Brian Solis had an interesting post recently (OK, many of his posts are interesting), touching on a critical corporate turf issue in the use, or misuse, of social media: namely, who within an enterprise should be managing social engagement?  He notes that the marketing department and/or its attendant agencies typically control social media… and in much the manner, it seems, that they’d handle any traditional media:  send out the message as if not expecting a response, or not being accountable for responding to consumer input, good or bad.

SOCIAL MEDIA TURNS ANTI-SOCIAL WHEN THERE’S NO RESPONSE
This reveals itself as an even more significant issue than you might imagine when Solis goes on to cite an Altimeter Group study that shows, as above, the corporate departments most likely to be controlling social media are marketing or marketing communications, while the least likely is customer service.  So much for customer-centricity as a brand-building orientation, especially when you consider other research, by Maritz and evolve24, which documents the fact that 64% of consumers tweeting to a company expect a their tweets to be read… but only 29% get a response.

 

THROW A PARTY AND THEN IGNORE THE GUESTS?
Social media is the big corporate marketing party these days, and it’s attracting a standing room only crowd.  But building brand engagement, trust and loyalty through social media – or even preventing its destruction – requires being a good host.  That means not only serving up the tweets, but replying in a meaningful way, too.

The rewards for doing so are significant.  The Maritz/evolve24 study shows that while a paltry 29% receive a response when tweeting a beloved brand, such responses elicit what can only be assumed as a loyalty-inducing state:  “32% and 51.5% said they either loved [the response] or liked it, respectively.”

IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SOCIAL ME-ME-MEDIA
Of course, it’s more than just a problem of organizational responsibility – it’s an issue of corporate mindset.  An A.T. Kearney report from December 2011 illustrates how marketers too often still see social media as they do traditional media, simply another platform for one-way messaging rather than active dialogue.  According to the study, related in a post by Melissa McNaughton, some 94% of brands on Facebook direct fans to pages that offer no opportunity to comment or initiate conversation. In short, they’ve turned an interactive medium into an inactive one, simply inviting consumers to “turn the page” as they would with a brochure.

IS YOUR BRAND TRULY SOCIAL?
What are your favorite examples of brands that are truly social – listening, posting, responding, and offering more than just promotional pap?  How do they manage their process?

OK, I’m finally going to do it. I’m putting a face, my face, on my personal brand. While up until now I’ve always taken the position that I would prefer to have the professional community judge me on my work rather than my appearance, I’ve finally given in to the profile picture as a “must do,” if only because, in some cases, the most common, or perhaps communal, practice becomes the minimum requirement for best practice.

So no more QR Code (which only my younger contacts liked, by the way). No more blank picture. Which leaves me to ask you, dear reader (assuming you did not already know me), seeing me now do you trust my opinions more, less or is there no difference at all? I’m looking for a gut reaction here. How does this photo strike you? Is this a face you can trust?

Brand Face Value
As I cogitated on my own “face value” in terms of creating trust, I did a little looking into the value of brand faces, which is to say, logos. One study reports that the visual key to a trustworthy logo – one that imparts confidence that a company will act ethically and in a social responsible manner – is symmetry. I suggest that it may not just be the logos’ symmetry that is reassuring, but also (or possibly moreso) their simplicity. They are easier to take in and remember, suggesting that the less we confuse our prospects and customers, the more likely they are to trust us. It’s part of why I have always counseled clients that “simple is good,” a rule of thumb that gets even more relevant in an age of advancing complexity.

Take a Look in the Brand Mirror
So, how important do you feel your showing your own face is to the perceived trustworthiness of your personal brand? And, reviewing your own portofolio of brand logo(s), what’s your response to the research indicating symmetry (or in my interpretation, simplicity) better creates a sense of corporate trustworthiness?

The just-past holiday remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. brought a torrent of tweets and other testaments leveraging the fallen leader’s great words, often including this quote: “The content of a man’s character is not where he stands in times of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Content is King and King is Content? Really? Do we have to go there?
Of course, according to my lesser, cynical self, the use of Dr. King’s quotes for tweeting, blogging and Facebook fodder is only about convenience versus challenge in that it represents the convenience of accessing a great man’s thoughts to meet the challenge of one’s daily social media quota. (And don’t get me started on the regrettable “content is King and King is content” wordplay… that goes back at least as far as 1997.)

Character Counts, Even at 140 Characters Per Message
Still, if we are going to continue to cultivate brand personalities, brand voices and all manner of personification for our products and services (and we are, of course), it’s necessary to examine the content not of a man’s character in this case, but of a brand’s.

