word
of mouth. Social media allows us
to connect with people who want
to start a relationship with us.
Smart marketers are leveraging
that initial connection to deepen
the relationship through amazing
service, remarkable products, and
engagement with brand employees
online and offline.
Good Luck!
Constructing Content that
Drives Awareness and Loyalty
@Brian_Stokoe
Caterpillar Inc.
by Brian Stokoe
The relationship and differences
between brand awareness and
brand loyalty may seem dramatic in
nature. Your audience is a diverse
set of individuals who benefit from
content that is hyper-relevant to
their needs and relationship to
your brand. But as a brand, most
of the time content must be mixed
together and published to your
audience as a whole. This is why
it is critical to develop strategic
content that can both introduce
and properly represent your brand,
while providing avenues for your
already loyal audience to participate
in the story and propagate the
message through their networks as
powerful brand advocates.
8 |
The Social Experience
Always keep in mind that each
message your brand publishes
is both an introduction and a
reflection of the expectations
of your company. This provides
a healthy reinforcement of the
responsibility to uphold and
strengthen the positive sentiment of
your brand.
Have you ever thought about planting a shill in
online review forums to get people talking about your
business? Wordofmouth.org’s Andy Sernovitz provides
a word to the wise on the importance of authenticity
and disclosure in social media.
@sernovitz
WordofMouth.org
A Cautionary Tale on Authenticity
(Or the Lack Thereof)
by Andy Sernovitz
Trust is First
When we have great tools for
analyzing social data, it’s easy
to find ourselves focused on the
quantity of conversations about our
brands—because we have the ability
to do it.
But smart marketers know that
no matter what the tools are, great
word of mouth and social media
marketing is grounded in trust.
Without trust, nothing else matters.
9 |
The Social Experience
Word of Mouth Can’t Be Faked
Word of mouth marketing can
only succeed when people trust
each other to talk honestly about
what they like and don’t like.
You cannot fake word of mouth.
It just doesn’t work without the
trust. You might be able to fool a
few people for a little while, but
in the end, people will figure out
that you faked it. Then you get
embarrassed, you make enemies,
and you lose sales.
Let’s say a restaurant posts fake
reviews to a website. It will get
noticed. No matter how good you
are, website operators are great at
sniffing out fake reviews. It’s their
job to keep their reviews clean and
credible. If they didn’t police them
and pay attention to what is being
posted, no one would trust their
sites.
On a bigger scale, if you post
the same review to a bunch of
blogs or message boards, people
will catch you. You can try to hide
it, you can try to vary the message,
you can use a bunch of user
names. You’ll still get busted. It’s
too easy to search for and compare
similar posts. The more you post,
the more people know you are
posting. As soon as one blogger
gets suspicious, they’ll look you up
and see that you’ve been posting
all over the place.
Guess what happens? All of
that positive word of mouth that
you were hoping to create turns
negative. The very same audience
that you were hoping to reach with
186%
continued
↑ purchase intent
Why the Real
Deal Matters
Smart marketers know that no
matter what the tools are, great
word of mouth and social media
marketing is grounded in trust.
your fake posts will feel deceived
and lied to. And they will out your
company all over the web. You’ll
lose far more business than you
ever could have hoped to gain.
Just Be Yourself Problem
As a marketer, you can comment
online, you can post on message
boards, and you can do it a lot.
Participation is welcome in the new
world of online communications
and communities. But you have to
do it the right way.
The difference between
deception and honest participation
is disclosure.
You can be an eager participant
as long as you do it in your own
name, clearly identifying who you
10 |
The Social Experience
are and what you stand for. Also,
insist that any relationship between
your business and the people who
speak for you be clearly disclosed
from the beginning, whether
they are employees, customers, or
volunteers.
Disclosure is a positive thing
when done well. Smart marketers
understand that disclosure makes
messages more powerful because
it makes them more trustworthy.
