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Your Business & Social Media
This column is the first in a series describing some innovative social media strategies which are currently being deployed in cyberspace. Going sector by sector the column will look at how leading international organisations are using multiple social media platforms to communicate their messages to customers, stakeholders, the media and even employees. Follow the leaders
There has been a lot of recent discussion in Qatar about the emergence of social media in the GCC and the Middle East broadly. Most of that discussion has focused on the growing need to engage with social media given rapid growth in regional memberships to popular sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, et al. If you’re like me you know and accept that organisations need to engage with social media for a variety of reasons from brand building or protection, to issues and crisis management. This then leads to the following questions – how do we engage? Are there rules of engagement with social media? And what are some best practice examples of creative use of social media for organisational communications? It makes sense to start the series with a look at organisations operating in the technology sector as we expect these companies to be the most savvy and creative in their use of social media platforms. Tech companies create products which are often complex to lay-consumers. Opening channels for easier two-way communications serves both the consumer and organisation. For marketing, brand building and publicity purposes, tech companies use digital platforms as an opportunity to communicate thought leadership. This is a central strategic objective for many tech companies, so using social media to communicate thought leadership simply extends on existing communications
opportunities. At the tactical level, social media provides technology businesses with additional benefits which value add to their business objectives as well as assist with day to day communications management. EMC Corporation, the US Fortune 500 and S&P 500 provider of information infrastructure systems, software and services uses a number of social media platforms for a variety of purposes. The company has its own YouTube channel on which it screens corporate videos, advertisements, filmed speaking engagements, et al. The EMC channel contains a wealth of information about what the company does and the expertise it provides to clients and the IT industry. The channel also serves as a valuable video catalogue, enabling the EMC corporate website to focus internal bandwidth on providing more corporatised information, both real and creative.
Branded social media platform
An innovative approach to social media which is becoming increasingly popular among large corporations is to create a branded social media platform which is owned and operated by the corporate entity. An example of such a platform is Oracle’s ‘Oracle Community’ (OC) site. OC contains forums, message boards and blogs, as well as links to customer
support and the entire Oracle corporate website database, which includes product information and downloads, as well as online training. By owning your own social media platform you are not privy to the problems, image, logistical successes or failures of the host site, but a corporate branded site does not have the perceived independence of a third party platform and will only attract users who are interested in, or have a vested interest in, your organisation. Using an independent platform provides your organisation greater scope to attract new audiences, potentially converting them into customers. Here lies the first key to successful utilisation of social media. Understand what you want to get out of each platform before you publish. What purpose will a Facebook page service your organisation? Does your organisation produce enough content to launch its own social media platform? Organisations operating in the tech industry understand how to utilise social media. For tech companies digital platforms are akin to trade media, operating in the same digital space they inhabit for day-to-day operations. Social media engagement can present far more challenges to organisations operating in other sectors. In next month’s issue of Qatar Today, I will look at how organisations in the consumer sector are marketing and protecting their brands and products n
By Jamie Morse The author is an Account Director at Hill & Knowlton Qatar. He has an MA in Professional Communications and is a member of the International Public Relations Association.
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Qatar Today JUNE 10