Four Simple Guides to Creating Content with Good Character
I encourage you to assess all of your content, online and off, according to its ability to answer “yes” to the following questions:

1. Is your content true? It’s simple: brand truth builds brand trust, which in turn creates valuable loyalty, whether you’re marketing to social-media-centric millennials or their baby boomer parents (or grandparents).

2. Is the content you’re creating original? Whether in terms of information or perspective provided, the brand value of your content is directly related to its uniqueness. Re-hashed, me-too content makes for rejected, me-too brands.

3. Is it useful content? The use may be functional or emotional, helping people complete a great project or laugh off a terrible day, but unless your content does something for the user, you’re wasting everybody’s time (and your own money).

4. Is your content thought-provoking? Does it provoke a reaction in the reader, in thought or deed? If not, you’re talking to yourself, which is of no value, no matter how smooth your brand voice.

True. Original. Useful. Thought-provoking. Make sure that all of your content meets those four criteria and it may indeed be king (or at least, you’ll be sure it isn’t an emperor without clothes).

NOTE: This is one of our periodic “leave a comment, get a coffee card” posts. If you are one of the first 10 to comment, we’ll send you a $5 Starbucks coffee card.

It’s always nice to have one’s brand pontifications proven out.

In a previous post “Are We Driving Millennials to Distraction – and Destroying Brand Loyalty?” I opined that, in this social media obsessed period “rather than giving short-shrift to traditional communications we need to up the ante in terms of offline contact and real-world interactions…” in order to create and maintain real brand trust and subsequent loyalty.

A new campaign from Wheat Thins bears this out nicely. According to a recent article, the social-centric-but-integrated campaign sends real camera crews out to surprise people who’ve commented about the snack online ¬– and to drop off a palette full of Wheat Thins – turning the results into TV spots for a nice bit of campaign integration.

After a few spots, one young man tweeted that he thought the commercials were “uber fake” – not exactly a rousing statement of trust. The Wheat Thins folks wisely responded, not online but in-person, surprising the young doubter with a camera crew and eliciting an affirmation that the product is indeed “uber real.” It makes for good TV, good online video, good social buzz – all the while not only creating brand involvement but also reinforcing brand trust.

Hmmm… makes me feel like cracking open a box now.

Recent research makes a strong case that where you encounter a brand online, along with the qualitative context of that encounter, makes a huge difference in brand trust, interaction and purchase. According to one survey, online media sites are seen to offer more trustworthy content – and therefore cast a greater aura of trustworthiness onto their advertisers – than do portals or social media sites.

I must admit that in this case the source almost inadvertently proves the premise to me: the survey was sponsored by the Online Publishers Association, not an online news site, and my cynical side automatically says that the OPA got only the answers they were looking for (or only shared the answers they liked). Notwithstanding my kneejerk response to distrust a self-serving survey, the findings do pass one critical smell test: they make sense.

CONTENT BELIEVABILITY = A CONTEXT OF BUY-ABILITY
A key survey finding is that relevant, quality content matters to consumer involvement with and response to brands advertising online. To quote a summation of the survey from imediaconnection.com:

• Consumers are more likely to trust content on media sites (72 percent) than portal channels (60
percent) and social media (23 percent) 

• Audiences on media sites are significantly more likely to believe these sites’ advertisers
are reputable and offer high quality products (24 percent), compared to portal channels
(20 percent) and social media (8 percent) 

• People who recall purchasing from a site’s advertisers are significantly more
likely to do so from media sites (8 percent) than portal channels (5 percent)
or social media (2 percent) 

• Those loyal to media sites are more likely to purchase from advertisers on these sites
(15 percent) than portal loyalists or social media loyalists (8 percent and 4 percent respectively)

Of course, I quote the above media site not (only) because I’m too lazy to make an independent assessment of the facts offered, but more so to make a point: how easy it is to convert marketing information (research or otherwise) into what passes for media information. This is true of traditional media, but, as on so many other fronts, the impact is magnified online. A simple Google search for the title of this survey, “A Sense of Place: Why Environments Matter,” yields 10,100 results, many of which are on online media sites like the one I quote above.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, and in fact I encourage clients to offer surveys and other information or tools of value, promoting them if only by electronic press release. One of the most immediate benefits is in search: a recent release we sent out catapulted the client to page one of Google for the most important keyword, and has kept them on page one or two as it continues to insinuate itself across the Internet.

