Social Media Proficiency

While talking today to MBI Professor Leah Hunter (Idea Couture) about launching a Facebook campaign in order to promote her Innovation talk here in Monterrey on May 12th, she mentioned the following:

“I actually just attended a small event in Silicon Valley with social media directors from a lot of the big companies headquartered here. Lots of good information shared. One of the things was this report by Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group (SF, Silicon Valley).”

I had a look at the report and wanted to share some insights with you. Owyang mentions the 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing and explains that real social media success depends on how brands activate word of mouth. There are many examples of important brands lacking social marketing skills, but what is interesting to acknowledge is that some companies have actually reached a social media proficiency level.

So who is on the right track to successfully harnessing Facebook page marketing? Owyang argues that brands like Pampers, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and AXE have become experts in social media, peer-to-peer interactions, or solicited business call to actions that result in transactions.

Let’s have a look at the first two examples: Pampers and Macy’s.

A good example of how P&G handled the social media tools at hand is the 2010 Dry Max defense campaign. Pampers was suffering because of angry Facebook parents claiming that the Dry Max diapers were giving babies serious chemical burns. The “Boycott New Pampers Dry Max” started because angry parents were using Facebook to talk about the dangers of the diaper. The stock price fell and so did sales.

So what did P&G do? Their answer to the situation was not the usual suspect. Instead of responding to angry parents on Facebook they relied on professional posts illustrating that the company understood the parents’ concerns. And it worked!

Second on the list of social media proficiency is Macy’s. Another great example of how to put social media in use is Macy’s 2011 campaign for its sleep-inducing softener Downy. Macy’s contracted comedian Mike Birbiglia for an unusual ad campaign in a store window in Herald Square. Birbiglia is not just any comedian. He has 57,000 followers on Twitter and 34,000 Facebook fans. Thanks to him Downy’s social media presence has taken off overnight and – the word of mouth had been activated.

La imagen superior es de Vicenzo Cosenza. Fue tomada de flickr siguiendo una licencia de Creative Commons.