Last Spring, I wrote a series of DIY columns about the use of social media in shopping center marketing and public relations and encouraged all of you to take the opportunity to shift your center’s communications from a model where customers are talking about you to a model where customers are talking to you. In the last year, I have often been asked by colleagues if I still believe social media is the "force to be reckoned with" that the marketing and public relations community swore it would be. The answer is a resounding yes!
Social media continues to explode. If Facebook were a country, it would now be the third largest in the world. One in eight couples who married in 2009 met on a social networking site. YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world. Social networking sites overtook "adult" web sites as the number one activity on the internet in 2009. Think social media is still just for kids? Re-think - the fastest growing segment on Facebook is women ages 55-65. 96% of GenY belongs to at least one social network. (Remember, GenY is in their mid 20’s to mid 30’s now.) Social media even has its own buzz word now – "socialnomics", based on the book of the same title by Erik Qualman. (Great read BTW.) This video was posted on YouTube on July 30, 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8. In less than a year, it was updated because a bunch of the stats were outdated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng. My favorite addition to the updated video is simply this – the ROI for social media is that your business will still be around in 5 years.
It’s an amazing phenomenon – and the shopping center world is finally starting to pay attention and jump in. I hope you are all happily posting, tweeting, and blogging on behalf of your centers with terrific results. (If not, check earlier posts for some tips to get started.) If you are, read on…..
Get By With A Little Help From Your "Friends"
Your Facebook friends/fans and Twitter followers are your best customers. They are your VIP’s, your advocates; the folks interested enough to seek you out because they truly want to hear what you have to say. And the very best thing about these wonderful folks – they’ll tell you what they want. They’ll tell you what their friends want. They will also tell their friends (and their friends and their friends) what you say if they value the message. Generally, they make up between 15 and 25 percent of your fan base and they are not to be ignored. The value they bring to your social media marketing efforts can not be measured – think of them as the customer you get to talk to day in and day out, without paying thousands of dollars to a market research team. They are your own private focus group – and it’s so easy to give them what they want!
One of the biggest mistakes I see made in shopping center Facebook and Twitter pages is a failure to acknowledge and thank the fans/friends/followers. Ask them what they would like to see on your page – they’ll tell you – then post/tweet it. Maybe its insider scoop on what stores are having a sale, maybe its advance notice on an event, or perhaps announcing a new store and hour before you send out the press release. So easy to do and the payoff is huge. Thank them every now and then for their support – they will be so thrilled, especially if you recognize them by name. (Try posting a special offer just for them.) Make sure you are monitoring your page enough that you are responding so that they feel acknowledged. It’s the same principles that make for great service in person – and they are way more important in the virtual world. Do you really want a Facebook friend posting out to all their friends that you didn’t treat them well?
The bottom line – it’s no longer about talking at your customers, it’s about talking with them. Be sure you take care of your friends and social media will serve you well.
It’s All About Engagement
I was recently asked if I would rather have a Facebook page with 3,000 fans and 20% engagement or 5,000 fans with 10% engagement. I didn’t even have to think – I will take 3,000 engaged fans any day of the week. Engagement refers to the number of fans that are interacting with your page – on Facebook that means clicking "Like", posting on your wall, commenting on one of your posts, RSVPing to and event, etc. On Twitter, engagement is measured by direct tweets and re-tweets. If you have engagement, fans/friends/followers will come – if you don’t your page will stagnate. Just like in the mall, activity breeds activity. Engaged fans indicate that your content is appropriate, appreciated and valued.
Remember, social media is about building a relationship and a two way communications stream. Pushing out information (ala an "ad") just isn’t enough. At the beginning, it can feel like you are talking to yourself but keep going. Generally, you’ll see quality engagement begin to develop right around 1,000 Facebook fans and 250 Twitter followers. (Generally – every market will be a little different.) By the time you reach 4,000 to 5,000 fans on Facebook, they’ll be taking you along for the ride – which is exactly what you want. It’s kind of like that old Saturday Night Live sketch – "talk amongst yourselves" – and they will. At that point, your job is to share what you know they want, foster the conversation when needed, answer questions, and enjoy the ride. Same goes for Twitter – monitor your mentions. When they start to outnumber you tweets in any given day you are doing it right!
In A Crisis
No article about social media right now would be complete without discussing how social media can (and should) be used in a crisis. Yep, here it comes, let’s talk about BP. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s handling of it will be the case study for crisis social media communications that Walmart was back in the 90’s over their use of underage, underpaid sweatshop labor. I still run into PR trainers who pull out that Walmart CEO interview where his handler can be seen hand signing him to stop talking as the example of what not to do and the BP example is already making its way into PR trainer power points world wide.
