I am speaking this morning at the IABC Social Media Conference.
The topic of my presentation is “Leveraging Social Media to Build Brand”.
Here’s my overall premise (which might get me kicked out of the conference)…
You don’t need a social media strategy.
You need a brand building strategy.
…which you effectively activate using the most appropriate tools available (including in many cases Social Media).
If your goal is X amount of Twitter followers or Y number of followers on Facebook, I believe you are destined to fail.
It’s like stating your goal is to go to an Ivy league school, with no plan whatsoever on how to get good grades, or distinguish yourself in extra-curricular or community service activities.
If you want people to “friend” you then be an interesting, useful, fun, compassionate person.
In other words, be someone that most people want to be friends with.
At Virgin we’ve had a rather rapid learning curve on social media (and we’re still learning).
When I joined Virgin about 3 years ago, most of our brands were just beginning to dabble in this realm.
Now thanks to all the efforts of the crack teams at the various businesses, in the US alone we have 400,000 (and growing daily) friends, fans, and followers on line.
But I wouldn’t say we have a formal Social Media strategy.
We have smart and creative people at each of the Virgin businesses that are focused on doing what they’ve always done- building great brand experiences and find clever and impactful (and cost efficient) ways to market them.
And they are doing this in many instances by applying Social Media.
And understanding and leveraging what’s so unique and powerful about this medium (e.g. immediacy and 2 way dialogues, etc.).
I think a tunnel vision focus on Social Media is a bit dangerous.
I believe instead should focus on brand building and then leverage Social Media tools to accomplish this in new, exciting, and often measurable ways.
So here’s a brief summary on what I will be covering in my talk:
5 Tips for “What Works” in Social Media
1. CREATE BUZZWORTHY EXPERIENCES
I believe the best way to get people buzzing about you on line is to give them an experience that exceeds their expectations and is buzzworthy.
Virgin America is a great example of this.
From the moment you step on the plane you know that something is different.
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