Disclosure gives status to
participants in a word of mouth
program, giving them credibility.
Disclosure is good. Demand
disclosure.
Word of mouth is about genuine
communications. Always be honest.
It’s the right thing to do—and it
works better.
Honesty really is the best
policy. Why bother posting
fake reviews when there
are so many benefits to
responding to the real ones
as your brand? Shoppers
who read helpful brand
responses to reviews show
a 186% higher purchase
intent and 157% stronger
brand sentiment. Shoppers
also find reviews with
brand responses up to 15x
more helpful than user
reviews without responses.
157%
15x
↑ brand sentiment
more helpful with
brand responses
Bazaarvoice, The Conversation Index Vol. 6
Paid, Owned & Earned:
Marketing’s New Triple Threat
by Sam Decker
@samdecker
Mass Relevance
T
he new world order of media and advertising demands that
brands find new ways to drive consumer engagement. They
must now look for ways to optimize paid, owned, and earned
media, and the trifecta is integrating all these sources of media
into a single, consistent brand experience.
Converged media refers to a
company’s paid media buys, owned
digital properties, and earned
user-generated content working in
conjunction to inform and involve
the user. A good converged media
strategy makes the end user want to
consume and partake; meanwhile,
the brand is reaping the benefit of
unobtrusive advertising.
See how three brands are
implementing successful converged
media strategies.
Incentivize participation by
tapping into user curiosity
In order to increase affinity and
ABOVE: HOLLISTER incentivized participation on owned channels by promoting the #inhollister
hashtag to generate earned ugc.
11 |
The Social Experience
PAID MEDIA
Display or broadcast ads
that require a media buy
like banner ads, PPC, or
social ad units.
buzz around their brand, Hollister
rallied consumers to unlock a
promotional product via social
interactions. Fans tweeted the
#InHollister hashtag to release the
brand’s special deal for the day.
Hollister leveraged Twitter
promoted hashtags to increase
campaign exposure. The hashtag
drove consumers to the social
experience, where they generated
earned media. This earned content
subsequently directed people back
to Hollister’s owned destination
thus completing the paid, owned,
and earned loop. The strategy was
hugely successful, earning Hollister
over 40,000 #InHollister Tweets
EARNED MEDIA
Media mentions and
user-generated content
such as consumers’ social
media posts.
OWNED MEDIA
A brand’s content assets
such as websites, blogs,
and social media
presences.
continued
and driving a 600% increase in
mentions. This exposure translated
into conversion as Hollister’s site
sales increased by 45% from the
average day.
TOP: AT&T used social sponsorship to engage American Idol viewers
BOTTOM: BEN & JERRY’S generated even more excitement about their FREE CONE DAY CAMPAIGN by
amplifying awareness using the hashtag #freeconeday
12 |
The Social Experience
Leverage paid advertising
to align your brand with an
experience
One way that brands are entering
the converged media space is
through social sponsorships. Brands
have seen value in spending ad
dollars on sponsorships as a way of
tying themselves to informational,
unobtrusive advertising that doesn’t
disrupt the user experience.
AT&T did just this through
their sponsorship of American
Idol’s #IdolAgree/#IdolDisagree
experience. They leveraged Idol’s
active built-in audience to engage
with their brand in a way that
enhanced the viewing experience
of the event. Of the total volume
of Tweets around American Idol
during the featured week, 27%
contained one of the two voting
hashtags, sponsored by AT&T.
Enable and inspire amplification
Free Cone Day is marked on the
calendars of ice cream lovers
around the world. To generate
global awareness and buzz,
Ben and Jerry’s utilized the
hashtag #freeconeday to inspire
amplification around the special
event. Scaling across multiple
touchpoints, Ben and Jerry’s was
able to successfully generate earned
media by asking fans about their
favorite flavors.
Using Twitter Promoted
Products, Ben & Jerry’s was able
to own the social conversation
surrounding the campaign by
targeting the right audience
with a brand-specific hashtag.
