Best Practices for Social Sharing

Wendy Clark, of Coca-Cola: Seven Rules for Building a Social Brand

When it comes to social media, Coca-Cola‘s advice is king. With more than 53 million Facebook fans, Coke is the largest consumer brand on Facebook. 

Wendy Clark, SVP of Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities at Coca-Cola, was interviewed at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit earlier this month. During her flight on her way to the Summit, Clark emailed her ideas to her interviewee, Patricia Sellers, of Fortune.

After her interview, Clark (left) agreed to share her intelligent, helpful advice to the world! 

Below are Wendy Clark’s seven rules for building a mega-brand in social media:

1. Be share-worthy in everything you do.

In a market that is now completely socially connected, we increasingly are thinking about our audience in two ways: our Initial Audience–those we can reach directly (52 MM Facebook fans, 600k Twitter followers, 18MM My Coke rewards members, etc)–and our Ultimate Audience, which is those people whom our Initial Audience can reach for us. For Coca-Cola, our Facebook fans are just over one fan or friend away from the entire Facebook community of 1 billion+. So if we do our job well of developing useful, compelling, interesting and share-worthy content, our fans become our sales force for us.

2. Listen. Then respond authentically and humanly.

The days of hiding behind two-sentence corporate statements have to end. This is easier said than done. We’re still unlearning this. Consumers and all constituents expect more. Coca-Cola isn’t a faceless corporation to them; it’s a brand they love and enjoy throughout their day. So when they interact with us, they expect that same experience: a human interaction. There are more than 15,000 Tweets everyday on brand Coca-Cola; any that are a question, we answer. We have to. Consumers’ expectations are that we’re listening and responding.

3. Think big. Start small. Scale fast.

If you have an ambition that you want to double the size of your business in, say, 10 years, you had better have a big innovation pipeline to help get you there. When we’re at our best, we think massively, but we beta and test that thinking in small bets to learn. To meet our innovation (and growth) ambitions, we are trying to get much better at discussing failures or learnings. For a big company like ours, it’s critical. Because we’re built for scale and if we don’t get better at testing, learning and then scaling, we have the potential of scaling the wrong thing perfectly.

4. Social is not a silver bullet. But social can make everything else better.

So much is made of social media and marketing that we can tend to overrate what it can do. We do not see social marketing as a standalone. Rather, our mantra for our media and connections planning is “social at the heart.” So we think in terms of ideas and campaigns that are social (share-worthy) at their core and then we think about how we can amplify the ideas and campaigns. Too often, we get asked if our TV investment is declining and our social/digital investment growing.  This is the wrong question. It’s not an EITHER, it’s an AND.

5. Content is the new currency. Create accordingly.

With 72 hours of content uploaded every minute on YouTube (GOOG), the world is not suffering from lack of content. With this in mind, content creation has to be useful, interesting, important, share-worthy. We learned this in seeing the difference in interaction level between status updates and Tweets that we wrote vs. those that our agencies wrote. We also learned that replication isn’t always a good thing in social marketing.  When we had a hit viral video in Coca-Cola Happiness machine, our first instinct was to replicate the film. We did that and had a fraction of the views.

6. We might be shepherds, stewards and guardians of our brands, but we no longer control them.

At best, we get to participate and co-create with our fans. I’d estimate that 10-20% of the content and conversation on our brands comes from us. The other 80%+ comes from others. So we need to get invited in to these communities and co-create with our fans.

7. Think of your constituents as storytellers.

Taking the principle of Initial and Ultimate audiences, we’re increasingly thinking about all of our constituents as storytellers, not just receivers of our content. This includes our consumers, employees, NGO partners, media, etc.. So our principle becomes that we create content and tell stories that we want to be retold.

Click here to read the original article by Patricia Sellers.

Bodyform: From Crisis to Creative

On October 8th, Bodyform, a U.K. maxipad maker, received a negative post on its Facebook wall. This post, which has now gotten more than 92,000 likes, called out the brand for false advertising. 

Instead of ignoring the post or replying with an automated apology, Bodyform creatively one-upped the post, made by Richard Neill, with a video.

The video pretends to fess up about pathological lying. CEO Caroline Williams, actually played by an actress, says “I think it’s time we came clean. We lied to you, Richard, and I want to say sorry…Sorry.”

The video goes on to facetiously explain why Bodyform has used metaphorical images in advertising rather the focusing on the truth of menstrual cycles.

Not every brand would feel comfortable doing something like this, or would have the skill and creativity to pull it off, but this a great example of what social engagement looks like.

We think it’s brilliant! What are your thoughts?

Determine Your Social Media Personality

In 1921, psychologist Carl Jung published Psychological Types. His theories presented in this book helped formulate a psychometric test called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This test was used to categorize the psychological types of humans into 16 major divisions.

Still in use today, the results determine whether test takers tend toward certain character traits, such as introversion (I) vs. extroversion (E) or thinking (T) vs. feeling (F). The metrics produce an acronym per individual. For example, “ISTJ” is for an Introvert-Sensing-Thinking-Judging person.

The infographic below, based on the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, details the qualifiers for each of the test’s characteristics. It also predicts the psychological types most likely to participate on specific social networks. More extroverts reported using Facebook than introverts, for instance. People with inclinations toward Feeling spend more time browsing and interacting with people on Facebook, rather than those who tend toward Thinking.