QUALITY CONTENT CREATES A TRUSTWORTHY CONTEXT
But the most important consideration here is value: are you providing information that merely grabs a search engine’s attention, or are you delivering content that creates a context of trust by delivering meaningful, useful input and insight? If you’re only doing the former, you are merely creating an counterproductive “opportunity” for disappointment, disbelief and mistrust. Apparently, online media sites are doing the latter, providing substance and value to build trust for themselves and the advertisers who sponsor them.

If you advertise online where are you finding your greatest success: media sites, portals or on
social media?

As we in the business of brand communications go increasingly gaga over the multitude of new media options for engaging consumers – particularly millennials – we might want to quit our marketing multi-tasking long enough to really concentrate on new research that points out a growing societal (and therefore business) concern: namely, that fundamental changes wrought by our digital lifestyle and exploding new media marketplace may just blow up any chance we have in the future of creating brand trust and maintaining brand loyalty.

ARE WE ENCOURAGING CONSUMERS TO JUMP SHIP?
The latest evidence: research referenced in the New York Times article aptly titled “Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction.” As the article notes, “The risk [researchers] say is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks – and less able to sustain attention.” Or, as the lead researcher is quoted, “Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing.”

Now, am I the only one who sees not simply an implication for issues of learning, where we seek to instill and maintain knowledge, but also for those of branding, where we seek to instill trust and maintain loyalty? Just replace the words “task” and “things” in that sentence with the word brand and you’ll see what I mean: “Their brains are rewarded not for staying on brand but for jumping to the next brand.”

TOO MUCH OF NOTHING
It raises the question of whether or not we’re really “engaging” our prospects via social media, and capturing their long-term attention… or even creating short-term interactions of value. As one teen quoted in the NYT article says, “Facebook is amazing because it feels like your doing something and you’re not doing anything. It’s the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway.”

That’s worth repeating, in its own chilling way: It feels like you’re doing something, and you’re not doing anything. Is that meaningful engagement, or just sponsored distraction?

A REAL NEED FOR REAL-WORLD INTERACTIONS
My point is not that we are wasting our time on Facebook et al, but rather that, given the possible “re-wiring” of young consumer brains we need to be circumspect about how we use digital interactions, and cognizant of their depth and quality. It also suggests to me that rather than giving short-shrift to traditional communications we need to up the ante in terms of offline contact and real-world interactions… or, as that same teen might say after attending a sponsored live event, or even just reading a billboard or print ad, “That was amazing, because it felt like I was doing something… and I was actually doing something!”

Failure to engage consumers beyond the digital realm will leave brands to fight an increasingly futile battle for the fractured, and fickle, attentions of consumers who live in “the state of permanent distractedness that defines online life” (Nicolas Carr, in his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains).

In the future – which of course starts now – our communications can be something or nothing. Our brands can build trust and loyalty (and shareholder value)… or build nothing. It’s our choice as CMOs, brand strategists, creative directors, copywriters, designers. We just have to keep from getting too distracted.

NOTE: In keeping with our desire to be a “virtual coffee break” in a world where nobody has time to get together for coffee, the first 10 people commenting on today’s post will receive a free $5 Starbucks coffee card (fitting for a post on the transactional nature of new media, no?). To LEAVE A COMMENT click on that regrettably imperceptible “Leave a comment” link at the very end of the listing of tags.

Take a good look at DDB’s recently released “Facebook and Brands” study and I think you’ll agree: the long-term appeal of new media is going to be driven by the same thing that drove old media, especially in response-seeking communications:self-enrichment.

Now, I don’t only mean financial or material self-enrichment… social media’s amazing abilities for interconnectedness can help us enrich, and share, our genuinely altruistic, or even simply human, selves. But as DDB’s study shows, the old “what’s in it for me?” question still has to be answered first for consumers to get and stay interested in a brand, whether online or off. As this chart, excerpted from the report, shows, specific promotional benefits trump general brand affinity when it comes to getting Facebook followers:

This gets me back to musings from a previous post on millennials’ brand motivations, as they are prime Facebook users: is the key to brand success going forward going to be more a matter trust or transaction? The answer, of course, is both – and the real question is, in what balance? The report goes on to note that “Being treated in a special way by the brand” beats out “Be a spokesman for the brand” as a reason to be a follower (translation for brand marketers: if you’re courting consumers, don’t forget to bring flowers to the next date if you want them to say nice things about you to their friends).

I encourage you to read the study above, and compare/contrast it with one from Cone, another Omnicom shop, that disagrees with some findings, most notably the number of brands people follow on Facebook (DDB says 9; Cone says just 5).

So… who do you see on Facebook striking the right balance in leveraging the interrelated attractions of trust and transaction?