This resulted in a massive social
reach generating brand exposure
globally to about 10% of the world’s
population.
Converged media is now the
ultimate marketing imperative.
You have an audience and they are
talking about your brand. It’s time
to make the valuable parts of this
conversation visible across multiple
channels to allow for further user
interaction and amplification.
5 Ways to Wreck your Content
Marketing
by Ann Handley
Content has always been part of
marketing, of course. But advances
in technology and the rise of
social media bring new and (I
think!) exciting opportunities
for organizations of any size.
Increasingly, the social and online
interactions we have with one
another are leading us to brands…
it’s no longer simply brands leading
us to their products.
I don’t use the word
“opportunity” lightly, because it’s
gargantuan. But what’s key to taking
advantage of its gargantuanness (Is
that a word? I say yes.) is that you
have to retool your marketing—not
do the same-old, same-old—but,
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The Social Experience
rather, shake things up and embrace
this whole “brands as publishers”
mindset.
So you get that. You know that
world-class marketers in this new
era consistently create and share
information that is useful, inspired,
and honestly empathetic in order
to attract customers, as we wrote
in Content Rules. You work hard to
create a social brand and a credible
reputation, and to generate positive
word-of-mouth to build your
business.
But are you unwittingly
undermining your own efforts
by making some classic content
marketing mistakes like these?
@MarketingProfs
Marketing Profs
Your content is about you.
This sounds obvious, doesn’t it?
Shouldn’t your content marketing
focus on your products and
services? Not quite. Your marketing
should focus on what your products
and services do for your customers.
It’s a subtle but important
distinction: the former is corporatecentric, the latter is customercentric. Take yourself out of your
marketing, and put your customer
at the heart of it. In other words,
make your customer—not your
company—the hero of your story.
You market to yourself.
Don’t mistake yourself for being
your target customer (unless, of
course, you are). You can skew
your marketing if you make
assumptions about your customers
based on your own preferences
and behavior (or that of your
friends), and not those of the
people you actually want to reach.
Your marketing could well end up
discordant with your intended
audience—out of touch with their
true wants, needs, preferences, likes,
behaviors, and so on.
continued
You market by committee.
Marketing is often like parenting:
everyone is resolutely secure in
their belief that they know how to
do it effectively (especially those
who don’t have children). We talk
about this at MarketingProfs all the
time, but the best way to neuter the
know-it-alls is to ensure that you’ve
got the data to back up your plan:
you know who your customers are,
you know how to reach them, and
you have insight into their mindset.
You don’t have customer data.
I know I pretty much already said this.
But it’s so important that it’s worth
repeating. Research, not opinion or
gut instinct or feel, should be the
foundation of your marketing program.
That doesn’t mean art and creativity
aren’t part of it. But think of data and
research as giving you the necessary
insights into new opportunities, and as
the foundation of marketing that’s truly
inspired.
You aren’t shaping shared
experiences.
In our newly social world,
marketers are no longer the
sole influencers of purchases.
Nor is traditional media. Many
consumers today rely on the
connected social web of their
peers with similar interests. So the
question becomes; How are you
enabling those connections? Are
you encouraging and supporting
interactions by rethinking the way
you market to reach customers
before they identify themselves to
you as prospects? If so, that means
listening on social media, having
a search and content strategy,
and engaging with your potential
customers on those channels
(among others).
14 |
The Social Experience
Great Social Experiences
Build Lasting Relationships
There isn’t just one way to provide great social experiences to your
communities. From rewarding loyal fans and followers, to providing a new
level of customer care through social channels, to delivering the right
content at the right time in the right places, three leading brands share
how they are building lasting relationships with social.
16
Going Local with
Social: How Whole
Foods Builds Engaged
Communities
By Natanya Anderson
Does your brand treat customers
as equal partners in social
conversations? Here is why you
should.
