Becoming social is an imperative for brands today, and while many are embracing the digital revolution, substantial improvements are yet to be made to build a brand with a distinctive social identity, according to a new global Weber Shandwick study in partnership with Forbes Insights.
"Socializing Your Brand: A Brand's Guide to Sociability" offers brand and communications executives with a starting point for developing their own best-in-class practices when creating an authentically social brand. The research was conducted online among 1,897 senior executives from high revenue companies across 50 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America.
According to the study, global brand executives believe that sociability is growing rapidly as a contributor to a brand's overall reputation, from 52 percent today with a projected estimate of 65 percent three years from now. Yet, a large majority (84 percent) report that their brand's sociability is not yet up to world class brand standards, despite the fact that nearly all of them (87 percent) say they have a social media brand strategy.
Socializing Your Brand – The Risks vs. The Rewards
Global brand executives consider that the rewards of using social media outweigh the risks, by more than a 2-to-1 margin. Among the rewards of social media, global brand executives count strengthening customer loyalty, improving brand recognition, helping locate new customers and prospects and improving customer service.
Nine Drivers of Leading Brand Sociability:
It's not the medium — and it's more than the message: World class brands are much more likely than the average brand to create original content. 45 percent of them create content specifically for social media purposes, compared to 28 percent of all global companies. World class brands depend upon much more than just the medium to make themselves social.
Put your brands in motion: World class companies do more than build an inventory of social media tools. They apply their tools in more social ways than the average global company. For example, they are 44 percent more likely to offer brand-related mobile content, 43 percent more likely to participate in "check-in" apps, 41 percent more likely to do proximity marketing and 40 percent more likely to have their own branded YouTube channel.
Integrate or die: World class organizations are much better integrators of brand personality — they are nearly twice as likely as other organizations to have a consistent brand personality across all social and traditional media channels and are much more likely to include a social media element to their traditional print or broadcast messaging.
Make social central: 61 percent of world class brands have a dedicated social media strategist or manager, vs. 41 percent of all global brands. According to one global executive respondent, "The most important thing we can do is to centrally plan social media activities across all channels to amplify key messages."
Listen more than you talk: World class companies fine-tune their messages to customers and integrate what is on their fans' minds into their brand stories. Nearly twice as many world class brands have changed a product or service based on fan recommendations compared to the average global brand.
Count what matters -- meaningful engagement: World class brands place more weight than other brands on their number of contributors when measuring social media effectiveness. Social contributors are ranked #1 by world class companies but #6 by other companies as a key metric.
Think global: Executives managing world class brands consider global reach as important as customer service as a driver of corporate reputation while the average global executive ranks global reach last.
Go outside to get inside: World class companies are nearly twice as likely as average global companies to engage outside support to measure their brand's social performance.
Be vigilant: To protect their social brand integrity, world class brands are always on high alert. They are 85 percent more vigilant since Wikileaks has been in the news and are 58 percent more likely to be concerned about privacy violations.
More information on Social Media and CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment