Seems there are two choices in launching a startup or brand:
1. Buy an audience. [quick but expensive]
2. Earn a following. [slow and cheap]
The problem with the first option is that we don’t get many chances to refine our stuff, and getting it wrong can end it all. The benefit with the second option is that it allows and encourages experimentation. And if we experiment enough, we might just be able dome some of the first option too.
I was writing a guide for a social startup Abbostford Biscuits on how to approach twitter. Here’s a little snippet I thought was worth sharing for anyone wanting to embrace twitter in their company.
The twitter account should be open to all in the Abbotsford Biscuits organisation. Anyone should be allowed to tweet on behalf of the company. This is important because the aim is to share the company culture and values, so that you can build a following. The reality of any culture is that it is the amalgam of all viewpoints. If the brand twitter account is just maned by one person, then the personality will be too singular to truly display the organisations values. It also adds variety to the output and creates more interest with followers.
The team should be given a set of guidelines and then allowed to tweet as they please. This will also help with frequency of output, without impacting the general responsibility of staff and workers. They can do it on their breaks, or any time in or out of the office. The chaos of this proposed situation must be embraced or it simply wont work. For a true social media engagement control must be relinquished. The voice must be human, overtly honest and omnidirectional.
Apple Inc sold an amazing 700,000 ipads on launch day. That’s around $350 million in revenue in one day. Most of the eager purchasers didn’t have full knowledge of what the gadget was even capable of. Which makes me ask these simple questions:
(A) Is Apple the most trusted brand in the world with loyalists? (B) And if so what creates such zealotry?
Startup Blog Answers:
(A) Yes, I think so.
(B) Abridged answer: Over delivering to expectations on multiple occasions.
The only other brands I can even think of people buying into without knowing what they are actually getting is the ever lasting life that comes with most religions!
The word expert gets thrown around lot. Everyone’s an expert these days, especially in the technology and media arena. My view on expertise:
Without implementation expertise is just an idea, and ideas are omnipresent.
I was recently invited to Social Media Club Melbourne to appear on a panel with Scott Kilmartin of Haul and Sahil Merchant of Magnation. The topic was Building Brand Buzz.
The three of us were generally aligned on our thoughts, with varied executions using social media tools given the differences in our businesses. I’m a big fan of Magnation, but there was one area in which Sahil and I disagreed, and that was that he preferred to control the output of social media. His contention was that he wanted a single voice to represent the brand personality. On the surface this sounds reasonable, even rational, but even a week later I really think it goes against what it is all about and here’s why:
The voice of a brand is the collective actions of all of it’s representatives. Not the CEO, the marketing director or the advertising they put in the market. Just ask anyone about their opinion of banks in Australia. It has nothing to do with the voice banks project, and more to do with the customer interactions. The voice is what the people hear & experience on a personal level, not what the brand stewards say.
Social media can’t be controlled. So why try? There is nothing worse than limiting the voice of your people. They will talk anyway. They’ll share links, write about your brand and talk about it on line and off. They will have real interactions with customers, and if what the authorised voice says (Sahil in this case) doesn’t match the reality of the brand in action, then it all sounds contrived and is useless anyway. It’s more likely to have meaning and be authentic if its the word of the people, not the king. So let your people participate. Give them their own Magnation twitter account, a sub brand of sorts. Be a collective. Be real.
Create culture, don’t control output. It’s an errant assumption to believe you know better than your people do. It’s often not the case. What we need to do is educate our people on what we want to be as brand, the persona. Give them some guidance and let them represent us, make mistakes and be human. People love dealing with companies who have a human voice and mistakes are part of the human.
Trust creates value. I find it curious that companies trust their employees with the key’s to the building and the cash register and not their voices. It’s best to approach it like a parent does with a teenager. Give a bit, let them prove themselves and then loosen the lead a bit more. Trusted people usually over deliver to expectations. People who are shut out usually react in the opposite. In social media context we need to trust the average human outcome, rather than block all for fear of a single bad outcome.
The key point to me is, if you want a controlled voice, then social media isn’t the right vehicle for a brand. More traditional media would be more suitable. The word social is the giveaway here, because social implies conversation, not lecturing or monologue. All our people should be part of the conversation if we want to create real value.
Greenpeace recently launched a public awareness advertising campaign. The campaign was fairly hard hitting, but it wasn’t generic, it was brand targeted. The campaign aimed at Nestle, who they claim makes their chocolate with Palm Oil. The issue with Palm Oil is that much of it is produced in areas which risk local orangutan populations. The advertisement is below – it comes with a warning for those with queezy stomachs.
[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/10236827]
It’s interesting not because the advertisement is so hard hitting, but rather that Nestle got it removed from youtube based on a ‘brand copy right’ infringement. They said it infringed the kitkat brand trademark. The beauty of the internet is that nothing can truly be banned. It will just bubble up somewhere else, like Vimeo in this case. In addition Nestles corporate strategy of removing it, only fueled the fire and cause it to be shared around and had the opposite of the desired effect.
Big companies will have to realize that they can’t hide stuff anymore. That we will pay more for ethical products. Now that we all have access to information distribution we have as much power as they do on important issues.
What does this mean for startups? Well it means we can play against the big guys. We have a palce for our voice if our dialogue is important enough. If our startup wants to create positive change. Maybe our launch strategy (gourment fair trade local chocolate company?) can spread the truth on the large corporate evil (enemy competitor) to grow their more earth friendly brand?
We live in a wordy world. It seems there’s a new acronym, piece of business jargon, or self defining adjective emerging every minute of the day. It’s easy to get caught up in the language, the jargon and forget what business and startups are all about:
Building stuff. Buying something for $1 and selling it for $2. Having a laugh along the way.
Keep it simple. Don’t try and be everything to everyone.
With all this in mind I’ll hand over to George Carlin – and yes, this video is worth every second of the 3.56 minutes it takes to watch.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6J3OD4Z0UQ]