Dale-Kurt shares his views on social media marketing used by commercial brands in Jamaica. Those that got it right and those who did not. Check out what he says about Island Grill, Restaurant Week Jamaica and two financial institutions he believes is doing it all wrong.Join in on the conversation.
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Dale, it is important to understand what the goal of something is before criticizing it as “wrong”.
It may be wrong to you because you totally misunderstand the point of what they were doing and reaching out to the company to first understand the goals and then comparing the goals vs. the outcome would be the proper way to judge.
The financial institution that created multiple twitter accounts was successful at their goals and the plan was as follows:
(1) Stream the AGM live to 7 locations across Jamaica, Canada and USA
(2) Take questions via twitter from each location and have the questions show up on screens at the AGM location in Jamaica
The twitter accounts were never meant to gather followers or be used after the AGM, except for the main account.
You judge success based on a number of followers but that is a bad metric for twitter since engagement is better than assumed audience.
This company was the first company in the Caribbean to ever take questions via twitter for an AGM and answer those questions via a live web stream feed.
The emails from the locations indicate that the members were extremely happy with the outcome and felt that the organization was very technologically savvy. Over 2,000 people saw the feed when only 700 could come to the actual AGM and it made them feel that the financial institution cared enough about them to put in all this effort, thus increasing and reinforcing brand loyalty.
Lastly, if you understand twitter, it is far easier to have the questions show up automatically on a feed if you follow an account than using hash tags since only the tweets of accounts you are following show up in your feed. This greatly simplified the answer to “how do I show only the questions from the locations?”.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
David, thank you for explaining the goals behind the use of multiple Twitter accounts, and if I understand, your measurement of success was based on the engagement.
From the questions posted on Twitter, can you say what percentage of the 2000+ viewers online participated by asking questions via Twitter compared to the 700+ persons in physical locations who asked questions via Twitter?
UStream.tv has a very interaction with social media, which allows you to log both the video and chat session. There are other Twitter clients that will allow you to do wonderful things with Twitter, but for what you have explained UStream.tv would have been the best solution, if you HAVE TO use social media.
Only a suggestion, I would opt to remove the Funny or Die video from the YouTube account.
November 10th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Three problems with your suggestion for the corporate world Dale:
(1) Ustream.tv did not offer the quality video that we wanted hence going with Justin.tv instead (I conducted extensive tests). When you are blowing up the video on a projector for an audience of 250 per location, quality matters.
(2) The twitter feed needed to be shown to the audience at the AGM, not the audience watching at off-site locations. Ustream is overkill when the audience is centralized.
(3) Ustream automatically includes a link to the video on Ustream. We embedded the video on a customized landing page and drove traffic to that page via email.
The last thing we want to do is have Ustream drive the traffic away from the site.
There are many ways to use social media and it is critical to recognize that creative people find creative solutions to the problem THEY face, not the problem someone else THINKS they face.
Again, you do not totally understand how the event worked (I will seek permission to post a detailed case study soon).
Questions that could be answered on-site were answered there while bigger questions were vetted and sent via Twitter. Only locations outside the AGM location used Twitter to ask questions.
Some were answered live and the rest have been answered in a document and sent back to the locations and members.
The report I received indicated that every member who wanted to ask a question was able to do so - the first time ever in the 135 year history of JNBS.
p.s. Thanks for the heads up on the ‘Funny or Die’ thing. Not supposed to happen (wasn’t me) but clearly need to revisit the policy.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
interesting but somewhat flawed reasoning int he video.
I didn’t know the goals behind the multiple twitter accounts but I too thought that it was wrong to think it was a failure because of your “professional” or “experienced” opinion.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Thanks for the extended explanation on that David, to my question “From the questions posted on Twitter, can you say what percentage of the 2000+ viewers online participated by asking questions via Twitter compared to the 700+ persons in physical locations who asked questions via Twitter?” from what I gathered, your online audience did not participate via Twitter, was that the case?
November 12th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
David, Here is my reasoning behind my statements granted they are based on face value opinions but I strongly believe they are warranted and I welcome you to challenge them.
I’m not challenging why or what method was used to delivery the meeting, whether it was UStream or Justin.tv the success for that is quiet obvious based on the fact that you were able to delivery it at reasonable quality. This is my question, and it is based on what you have shared so far, you audience participated through a moderator who sent a Twitter notification to the primary Twitter account.
Then the panel responded through the video stream. Where there questions that were asked by the audience who watched the video stream online? For example did @johnDoe submit his question to the panel and got a response?
No one has challenged your creativity. I am looking for the value in that scenario where Twitter was used, especially when I cannot see any tweets from your online audience participating via Twitter.
Here is a article which demonstrate how Twitter can be used to add value to a meeting or conference.
6 Ways To Utilize Twitter At Your Next Conference | Meetings Podcast - http://grassshackroad.com/meetings-podcast/business/6-ways-to-utilize-twitter-at-your-next-conference
I appreciate the time you took to reply to my earlier comments, but the responses only solidified my initial thoughts that it was not the most effective use of Twitter.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Twitter can be used to add value in many ways and those 6 only scratch the surface.
No questions were submitted from the people watching from home as they were not invited to submit questions (they actually could if they were following the primary account and sent a tweet).
The point was to get people to come to the locations that were setup to view the AGM and give the company a chance to show that they cared about members.
If and when I get permission to write a post about the whole thing, it will be quite clear.
Suffice it to say that “right” and “wrong” when it comes to using new technology is often more a case of SUBJECTIVITY than OBJECTIVITY and as a reviewer myself, I am careful to remember that.
November 13th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Jamaipanese If the idea was to broadcast a video stream to an audience in seven locations, then they were successful.
If the idea was to have the same audience in these seven locations ask question which were communicated through a moderate in the same location across twitter, then again it was successful.
Personally that would not have been my measurement of success, but we don’t think alike.
My strategy for that scenario would have been to engage the 2,000+ online audience through Twitter and taking their questions during the video broadcast. That would have been my implementation of Twitter for a meeting. Secondly, I would measure my success based on the level of interaction with both audience tiers.
Again, I don’t expect us all to think alike.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
It is important to understand what the goal of something is before criticizing it as “wrong”. - David Mullings
Powerful statement… great discourse.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Dale, thank you for understanding the different approaches and measurements.
While your strategy makes complete sense, it has to be aligned with an overall marketing plan and match the profile of the organization’s customers to deliver the best ROI.
Social media, as we both agreed in the past, does not standalone and marketing through that channel must still tie back to a marketing plan.
Immediate problems come to mind for this particular company when one evaluates your strategy:
(1) A large % of the members are older and not versed with technology so having them watch the live stream much less post questions via Twitter is a non-starter
(2) Relationship management and building/maintaining customer loyalty by treating them and making it easy for them to participate is far more valuable than 2000+ people watching online only
Interaction with an online audience is valuable but face-to-face interaction with 250 current members per location is worth much more.
There are even more reasons this strategy was employed over yours (it was considered) but I am not at liberty to disclose all.
November 14th, 2009 at 4:08 pm