15 |
The Social Experience
18
20
By Sandeep Gill
By Cosmin Ghiurau
What does it take to make social
care great? Sonny Gill outlines U.S.
Cellular’s approach.
The electronics retailer is driving
in-store traffic with Facebook
Offers, tying loyalty to business
impact.
U.S. Cellular is
Answering the Call for
Social Customer Care
RadioShack is Giving
Customers what they
Like
experience
@NatanyaP
Going Local with Social: How
Whole Foods Builds Engaged
Communities
Whole Foods Market
Finding the right channel fit
by Natanya Anderson
Brand and Local Engagements
Are Fundamentally Different
We have to honor the
relationships our customers
want to have with us through
our different communities
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The Social Experience
A
combined brand plus local
approach to social media
provides an opportunity to
explore different approaches
to engagement with the
same customer base. It also
allows us to effectively tell
the same story to customers
based on the different types of
communities we are building
at the brand and local level.
We have found that at the brand
level our customers are looking
for a lifestyle-focused relationship
and they appreciate engagements
that are focused on information,
inspiration, and aspiration.
Conversely, at the local level
customers are most attracted
to engagements that support
their in-store experience. Sales,
events, special products, and team
member stories all help connect the
customer’s social experience to their
next in-store experience, enriching
it with useful information they can
use when they walk through our
doors. We apply this understanding
of how customers engage with our
content at the brand and local levels
in two ways:
For every engagement we want
to create, we first assess if it’s a
better fit at the brand level or the
local level, or if it’s appropriate to
share at both. Trying to force-fit
transactional store messages into
the brand level rarely succeeds
and similarly, telling too many
lifestyle stories at the local level
tends to reduce engagement. We
have to honor the relationships our
customers want to have with us
through our different communities.
To create cross-channel
strategies
When an engagement is appropriate
for both brand and local channels,
we work to create a complimentary
approach instead of a redundant
one. At the brand level we look for
the information or inspiration in
the story and highlight it strongly.
At the local level we work to strip
the engagement down to the most
useful information to encourage
the customer to take what they’ve
learned into the store to support
their purchase.
continued
Whole foods uses lifestyle-focused content at
the brand level and content that supports the
in-store experience at local levels.
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The Social Experience
A Real World Example:
Blueberry One-Day Sale
Throughout the year we offer a
handful of compelling one-day
sales available at every store in the
country. In our business model
each store is able to choose their
own products and create their
own promotions, making these
sales a significant retail event. We
also typically feature a compelling
product aligned with our quality
standards and the type of products
customers regularly look to us to
provide: grass-fed beef, organic
cherries, organic whole roasting
chickens, and avocados just to
name a few.
This summer, at the height of
berry season, we offered organic
blueberries for $1.99 a pint—a deal
so good we had customers lining up
outside of the store to buy flats of
berries. To promote this content in
brand channels we focused on ways
to select and cook with berries.
This approach drove engagement
around favorite ways to cook with
blueberries, options for freezing
and preserving them, and even
memories involving blueberries.
Even though we weren’t overtly
promoting the sale in every post,
and we didn’t feature sale signage,
the inspirational approach to the
blueberry story kept them top of
mind for the customer.
At the local level, we worked to
create a glimpse into the blueberry
display in the store, showing
customers exactly what to expect
when they walked into our produce
department.
A stronger product focus and
Customers are equal
partners in social conversations
the “from the store floor” visual
created a connection for the
customer between their Facebook
engagement and their store
experience. While asking a question
to generate discussion, we kept
the primary messaging focus on
the sale price, which was key to
drawing the customer into the store.
Engagement (Still) Starts with
the Customer
Our experiences with different
engagement successes at the brand
and local levels are an important
reminder that customers are equal
partners in social conversations.
The more we can understand what
is most interesting and helpful to
them in any given social channel, the
stronger our engagements will be.