Right now, poor handling of social media (not to mention traditional PR) has so overwhelmed BP that you can not even find their legitimate social media pages without some effort. Sites with catchy titles such as "Stop oil leak by stuffing BP execs in the pipe" (291,000 fans as of May, 2010) are dominating social media sites like Facebook. In fact if you search BP on Facebook, the top page that comes up is Boycott BP (690,000 fans as of May, 2010) and the top ten results are all anti-BP pages. If you search BP on Twitter, the first result is an account called BPGlobalPR (175,000 followers as of May, 2010)– which is nothing of the sort - and features sarcastic tweets in the "voice" of BP CEO Tony Hayward. You’ll find the same on YouTube, MySpace and every other social networking site. It’s a shame, and in my opinion, BP squandered a tremendous opportunity. Had they come out right away and accepted responsibility, used their established sites and pages to distribute factual information, start a conversation, engage the communities and consumer base, and put a relatable face on the situation (lets face it, Mr. Haywood and some of the other BP folks who have commented have dropped some real gems about "getting my life back" and "Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp") the outcome could have been dramatically different. By the time they started to do some of these things it was just too late. BP did not react in the RT world of social media, forgot that in today’s RT communications that they were dealing with a two way conversation stream, and refused to engage. Just how much it will cost them remains to be seen.
But for all BP’s troubles, a second crisis was happening in our country at the same time as the oil spill and the social media there had a very different outcome. Nashville, TN experienced record flooding the first weekend in May. The Cumberland River overflowed putting up to 10 feet of water in iconic Nashville properties like the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, the Grand Old Opry, Opry Mills Mall, and several blocks of downtown Nashville. Folks were struggling – their jobs were at stake, their homes were destroyed, and transportation and communications were sketchy. Yet within hours, the Gaylord folks had a video tour of the hotel damage up on their FB page (and to the local media) and statements re-assuring their employees that their paychecks and benefits would be paid for at least 6 weeks. Their Facebook page went from about 800 fans to almost 4,000 in a matter of days. The Grand Old Opry didn’t miss a single show – they simple found other locations and brought in Opry members to give video tours of the damage. The Community Association put out a call on their Facebook page and web site for a few volunteers – and got over 1,000 in a few hours. And Opry Mills Mall went from 1,300 Facebook fans to over 7,000 as it kept shoppers and mall employees updated about the clean up efforts – posting everything from where to go to get clean up jobs, to photos of the efforts, to video updates. Their fans were (and are still) volunteering to come clean the mall for them they are so engaged and the damage there was so great that the mall literally does not know when they will be able to open again. People needed information – and these organizations stepped up. All of them share just a few simple traits in their social media efforts: they were timely, honest, engaged, and relatable. Take a look at the Opryland Hotel or Opry Mills Facebook pages – we should all be so lucky as to have fans like these rallying around our business. Yes, Nashville was a natural disaster not a man made one, but the principals are the same. And I firmly believe that BP could have had a very different outcome had they used social media to their advantage.
What’s New
In an ever changing social media landscape, there are always new cool things out there. A few of my favorites are:
Facebook Ads: Talk about a quick, easy, and cheap way to advertise with tools that let you monitor and make changes and track results built right in. A $500 ad budget can buy you millions of impressions and grow your fan base by hundreds in a matter of hours. If you have never clicked on the "Promote With An Ad" link from your center’s Facebook page, now is the time to try it. A year ago, most folks did not know what they were. Now, Facebook ads are among the highest producing ROI tools in advertising and a two way conversation – the minute the viewer clicks "like" it’s a "Hi, how ya doing" for your center.
Hootsuite: One of the biggest questions I get about social media is "How much time does it take?" With Hootsuite – the answer is not much. You can monitor almost every social networking site out there in one location, plan and schedule tweets and posts, respond – the works. About the only thing you can’t do is post videos. The best part – ITS FREE! Go to hootsuite.com and check it out.
FourSquare: Foursquare is a new web application that is all about letting your friends know where you are and figuring out where they are. You can collect collect points, prizes, coupons, etc. as you go about your everyday business. Think Twitter meets Farmville. It’s the latest buzz and in less than a year already has 1.9 million users. Check it out at foursquare.com.