According to the infographic, what type of social media personality are you? 

Statistics on Facebook User Interactions

A recent social media survey from Performics, a performance marketing firm, shows that 33 percent of people are most likely to respond to brand offers when they are reposted by a friend. The study shows that 27 percent will respond on the brand’s page, 26 percent from the newsfeed, and 20 percent from a social ad. 

The study also provided insight about branded content engagement: 44 percent of Facebook users are most likely to engage with branded content containing images, roughly 40 percent of users said they are likely to engage with status updates and 37 percent said they are likely to engage with videos. 

These statistics are based on the Performics Life on Demand social media survey, which studied 2,000 Americans who visit a social networking site at least once a day. 

Facebook Timeline Tips from Grovo

Whether you haven’t switched your Facebook profile to Timeline format or you’re already a Timeline pro, check out Grovo’s quick video-based tips for making your Facebook presence just right.

Grovo has video lessons on everything from controlling privacy to exporting Facebook birthdays and calendar events. The screenshot below shows”New Lessons” and “New Courses” Grovo offers.  

Let us know what you think. Did Grovo increase your Facebook knowledge? 

How Pinterest Drives Online Sales

Recommended Read: The Social Media Bible

I recently started reading The Social Media Bible, by Lon Safko. I highly recommend this book to everyone; it’s full of great insight and interesting facts. Below are a few quotes I felt were worth sharing!

“The next most-asked question at my keynotes are ‘Where’s the ROI in social media marketing?’ and ‘How much money should I be spending on social media marketing?; My answer is always, remove the term social media from those questions and ask them again ‘Where’s the ROI in marketing?’ and ‘How much should I be spending on marketing?'” 

“Social media is only a new set of tools, new technology that allows us to more efficiently connect and build relationships with our customers and prospects. It’s doing what the telephone, direct mail, print advertising, radio, television, and billboards did for us up until now. But social media is exponentially more effective.” 

“Social media marketing is all about listening first, understanding the conversation, and then speak last.”

“Whether it’s a social network like Facebook or LinkedIn, Twitter or blogging, it’s about participating in that conversation and being there with a relationship when your prospect is ready to buy.” 

“By building relationships through social media, you build a more lasting trusted relationship that will result in more sales, fewer returns, and greater word of mouth.”

“The reason for Twitter‘s success was best put by Mark Twain, when he said in the late nineteenth century, ‘I apologize for the length of my correspondence. Given more time, it would have been shorter.'” 

“Kakul Srivastava, the general manager for Flickr, told me that there are three cell phones for every man, woman, and child on the planet. With that kind of technology penetration, you and your company needs to be participating.” 

“Anytime there is a tool that millions of people in one place at one time, all with common interests, are clamoring to use, you, as a businessperson, need to understand it and be a part of it.” 

Facebook Determines World’s Most Social Landmarks

Facebook has collected data and measured check-ins made on Facebook in 25 cities worldwide to determine the world’s “most social landmarks”. 

Among the number one ranked landmarks across the 25 cities:

– 7 are sports stadiums/arenas
– 6 are public areas: squares/avenues/parks/gardens
– 2 are amusement parks
– 2 are concert arenas
– 2 are shopping-related: shopping centers/malls

The data also shows: 

-Shopping is popular internationally. Malls and outdoor markets appear within the top 10 landmarks for 19 0f 25 cities. 

-Cities with warmer climates had more check-ins to outdoor spots, while cooler climates had more activity in concert halls or bars.

– In summer months, music festivals are top summer check-ins as well as sports venues. 

Below is a map of the most social landmarks around the world. 

The most social landmarks in the U.S.: 

Time Square, New York City

AT&T Park, San Francisco 

Staples Center, Los Angeles 

Wrigley Field, Chicago 

Have you ever checked-in to these most social landmarks in the United States? 

How Facebook Responds to Inappropriate Content

Ever wonder how Facebook ensures that its more than 900 million users abide by the company’s user policies? This issue requires the work of hundreds of employees. 

Based in Menlo Park, Austin, Dublin, and Hyderabad, these hundreds of employees field user reports of inappropriate posts constantly. 

Reports of inappropriate content, which users submit themselves with just a few clicks, are directed to one of four support teams. 

1. Abusive Content Team: This team handles spam and sexually explicit content. 

2. Safety Team: This team handles threats of vandalism, graphic violence, credible threats of violence, and illegal drug use. 

3. Hate and Harassment Team: This team handles reports of hate speech and harassment. 

4. Access Team: This team handles hacked and impostor accounts. 

If the reported content is found to be a violation of Facebook’s policies, Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, or Community Standards, the content is removed and the publisher is warned. Facebook’s support teams can also block users who post inappropriate content or ban them from certain features.  

Some content on Facebook violates not only the company’s polices, but the law. 

For example, one law enforcement agency discovered photos of a man siphoning gas from a police car on the sight. Others have discovered stolen property, calls for help, and even live-crime updates on Facebook.

When dealing with content such as that, Facebook says it will share reports with law enforcement “when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent fraud or other illegal activity, to prevent imminent bodily harm, or to protect ourselves and you from people violating our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.”