Experience
U.S. Cellular is Answering the Call
for Social Customer Care
@sonnygill
U.S. Cellular
by Sandeep Gill
I
n the last two years, U.S. Cellular
has embarked on a journey to
provide customers with a level
of service on social media that
further enhances the experience
they are accustomed to receiving in
traditional mediums. The question
we asked ourselves was, “How do
we build an efficient and sustainable
program?”
First, we analyzed our Facebook
and Twitter communities to
determine the current state of
customer service requests. What
were our customers asking for help
with the most? What answers did
they need? Knowing the answers to
these questions helped us determine
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The Social Experience
how to approach our strategy.
Our analysis revealed that
our customers wanted technical,
account, and device related support.
This led to the realization that the
program needed to live within our
call center where our customer
service reps were the subject matter
experts in these areas. Logistically,
we connected with our crossfunctional teams within customer
service to develop resource and
staffing models to build the
appropriate team, provide training,
and map out operations.
Next was the technology.
Selecting Spredfast allowed us
to scale our program through a
platform that provided solid team
workflow and performance features.
Knowing the technical capabilities,
we were able to build two important
aspects of our social care program:
Training We covered the ins and outs
of the program for our new
social care team members –
from understanding the basics
of social media and our brand
to performance expectations
and trainings on the Spredfast
platform.
Performance Management To measure team effectiveness,
we first needed to identify and
track the appropriate metrics. As
your organization looks at social
care performance, several key
indicators you should consider
are:
• Number of issues routed
• Number of issues resolved
• SLA —service-level agreement, or
resolution time
• Average handling time
• Individual and team performance
measured against the above
• Community sentiment
continued
Customers have become increasingly aware and
accustomed to contacting us in social and it shows.
We’ve had over 29,000 service inquiries in 2012
alone, a 205% increase from 2011.
Fast forward to present day: we’ve
seen tremendous growth in our
social care program. Starting in
beta, we had just 5 associates
working normal business hours.
We worked out the kinks with this
smaller team. Today, we have 11
associates working 7 days a week
and into the evenings.
This expansion reflects the
increased activity of our service
channels of Facebook and
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The Social Experience
Twitter. Customers have become
increasingly aware and accustomed
to contacting us in social and it
shows. We saw over 29,000 service
inquiries in 2012 alone, a 205%
increase from 2011, and that trend
has continued in 2013.
In answering these thousands
of monthly requests, our social
service team has met and exceeded
our social SLA of < 1 hour. This
has been an important metric as
we continue to evaluate team and
individual effectiveness, along with
overall program efficiency.
Social customer service
continues to be an integral part
of organizations today. It’s an
opportunity to better understand,
connect, and service your
customers – and a program that
continues to grow and evolve for
U.S. Cellular.
Experience
RadioShack is Giving
Customers what they Like
The electronics retailer is driving in-store
traffic with Facebook Offers
by Cosmin Ghiurau
@cosguru
RadioShack
S
ocial media marketing at RadioShack has gone through multiple
phases since the first social channel was started in April
2009. In 2012, there was a strategic focus to acquire a larger fan
base for key social channels, specifically Facebook and Twitter as
these channels consistently led in overall conversation around
RadioShack, its products, and heritage. From May 2012 to the end
of December 2012 we saw our fan base grow 2x across all of our
social channels.
by testing various deals and creative elements, radioshack was able to optimize its facebook
offers to drive redemption
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The Social Experience
As most brands focus on
acquisition and content after they
have listened and engaged their
fans, at RadioShack our growth led
to a deeper study of the behaviors
and psychographics of our fans.
Doing this allowed us to better
understand the type of content
they will engage with personally
and when the highest likelihood
of engagement happened in order
for us to deliver content that
continued
had a higher virality to produce
maximum earned media awareness
of our brand and relevancy.