Social media remains, in my eyes, the ultimate DIY project. With virtually no money and not all that much time, you can make a big impact. For years, our industry has spent big bucks talking at our shoppers. My DIY take – stop spending money and invest some time in talking with your customers. Create a conversation and a relationship – and your center will be one of those businesses that will still "be here" in 5 years!
Social media continues to explode. If Facebook were a country, it would now be the third largest in the world. One in eight couples who married in 2009 met on a social networking site. YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world. Social networking sites overtook "adult" web sites as the number one activity on the internet in 2009. Think social media is still just for kids? Re-think - the fastest growing segment on Facebook is women ages 55-65. 96% of GenY belongs to at least one social network. (Remember, GenY is in their mid 20’s to mid 30’s now.) Social media even has its own buzz word now – "socialnomics", based on the book of the same title by Erik Qualman. (Great read BTW.) This video was posted on YouTube on July 30, 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8. In less than a year, it was updated because a bunch of the stats were outdated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng. My favorite addition to the updated video is simply this – the ROI for social media is that your business will still be around in 5 years.
It’s an amazing phenomenon – and the shopping center world is finally starting to pay attention and jump in. I hope you are all happily posting, tweeting, and blogging on behalf of your centers with terrific results. (If not, check earlier posts for some tips to get started.) If you are, read on…..
Get By With A Little Help From Your "Friends"
Your Facebook friends/fans and Twitter followers are your best customers. They are your VIP’s, your advocates; the folks interested enough to seek you out because they truly want to hear what you have to say. And the very best thing about these wonderful folks – they’ll tell you what they want. They’ll tell you what their friends want. They will also tell their friends (and their friends and their friends) what you say if they value the message. Generally, they make up between 15 and 25 percent of your fan base and they are not to be ignored. The value they bring to your social media marketing efforts can not be measured – think of them as the customer you get to talk to day in and day out, without paying thousands of dollars to a market research team. They are your own private focus group – and it’s so easy to give them what they want!
One of the biggest mistakes I see made in shopping center Facebook and Twitter pages is a failure to acknowledge and thank the fans/friends/followers. Ask them what they would like to see on your page – they’ll tell you – then post/tweet it. Maybe its insider scoop on what stores are having a sale, maybe its advance notice on an event, or perhaps announcing a new store and hour before you send out the press release. So easy to do and the payoff is huge. Thank them every now and then for their support – they will be so thrilled, especially if you recognize them by name. (Try posting a special offer just for them.) Make sure you are monitoring your page enough that you are responding so that they feel acknowledged. It’s the same principles that make for great service in person – and they are way more important in the virtual world. Do you really want a Facebook friend posting out to all their friends that you didn’t treat them well?
The bottom line – it’s no longer about talking at your customers, it’s about talking with them. Be sure you take care of your friends and social media will serve you well.
It’s All About Engagement
I was recently asked if I would rather have a Facebook page with 3,000 fans and 20% engagement or 5,000 fans with 10% engagement. I didn’t even have to think – I will take 3,000 engaged fans any day of the week. Engagement refers to the number of fans that are interacting with your page – on Facebook that means clicking "Like", posting on your wall, commenting on one of your posts, RSVPing to and event, etc. On Twitter, engagement is measured by direct tweets and re-tweets. If you have engagement, fans/friends/followers will come – if you don’t your page will stagnate. Just like in the mall, activity breeds activity. Engaged fans indicate that your content is appropriate, appreciated and valued.
Remember, social media is about building a relationship and a two way communications stream. Pushing out information (ala an "ad") just isn’t enough. At the beginning, it can feel like you are talking to yourself but keep going. Generally, you’ll see quality engagement begin to develop right around 1,000 Facebook fans and 250 Twitter followers. (Generally – every market will be a little different.) By the time you reach 4,000 to 5,000 fans on Facebook, they’ll be taking you along for the ride – which is exactly what you want. It’s kind of like that old Saturday Night Live sketch – "talk amongst yourselves" – and they will. At that point, your job is to share what you know they want, foster the conversation when needed, answer questions, and enjoy the ride. Same goes for Twitter – monitor your mentions. When they start to outnumber you tweets in any given day you are doing it right!
In A Crisis
No article about social media right now would be complete without discussing how social media can (and should) be used in a crisis. Yep, here it comes, let’s talk about BP. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s handling of it will be the case study for crisis social media communications that Walmart was back in the 90’s over their use of underage, underpaid sweatshop labor. I still run into PR trainers who pull out that Walmart CEO interview where his handler can be seen hand signing him to stop talking as the example of what not to do and the BP example is already making its way into PR trainer power points world wide.
