Why More Social Media Engagement equals Mo’Money, Mo’Money
I ran across a fabulous report that I wanted to share with you.
Is your company a maven or a wallflower when it comes to engaging customers on the various social media platforms? This is the question that Charlene Li, Partner, Altimeter Group and Ben Elowitz, CEO, Wetpaint attempted to answer in their report, “The World’s Most Valuable Brands, Who’s Most Engaged”.
Using the Top 100 brands based on BusinessWeek / Interbrand “Best Global Brands 2008” publication as the source, the authors uncovered the following key points about social media engagement:
- Depth of engagement can be measured
- Brands fall into one of four engagement profiles
- Financial performance correlates with engagement
Measuring Depth
Using customized criteria for assessment, Ben & Charlene found that how many channels a company uses coupled with how often or at what level they participate could measure engagement. At the most basic level, they consider low participation to be fewer than six channels used with inconsistent involvement. High engagement then is just the opposite, seven or more channels with very consistent involvement. Additionally, the team gave out bonus points by looking at who in the company was involved.
The Profiles
Mavens, Butterflies, Selectives, and Wallflowers make up the various levels of engagement. Mavens are the ones who participate in over seven channels and are deeply involved. The Wallflowers, as the name suggests, are the ones who are involved in six or fewer channels with sporadic or inconsistent participation.
Yeah But, Mo’ Money?
Ok, to tell the truth, no one has data that can link specific social media efforts to dollars but Charlene and Ben, who are very well respected had this to say:
. . . companies that are both deeply and widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in terms of both revenue and profit t performance by a significant difference. In fact, these Mavens have sustained strong revenue and margin growth in spite of the current economy. Coincidence? Perhaps, but we’re looking at statistical significance among the world’s most valuable brands.
In others words, will there come a day when a specific tweet or blog post can be linked to the dollar it produced. We don’t know if that can ever be tracked but we do see that the major brands who have a significant presence in many social media channels are still making money even while the economy is extremely sluggish.
What does that mean for your business? When the one-person professional working from home or the small business that is not competing against an industry giant applies this insight, will it produce a significant opportunity to increase profits? Well, my opinion is yes. Why? Because that’s the nature of social media. This medium has a way of leveling the playing field so that a one-person office can leverage just as many channels as the big guys. The top companies are trying to do the same thing that the little companies are trying to do; trying to adjust to how social media is changing the way companies communicate and engage with customers. Oh, yeah, and make money.
So, there is no such thing as the little guy anymore. You too can use social media my friend and have as big of a presence as you want. In fact, United Airlines found out the hard way that social media is powerful because it is accessible by anyone who wants to be there. (For more on that jump over to Bill Seaver’s blog. He wrote a great post about that.) I think they lost money on that one. However, if your goal is to make more money, then take advantage of social media like the big boys do.
The report contains some information about the best practices these companies use. Here is the link again for the report so you can read that for yourself to see if anything can be applied for your own business improvement.
Discussion Question: After reading the report, how will you increase your level of participation in whatever social media channels make sense for your business?
