Corporate social identity - should I be Frank, Susie or corporate …

One question we have been discussing at length in the office recently is the  simple issue of naming a twitter account, initially we branded all company names as simply as CompanyName, but we began to notice that engagement was better when we attached names to the accounts Name at Company…  An example – the primary Social Loop Twitter account should it be “Social Loop” or “Chris at Social Loop” or alternatively should it be a girls name the impact of pink SEO is well documented (sending link bait emails as a girl seemed to have better results).

Having a name to an account also seems to give you more freedom, Mark @ company Y is more likely to be chatty than a straight looking corporate account.
So more freedom and better engagement – seems an obvious choice? 

There are a few negatives –  by humanising it people expect you to recall the conversations you had as though you are a real person – a 24/7 primary twitter account manned by one person (who never takes holidays) isn’t realistic and today people rarely stay in the same job forever.

As well as that people still want to hear the corporate voice sometimes rather than the voice of a lone employee.

Solutions

CRM
Well there are a few solutions – an expensive social CRM solution like Radian6 allows you to track and tag up conversations, CoTweet is a cheaper solution but no where near as powerful.

Multiple AccountsAlternatively, and the version we have recently been leaning towards is multiple accounts – encourage your employees (particularly trusted ones) to brand their accounts with the company, typically this involves substantially more trust and a new way of thinking than larger companies are used to – but companies that have been doing this have been seeing it paying off, this really is what social media is all about,  the only flaw in this (other than drunk tweeting but that is another matter) is when employees leave – who owns the account, the following they have developed, clearly something that needs talking through before this happens.  The various accounts can happily retweet each other when ever it is worth doing. 

Who is doing the tweeting One solution that has been popping up more and more is to say who is doing the tweeting, i.e. you put names on the account – one example of this is Leeds Digital – the description names the 3 people who are managing it, (Leanne, Simon and John)

Concluding – what is best for your business Twitter profile(s) ? In my opinion every company is different – what sort of personalities suit your online presence. At the moment and with a little thought, we have gone with “Tweets mainly from Chris and Maria” – I know in the future that all of our personal accounts will have a little @ Social Loop …

Why are people not checking in?

Oddly, it seems that people aren't using the various social networks to tell everyone where they are... Why not? Apart from letting your friends / contacts know where you currently are or have been it does very little for you.
Tweet
Most of my social media experience comes from using Facebook to advertise and promote events to students and the public. So when I heard that Facebook had set up “places” my imagination began to run away.

It’s human nature for people to be nosey, especially about our friends and events, more importantly people you do not particularly like. I would bet a lot of money that people spend large amounts of their time looking at peoples profiles who they don’t really like, partners ex-girlfriends (or ex partners current girlfriends).

Location based networking has all the ingredients to be very popular and successful, but we seem to still be waiting for it to happen.

Someone really needs to have created the location you want to check into such as a fan page with an address on, whilst it is possible to do it yourself, most people won’t.  You can tag friends in a location with you as well which shows up on their profile & news feed. That is where it ends. Unless an offer has been advertised for “liking” or “checking in” from the business then nothing really happens, on top of that getting your phone out loading the app and checking in where there is either limited reception or GPS signal can be frustrating.

Facebook users haven’t come on board and aren’t really using it, so much so that despite user checking in being more popular than the entire FourSquare communtiy, Facebook are no longer pushing deals on it.

I was lucky enough to visit Las Vegas this summer with my family. I was amazed at the amount of advertisement that there was to take “off line” to “online”, from promotional material to your food receipts there with links to get people to join their fan page or follow on twitter. If the same amount of effort had been made to check in as well then it would make an impact

I like the concept of Foursquare although I feel at present it is only the technology savvy that really use and understand it, and in our local town it is the same faces that appear to be Mayors of all the local venues.

Chris Pool Follow @chrisbenoitpool

QR codes - the primer

Over the past year QR codes have rapidly spread we are starting to see them from MI5 recruitment adverts through to learn more links in Tescos.

So what actually is a QR code – put simply it’s a barcode designed to be easily read by mobile phone cameras, they usually need a bit of software to interpret it and can contain information from a simple link through to contact information (more can be contained, but to be honest for Social Media, it is the URL part that is important.

Should we sit up and take notice? No is the simple answer unless your target audience includes the digital natives who carry smart phones (typically touch) and you have a social media presence or a well built mobile site, something we can of course help you with if you need it (two things we can of course help you with).

If you answer yes to those two questions it is actually pretty simple to start including these codes in your offline media – you can easily direct people to your Facebook page, allowing them to click the like button for you to re-engage with them later, or your twitter account, or a mobile page which offers links to both.

It is actually really easy to do this – get your link, put it into one of the many QR code generators out there including Bit.ly, Goo.gl which also include tracking (this is important of course), place them in discreet locations on your printed materials (including clothing, banners and more).

You can make them ‘popout’ a bit by even colouring them in (thanks for Bob Bardsley for the idea) - http://phronesisseo.blogspot.com/2011/06/putting-colour-into-qr-codes.html

So to conclude – if you have a mobile site or social media and produce printed offline materials then try including a QR code – track it of course to make sure it is working for you.

The ubiquitous plug -
If you want to know more about mobile and social strategic solutions then chat to Chris at Social Loop.