Right now, poor handling of social media (not to mention traditional PR) has so overwhelmed BP that you can not even find their legitimate social media pages without some effort. Sites with catchy titles such as "Stop oil leak by stuffing BP execs in the pipe" (291,000 fans as of May, 2010) are dominating social media sites like Facebook. In fact if you search BP on Facebook, the top page that comes up is Boycott BP (690,000 fans as of May, 2010) and the top ten results are all anti-BP pages. If you search BP on Twitter, the first result is an account called BPGlobalPR (175,000 followers as of May, 2010)– which is nothing of the sort - and features sarcastic tweets in the "voice" of BP CEO Tony Hayward. You’ll find the same on YouTube, MySpace and every other social networking site. It’s a shame, and in my opinion, BP squandered a tremendous opportunity. Had they come out right away and accepted responsibility, used their established sites and pages to distribute factual information, start a conversation, engage the communities and consumer base, and put a relatable face on the situation (lets face it, Mr. Haywood and some of the other BP folks who have commented have dropped some real gems about "getting my life back" and "Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp") the outcome could have been dramatically different. By the time they started to do some of these things it was just too late. BP did not react in the RT world of social media, forgot that in today’s RT communications that they were dealing with a two way conversation stream, and refused to engage. Just how much it will cost them remains to be seen.
But for all BP’s troubles, a second crisis was happening in our country at the same time as the oil spill and the social media there had a very different outcome. Nashville, TN experienced record flooding the first weekend in May. The Cumberland River overflowed putting up to 10 feet of water in iconic Nashville properties like the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, the Grand Old Opry, Opry Mills Mall, and several blocks of downtown Nashville. Folks were struggling – their jobs were at stake, their homes were destroyed, and transportation and communications were sketchy. Yet within hours, the Gaylord folks had a video tour of the hotel damage up on their FB page (and to the local media) and statements re-assuring their employees that their paychecks and benefits would be paid for at least 6 weeks. Their Facebook page went from about 800 fans to almost 4,000 in a matter of days. The Grand Old Opry didn’t miss a single show – they simple found other locations and brought in Opry members to give video tours of the damage. The Community Association put out a call on their Facebook page and web site for a few volunteers – and got over 1,000 in a few hours. And Opry Mills Mall went from 1,300 Facebook fans to over 7,000 as it kept shoppers and mall employees updated about the clean up efforts – posting everything from where to go to get clean up jobs, to photos of the efforts, to video updates. Their fans were (and are still) volunteering to come clean the mall for them they are so engaged and the damage there was so great that the mall literally does not know when they will be able to open again. People needed information – and these organizations stepped up. All of them share just a few simple traits in their social media efforts: they were timely, honest, engaged, and relatable. Take a look at the Opryland Hotel or Opry Mills Facebook pages – we should all be so lucky as to have fans like these rallying around our business. Yes, Nashville was a natural disaster not a man made one, but the principals are the same. And I firmly believe that BP could have had a very different outcome had they used social media to their advantage.
What’s New
In an ever changing social media landscape, there are always new cool things out there. A few of my favorites are:
Facebook Ads: Talk about a quick, easy, and cheap way to advertise with tools that let you monitor and make changes and track results built right in. A $500 ad budget can buy you millions of impressions and grow your fan base by hundreds in a matter of hours. If you have never clicked on the "Promote With An Ad" link from your center’s Facebook page, now is the time to try it. A year ago, most folks did not know what they were. Now, Facebook ads are among the highest producing ROI tools in advertising and a two way conversation – the minute the viewer clicks "like" it’s a "Hi, how ya doing" for your center.
Hootsuite: One of the biggest questions I get about social media is "How much time does it take?" With Hootsuite – the answer is not much. You can monitor almost every social networking site out there in one location, plan and schedule tweets and posts, respond – the works. About the only thing you can’t do is post videos. The best part – ITS FREE! Go to hootsuite.com and check it out.
FourSquare: Foursquare is a new web application that is all about letting your friends know where you are and figuring out where they are. You can collect collect points, prizes, coupons, etc. as you go about your everyday business. Think Twitter meets Farmville. It’s the latest buzz and in less than a year already has 1.9 million users. Check it out at foursquare.com.
Social media remains, in my eyes, the ultimate DIY project. With virtually no money and not all that much time, you can make a big impact. For years, our industry has spent big bucks talking at our shoppers. My DIY take – stop spending money and invest some time in talking with your customers. Create a conversation and a relationship – and your center will be one of those businesses that will still "be here" in 5 years!