‘Socializing’ Your Brand
Bailey Brand Consulting sits down with Richard Rosenblatt to discuss social media and branding Richard Rosenblatt is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Demand Media, the leader in distributed social media powering 3 billion conversations every month. A serial entrepreneur, Rosenblatt is arguably best known for his role in growing MySpace.com from an unknown website to one of the most popular properties on the Internet—and selling its parent company, Intermix Media, Inc., to News Corporation for approximately $650 million. There’s no argument that Rosenblatt is a true visionary when it comes to social media. Here, Bailey Brand Consulting taps into his expertise about the role of social media in branding. We discuss, among other things, how companies like yours can develop an effective strategy for what many still view as largely uncharted—and often confusing—territory. Bailey Brand Consulting: Let’s start at the very beginning. How do you define “social media” in general and “social media” in the realm of branding? Richard Rosenblatt: “Social media” represents all the spaces where people can interact. It’s an evolutionary concept that stems from what we used to call “community”, but the term tends to be associated with more real-time, less programmed interaction. In a branding context, the same definition still applies. What’s different for brands are the challenges they face around building credibility and “fitting in” at the party.Bailey: Why should brands use social media as part of their approach or marketing plan to reach their target audience? Rosenblatt: When you add social media components—like blogs, photo galleries, forums, ratings and reviews—to your site, you transform your web property into a socially enhanced experience. So users can still browse product information, but they can also interact with friends or share ideas or even create new content. With social media, you’re truly engaging consumers with your brand rather than managing the brand on your own and in a vacuum. Bailey: From your perspective, what does today’s social media landscape look like? Rosenblatt: Today the most common social media practices are participation, integration and syndication. Your consumers are spending time on social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, but they’re also spending times on sites like eHow.com and so you should, too. Ace Hardware is one of several brands enjoying the benefits of having their brands integrated in specialized campaigns on niche community social media sites like eHow, which currently receives more than 32 million visitors each month by people looking to take action after finding out how to do just about anything. There’s no debate about that. What is up for debate is how you should go about participating on these networks. Simply putting up a branded page on one of the popular sites is of very little value. As you think about participation, ask yourself: Are you truly interacting with consumers or just posting a promotion that people are probably going to ignore, anyway? The keys to participation are authenticity, responsiveness and personal engagement. This means not paying your agency to do it, but doing it yourself. Your consumers are like your kids—they can always tell when you aren’t being authentic. So you need to identify the right people in your organization who are comfortable with social media tools and who naturally represent your company well, and then let them be the voice of your brand in the social media sphere. Of course, participation on social sites is critical, but it’s just as important for you to embrace—and integrate—social media on your own site. Research shows that integrated social media can help drive traffic and sales, through three key pillars—user-generated content, user-enhanced content and social networking. Last year we acquired Pluck, a top provider of integrated social media solutions, deployed across our owned and operated properties, as well as many of the world’s leading digital destinations like USAToday.com, NFL.com, Whole Foods, Kraft and many others. The next frontier for social media for brands is syndication—allowing the many interactions that happen on and off your site to travel wherever they’re most relevant. That means, for example, if a visitor posts a comment or reviews a product or asks a question on your site, you can now let them cross-post that to other communities, such as Facebook. So then that person’s friends and family can see and participate in the conversation. In other words, the content no longer resides on your site alone. It’s everywhere your consumers live and breathe online. Bailey: What are some examples of brands that are already successfully using social media channels to enhance their brand experience? Rosenblatt: Kodak’s “A Thousand Words” is a fantastic example of a corporate blog with a human voice. There may be a temptation to pitch and position Kodak products in every entry, but the blog’s authors do a great job keeping it focused on photography. Sometimes they refer to Kodak’s role in the history of photography, but they do that only occasionally and always appropriately. Another company that’s getting it right is Scotts Miracle-Gro. Scotts recognized that the gardening and lawn-care market is an information-intensive category. Consumers are passionate. They want to learn more and share what they know. So Scotts lets consumers participate in blogs, forums and photo galleries for gardening enthusiasts. The site also lets consumers align themselves with distinct groups, like “urban dwellers,” “pet owners” or “first-time homeowners.” So far, Scotts has hosted more than half a million social interactions between consumers. Bailey: When it comes to developing a social media strategy for a brand, what are your top “dos” and “don’ts”? Rosenblatt: The biggest “do” is really formulating a holistic social media strategy that’s an extension of the brand strategy. I’d be more prone to call it an “engagement strategy” because it could easily encompass much more than just the hot new social media tools. An engagement strategy shouldn’t rely on the hype and current excitement around popular tools or sites. The biggest “don’t” is expecting that the tools themselves will meet the needs and expectations of consumers. As a brand, you need to get your organization and people involved. You can’t just create the social space. You have to fill it. You have to keep it lively and full of purpose. Bailey: If you were talking to someone in charge of a brand that hadn’t even dipped its toes in the social media waters, what would you recommend as an optimal course in today’s environment? Rosenblatt: First, I’d recommend taking a look at what your competitors and partners are doing. That will at least tell you what’s been tried so far in your space. You’ll also want to get an understanding of what your target consumers are already doing online relative to community and social interaction. There’s plenty of research available on this through Pew and others. Finally, make sure you have the right champion inside your organization. It needs to be someone who is high enough in the organization to drive it all the way through. It’s important to note here that an agency person outside your organization doesn’t count. An agency can advise you and do design work, but an agency can’t create and sustain the energy and authenticity that’s required for social media. Your social media communications should be spontaneous—not polished. Bailey: Does social media replace or complement a company-developed website? Put more bluntly, are “old school” websites headed for extinction? Rosenblatt: No, I don’t think brand websites are headed for extinction. In fact, I think they will remain the core digital asset. But they will need to evolve to offer more value—in other words, more reasons for people to be there. You’ll always have someone visiting your site to get an address or some other specific piece of information. But to remain truly relevant, sites will need to facilitate interaction since that’s what consumers can do almost everywhere else on the web. Another important part of making brand sites valuable is recognizing that content IS marketing. This principle is a foundational concept for Demand Media, and it’s reflected in the tremendous growth of our content studios which feed our own properties and commercial partners. Brands and their agencies are starting to understand that specific, interesting and relevant content will spread on its own—and this is igniting a remarkable shift in focus from content distribution to content creation. Bailey: Finally, what key trends and developments do you see on the horizon? In other words, what’s next? Rosenblatt: Brands have been participating in online social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. And in the last year or so, they’ve started to offer more social functionality on their own websites. The key trend coming up is the “marrying” of these two types of social programs—having your onsite and offsite social experiences connect. That combination represents your brand’s “social system”—your way of empowering consumers to interact with your brand wherever they want, on their terms. For more information about Richard Rosenblatt, visit Demand Media online. For more information about Bailey Brand Consulting, visit us online or email us at info@baileygp.com. A new baby brand is born. Click below to learn more.