Losing the battle for control?

A man goes into a shop to look for a new electronic product. He’s already been researching his new purchase online via the manufacturer’s website as well as news sites, product review sites, blogs and by asking his online and offline friends about which brand and products they know and recommend. Armed with this store knowledge he knows exactly what to look for when he goes into the shop and is, in fact, much better prepared on the subject than the sales representative he’s just about to ask for help. Some of the customers calling the retailer’s help line for support are similarly empowered with the latest information and frustrated when the customer service reps don’t know what they’re talking about. A journalist calling the marketing department for an interview already knows about a product recall that has so far not even been communicated to the shop floor. However, some of the company’s staff have already found out about the recall via Internet chat and so have started to post jokes about it on Facebook. Meanwhile, it comes as a surprise to the customer service team that a disgruntled customer has aired his colourful views on the company’s service via his blog and that this has attracted a wide audience and much agreement from dissatisfied customers.

The company management takes a long hard look at its communications and concludes that an increasing number of communications about the company, its services and its products are completely out of its control. The more difficult reality to come to grips with is this is perfectly normal and will, in fact, become increasingly the case.

Social media is bringing changes at every level of organisational communications. And this is not simply online communication either. Increased consumer access to information and opinion means that customers, employees, investors and other stakeholders engage with organisations with the benefit of knowledge gained from a wide range of other sources. Organisations now have much less control over what their customers see, read and hear about them. Customers, on the other hand, have an almost infinite choice of information sources. More and more consumers decide when and how they access news and information, and then access it via their preferred media platform. They also become conduits for information, creating their own content channels: filtering, sharing and recommending content to their own contacts, forums and audiences.

In the past organisations have focused a great deal on putting out what they want to say and far less on what their audiences want to hear. In the age of social media, where people have an overwhelming choice of content, every organisation needs to be in the content business – and that means carefully considering the content consumption habits and needs of its stakeholders. Those that fail to meet the content challenge may see third party content, well informed or not, fill the vacuum.

The consequence of this shift in communications is that many organisations are likely to find that focusing on information or messaging control as a core strategy is going to become less and less effective as time goes on. Some will simply find that the battle for control is simply not worth fighting, since the Internet provides so many ways for content to be created, copied, edited, shared and commented on that are outside the possible purview of corporate control. The new challenge for organisations is to ensure that their own content is the most compelling, most easily accessible content available and therefore the most appealing for their stakeholders. Ensure that your own content is the most copied, shared and commented on by your key audiences and suddenly the ubiquity of content channels becomes an enormous strength.

As at a real life house party some people at the party will give ‘marketing’ the benefit of the doubt, some people will walk over and try to engage the newcomer in conversation, some will wait to see how marketing goes down with the others before making any approach of their own and some will object to marketing being at the party at all. It’s clearly marketing’s task to prove that he’s not such a bad chap after all and can even be fun to have around!

The party analogy is a good one for communications and marketing teams joining Twitter to bear in mind, since the key to success is seeking common ground with your audiences and listening carefully so that you can tune in to the vibe of the room. Those that don’t bother to listen to other conversations and insist on talking about their favourite brand without stopping to see whose actually listening, risk building negative feeling around their brand rather than anything positive. Those that take the time out to listen and ‘work the room’ to take in as much information as possible on what interests their audience, will ultimately have the best chance of engaging contacts effectively.

How popular is your brand?

Here are some signs that you may not be the most popular guy at the party:

- You’re following hundreds of Twitter users but few follow you back

- You’re Tweets are never or seldom retweeted

- You receive few if any questions from other Twitter users

- Your Twitter account is rarely recommended by other Twitter users, for instance on ‘#FollowFridays’

- You post links but few people ever click on them

Here are some indications that you may be fitting in rather well:

- Twitter users relevant to your brand follow you

- Twitter users often follow you back

- You’re Tweets are more replies than announcements

- You’re Tweets are often retweeted

- You often receive questions from other Twitter users

- Your Twitter account is recommended more and more by other users

Finally, as with any group of people at a party, you’ll hit it off with some of them immediately, some will take time to get to know and some won’t be easy to win over. Remember: it’s not your party, so you don’t choose the guests, rather it’s up to the guests to decide if they like having you around.

Is your brand stuck in the ‘not so popular’ group? Feel free to contact us if you think you need help on making your brand more ’social’.