Social media optimisation (SMO) is most definitely an excellent marketing tool to get your brand spoken about in social media conversations.
If you don’t want to speak about your brand and aren’t quite ready to fully launch you should at least monitor what is being said.
But, as with most articles there seems to be a but, if you launch into social media do so with a plan, a half hearted launch does little and could do more harm than good. (Read further on how to passively monitor if nothing else)
We recently reported that while brands are being spoken about, not all mentions have sentiment and most are purely comments. Nearly 30% sought or provided brand information while 22% added sentiment, however not all were bad comments. Okay, those stats prove conversations are happening so how can you go wrong?
Half hearted social media launches
I recently read about a well known US brand setting up a Twitter account based on their brand name. I won’t directly mention the brand but they setup their account as @xcompanycares, the implication that the company cared about their consumers and their brand.
What this account then failed to do was follow through with what their Twitter bio and account name promised to do. They aggressively built the number of followers, did not follow back and then failed to Tweet any updates. They also was unable to reply to any Tweets seeking customer care and showed no inclination to care. Reputation management at its worst.
Another scenario where a company clearly positively bought into the reputation management aspects of social media was @bettercompanycares who follow people, they did reply to comments and they actively used social media as a marketing and reputation management too. Bottom line: plan what you want from social media, break it down into action points and follow through, stay away unless you can deliver on what you promise.
Passive social media engagement
In the opening paragraphs I mentioned that if nothing else you should consider launching into social media to monitor what is being said. The scenario may be that you are somewhat hesitant to fully launch but do not do what the first case study did.
A good workaround would be to set up a Twitter account which has a username that is not associated with your company and brand. Go out there, listen to the conversations, follow and be followed, share ideas and when you are ready to fully launch under your brand change your Twitter account name. Twitter allows you to change your account name and when you are ready launch fully.