Once we understood our fans
beyond the Like and Follow,
we tested multiple offers via
the Facebook Offers product to
learn what and when the best
offer resonated with our fans as
a “reward” for their engagement
with us as a brand. This approach
allowed us to understand the right
offer for our fans and produce
loyalty that extended beyond the
traditional social engagement
of likes, comments, and shares.
We converted our fans into loyal
customers that sought out content
radioshack has continued using facebook offers, updating creative to keep offers fresh and
relevant
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The Social Experience
from our social channels on a
consistent basis.
The offer that produced the
highest return was that of $10 off
a $40 purchase. We saw consistent
lift on claims in our Offers month
over month as we shared it with our
fans via a TGIFacebook Campaign
over the course of 3 months with a
7% redemption on all claims. Not
only did the offer drive redemption,
also drove a significant increase in
basket size which was key for us to
prove the success of the offer and
showcase loyalty.
Why Being Helpful is Better
than Being Amazing
By Jay Baer
C
onsumers are being subjected to an invitation
avalanche, with every company of every size,
shape, and description asking people to Like them,
Follow them, friend them, click, share, and +1 them.
“Please engage with our company,” we plead, again,
and again, and again. At best, it wears thin. At worst,
it does more harm than good to brand equity and
contributes to the distrust of business.
If you sell something, you
make a customer today; if
you help someone, you make
a customer for life.
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The Social Experience
There are only two ways
companies can differentiate
themselves within this din and
derive meaningful business results.
The first is to be disproportionately
amazing, interesting, human, wacky,
irreverent, or timely. This is where
advice to “humanize” and engage
using social and new media stems
from. It’s also the wellspring that
feeds the quest to deliver knockout
customer experiences—doing so
creates “buzzworthy moments”
that boost awareness and loyalty. I
believe in the premise of amazing,
interesting, human, wacky,
@jaybaer
Convince & Convert
irreverent, or timely so much that
I cowrote a book in 2010 (The now
Revolution) that is partially devoted
to it—especially the human and
timely components. But here’s the
truth: I’ve worked with more than
700 companies as a marketing
consultant and I’ve come to realize
that while “be amazing” can work,
it’s also extraordinarily difficult.
The marketing of “be amazing” is
the marketing of the swing-for-thefences home run hitter. There are
two byproducts of that approach:
an occasional home run, and many
strikeouts.
You can do better. You can break
through the noise and the clutter
and grab the attention of your
customers by employing a different
approach that is reliable, scalable,
functional, and effective.
What if instead of trying to be
amazing, you just focused on being
useful? What if you decided to
inform, rather than promote? You
know that expression, “If you give a
man a fish, you feed him for a day;
if you teach a man to fish, you feed
him for a lifetime”? Well, the same
is true for marketing: if you sell
something, you make a customer
today; if you help someone, you
make a customer for life.
I call this Youtility. Not “utility,”
because a utility is a faceless
commodity. Youtility is marketing
upside down. Instead of marketing
that’s needed by companies,
Youtility is marketing that’s wanted
by customers. Youtility is massively
useful information, provided for
free, that creates long-term trust
and kinship between your company
and your customers.
The difference between helping
and selling is just two letters. But
those two letters now make all the
difference.
Incorporating Social into
your Sales Toolkit
@thejonsander
Mason Zimbler U.S.
by Jon Sander
“Can we use social media to drive
demand and connect with B2B
prospects?”
T
hree years ago, when IBM asked
this of us, it was both a simple
and somewhat terrifying question.
It was June of 2010, well before
searching the term “social selling”
would yield any Google results.
(That didn’t happen until August
2011.)
At the time, I wasn’t sure we had
an answer to the question, and I
even remember joking around with
my boss that if we actually pulled
this off, we would “break” social
media. At that time, posting about
something other than Justin Bieber
or what you ate for dinner was
somewhat frowned upon.
