Kevin Pike – Kansas City SEO Blog

Start by listening:

Before launching your social media efforts, identify who is talking about you, which channels they are using, and what they are saying about you and your brand. To do this, you can filter tweets for specific keywords, such as a phrase, company name, or product name. You can create an influencer map by grouping contributors to identify online brand detractors and advocates. This helps answer the following questions:

• Do you have potential evangelists?
• Do you have detractors and what are their complaints?
• Where are your potential influencers online?
• Who do they trust?
• What tools do they use?
• Where do they work?
• What is their role?
• What are their biases?
• What motivates them?

After you identify your advocates and detractors, move these relationships offline whenever possible so that you can have an initial one-on-one conversation, point them in the right direction, and then get out of their way.

Creating a community of advocates

Managed properly, a good social media plan will generate a considerable amount of positive chatter, and ideally, some of your best customers will become advocates, or “evangelists,” for your brand. This can manifest itself in a number of ways:

• Talking about the brand with glowing praise
• Sending prospects to the company
• Answering questions about a company or its products
• Offering support and advice on using products

Any of these is good news for a company. Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them.(Forrester
Research, 2008 study), so a customer stepping in with a testimonial on behalf of the company can be worth more than any other kind of marketing message.

Adobe’s use of social media

For some time, Adobe has had its own advocate, known as Virginia Beach Kevin, who goes on Twitter and speaks highly of Adobe technology, powered by Omniture® technology. At times, he responds to questions and comments even before Adobe does. Oftentimes, the commenter will follow up not with Adobe but with Virginia Beach Kevin directly.

Because of this early and positive Twitter advocacy experience, Adobe thought about how it could turn other users into “an unpaid army” of evangelists for the company. Adobe started looking for not just satisfied customers, but people who would talk passionately about Adobe solutions, give advice and support, share content, and drive traffic to Adobe’s website. To do this, Adobe had to devise and implement a plan that focused on emerging social media channels.

Source:Brian Watkins – Adobe