Social Media Engagement Communities vs. Crowds

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isearchm.com@ISMSearchSocial

The benefits of a community

Emotional Connections and Loyalty6% increase in basket size*13% increase in dwell time*

Viral SpreadRegularly testing content qualityExtending content reach beyond the initial target group

Feedback and ResearchFocus groups you can ask to improve productsListening and giving back what the community needs

*Average across ISM retail clients

Crisis PRYour platform to help rescue a crisisYour ambassadors coming to your rescue on social

Social CRMA source of real time data to enhance your customer communicationManage your social data during the marketing and sales cycle

Gross Ratings PointsMeasure your social media exposure and reach agnosticallyAllows more integrated online campaigns to improve community experience

But brands are still just broadcasting

Broadcasting builds crowds, not communities

...until you start listening to what they are saying

64% of brands have crowds* More complaints, less positive comments

16% have engagement less than 0.05%

12% contain overt sexual references

8% contain racists comments

*ISM researched 25 leading international brands across 4 sectors

“Facebook is about your real friends and Twitter is about who you would like to be friends with” -David Shing, AOL Digital Prophet, Dublin Web Summit Oct. 2011

Choose your social platforms wisely and play by the rules of its members

Increasing your social noise is now becoming counterproductive

The next big trend is defriending and unfollowing

Beware the future

Crowds eventually disperse

Nurturing and building a community:

1. Structure2. Purpose3. Knowledge4. Conversation

Protect the community-Community guidelines should be on display and enforced

-Guidelines to empower the brand and audience, not to restrict

-Encourage opinion and debate, not personal attacks or defamation

-Improve the quality of your social strategy by adopting the “Broken Windows” methodology*

*Broken Windows by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling

A community is like a club, you join for a reason

The perfect community manager is part scientist and part conversationalist

Brands need to optimise for social signals with trusted SEO mechanisms

-When to post, where to insert the link, keyword research-Monitoring, insights, analytics -Gaming Social EdgeRank in the same way as SEO PageRank-Sweating the most out of your social objects-Continually testing content quality

Community Mapping for a brand affiliated with mountain biking identifies who their existing influencers are and helps build a prospect pool of new influencers to approach

Know your onions (and the law)-CPR, IP and Defamation should not put you off-Brands should use legal guidelines to empower social excellence

6% Interaction*

3.5% Engagement*

A successful community is…-Audiences that are giving and getting involved

-Independent audiences that don’t just react to brand messages but start spontaneous conversations about the brand

*Talking about/interaction as a percentage of total community size/audiences that have seen content

Crowds disperse and they might smash some of your windows on the way out...

But communities stay and are loyal ambassadors, sharing your brand messages, offer focus groups, social CRM and rescue you in times of crisis.