Hindsight has proven that we
could absolutely use social media
to help IBM achieve their business
goals. And by partnering with their
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The Social Experience
innovative sales leaders, we’ve built
a social selling program that now
spans across North America and
EMEA and a sales force of 1,700,
plus IBM Inside Sales Reps. As
recently as October 2012, upwards
of 15% of all wins for IBM’s Inside
Sales Public Cloud Computing
Group were being directly
attributed to the current social
selling effort.
A true “social selling” effort
includes more than just a LinkedIn
profile and a best practice guide
of how to engage on Twitter. It
involves not only activating your
internal sales force to integrate
social media across their broader
digital sales kit, but also using social
media as another way to stay tuned
to your audience’s pain points and
leverage key insights to inform
future content creation efforts to
drive leads.
Working with IBM and other
comparable organizations, I’ve
picked up a number of valuable
tips for implementing and scaling
a social selling program within
an enterprise organization. The
following elements are essential to
getting things started:
As recently as October 2012,
upwards of 15% of all wins
for IBM’s Inside Sales Public
Cloud Computing Group were
being directly attributed to the
current social selling effort.
Training & Enablement:
Prior to kicking off any social
selling effort, take the time to assess
your sales organization’s social
selling maturity. How many of
your reps are novices? How many
have experience with social sales?
Knowing this will inform the level
of training and enablement that
needs to be done prior to a full
launch across the organization,
as well as reveal the social selling
tactics that your organization can
take on immediately. Training and
enablement can include anything
from activating sales reps’ social
accounts to upgrading LinkedIn
profiles to social CRM-tool
training.
Social Listening & Analytics:
Implement a social technology set
continued
that helps you listen to both internal
and external conversations for your
social selling program and spans
across your organization.
Internal Conversations:
What are your employees saying?
Are they on target with your
broader marketing strategy? Are
they talking about the right topics
and engaging with the right type of
influencers and prospects?
External Conversations:
What are your prospects and
known audience talking about
in the social graph? What can
you do to make your next social
engagement with them as timely
and relevant as possible while
maintaining credibility?
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The Social Experience
Tools & Technology:
There are certain capabilities
that you need within your social
technology that help enable an
enterprise social selling program.
Social Listening and Analytics:
You need a tool to tap into the
current conversations in the social
graph in order to align a social
selling editorial calendar.
Social Community Management and CRM:
You need a tool that’s scalable
across your inside sales force so
you can get consistent governance,
workflow, and reporting to measure
success.
Web Analytics:
You need a tool that connects to
your social CMS/CRM in order
to better understand where you’re
driving top-of-the-funnel traffic
from — and how successful these
efforts are at converting unknownto-known lead opportunities.
Location, Location, Location:
Aside from a socially active sales
force, you need a destination for
prospects to land on. One that
offers valuable information that
allows them to do their own
research first and/or contact you
through more traditional means
on their own terms. This is the
equivalent of a social selling
rep page and can be used as a
destination site to facilitate future
conversions.
Measurement & Tracking:
Connecting your social selling
efforts internally to an existing
CRM solution to track the total
volume of social leads and
opportunities is vital to tracking
success.
Would you like your
own Private Island?
@jennstafford
HomeAway
HomeAway’s Approach to Testing
& Measuring Engaging Content
by Jennifer Stafford
A
t HomeAway, we’ve taken
a focused approach to
content testing and performance
measurement in order to build
a strategy that maximizes
engagement from both our fans
and those who are not already
connected to our social accounts.
Over several years, we’ve
identified content categories that
consistently perform well, and have
incorporated those into monthly
editorial calendars in order to have
both our high performing and test
content running concurrently. To
grow a social program you have
to know your audience, what
content they respond to, how to
blend engagement and business
messaging, and the expected results
from your various messages.
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The Social Experience
Our testing strategies vary across
social networks, but have included
engagement and traffic-driving
experiments such as: day of week
and time of day combinations; post
length; photo and call to action
variations; types of site content that
receive the most traffic from social
channels; and content categories
that drive traffic versus engagement.
HomeAway uses other data such
as social sharing and inbound link
trends, as well as seasonal and
popular content trends to help build
out our content testing plan.
After defining a strategy
for ongoing and test content,
performance measurement is
essential to ensure that we’re
growing reach, engagement and
traffic, as well as keeping content
homeaway constantly tests content to determine the types that resonate most with their
audience
continued
To grow a social program you
have to know your audience,
what content they respond
to, how to blend engagement
and business messaging and
the expected results from your
various messages.
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The Social Experience
fresh. Developing a consistent
set of reporting that measures
engagement weekly, and looks for
traffic and strategic content trends
on a monthly and quarterly basis is
key. Reviewing engagement weekly
enables us to quickly identify
positive and negative trends in
content, which can then be adjusted
in our daily editorial calendar.
Monthly and quarterly data reviews
enable us to adjust our overall
content strategy throughout the year.
One example of our testing and
measurement results can be seen
within our “Aspirational” content
category. Throughout 2013 we’ve
tested various aspirational vacation
rentals such as castles, oceanfront
mansions, and private islands
on Facebook and Pinterest to
determine which is most engaging.
Testing revealed that private islands
are our best performing content
type in this category; our most
recent post received over 17,000
points of engagement. Based on
these results, the decision was made
to begin featuring island properties
as a separate content category, and a
more frequent topic in our editorial
calendar.
With a continuous testing and
measurement approach we’ve been
able to increase content engagement
by 74% year over year. Social media
referring traffic is also up almost
100% in the June to August time
frame, year over year.
An Inside Look: The 3 Keys to
ARAMARK’s Social Success
@bmarks
ARAMARK
By Brian Marks
Y
ou have made social
media a priority at your
company. Great. It all starts with
commitment. But it’s 2013—how
are you going to get your social
presence to be more of a social
business and less of a social
activity? Here are three simple
ways we cut through the mud
and started seeing real results.
the aramark team works together to make social business meaningful and celebrates that
success
We made it practical.
The truth is that execs will always
have a hard time getting behind
posts featuring cute cats, crazy
memes, and everything else that has
nothing to do with your products
or services. And why should they
support that when value has been
difficult to track even in the best
of campaigns? But when you’re
actually using social media as a tool
for doing your business—adressing
customer needs, presenting offers
that incentivize customers to
visit your locations, or generating
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The Social Experience
thought leadership—everyone
wins. Know your audience and
understand what it takes for your
business to be successful. Then use
Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn to
help reach those goals. You will see
results and executives that buy-in to
the madness of your methods.
We worked together.
At the end of the day, you’re all
on the same team. So why don’t
companies do more to work better
together? At ARAMARK, tackling
social media was a collaborative
affair, one that allowed us to work
across all of our businesses and
functional areas. This allowed
everyone to learn more about social
media and see what success really
looked like. Our marketers didn’t
tentatively dip their toes in – they
dove in headfirst with confidence
in leveraging social media, building
stronger strategies, and creating a
team that spanned all of marketing.
We used the right tools.
Big new initiatives usually mean big,
new shiny objects. And big, new
shiny objects…well, they quickly
become rusty old relics if they’re not
being used correctly. Know the gaps
your community managers have in
managing social media and equip
them with the best tools that will allow
them to be successful. If you can’t
build adoption, it will be because the
tool wasn’t valuable for the people
using it.
Thank You
For more information about Spredfast,
visit: www.spredfast.com
For webinars, case studies, and social
media resources, visit:
www.spredfast.com/social-mediaresources
Stay Social with us:
Please send us your comments and
suggestions to @Spredfast
The final word
Today’s top social brands know that by investing in great social experiences, they are building longer lasting and
more meaningful relationships with their customers. We hope that the contributions from social brand strategists
and marketing visionaries in The Social Experience have given you ideas and inspiration to create great social
experiences for your own customers. Share them with us @Spredfast.
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