Much has been written about the top brands and how they are using social channels to engage with customers - and in the case of the Altimeter/Wetpaint study from last summer - how "deep engagement" through social channels correlates with financial performance. Putting aside whether this relationship is causal or not (I don't believe it is in most cases), I DO believe that a well-thought-out social business strategy is critical, and that most companies will want to participate on most social media channels. Or risk the opportunity to observe customer discussions, and ideally even steer the community and gather feedback to improve products/services/brand...and of course generate leads as I have discussed here.
Of course which channels are most important for a particular market, audience, etc. needs to also be part of your social media strategy (a persona model can also help). As discussed here, and reinforced by Debbie Weil in her excellent blog when she notes that "blogs are the home base of your social media strategy," corporations have many reasons to focus and invest in blogging. Especially in highly dynamic, competitive, even fad-driven consumer markets like consumer electronics. Dell (Interbrand #35; 74 blog posts, 100+ comments YTD) understood this early on, and has been singled out as an innovator and even was ranked #2 in the Altimeter study.
Eventually Microsoft (Interbrand #3) and HP (Interbrand #12, over 50 separate company blogs) did as well, and even Sony (Interbrand #29) electronics jumped on board, and now has a very slick social "portal" for all their community and social offerings (see screenshot below) and an active blog with 39 posts and 78 comments since the beginning of the year.
But what about Apple? They certainly are doing something right. And as outlined in Prem Kumar's excellent blog
and discussion thread (motivation for getting this post written today),
they may be following the social media/CRM "playbook" - but just not in
obvious ways. How else to explain how a product launch (A PRODUCT
LAUNCH!) can get customers lining up overnight or 100's of media
reviews or TV news coverage from coast to coast.
Yet Apple has no corporate blog, no obvious link on its Website
to its (modestly followed) "appleincnews" Twitter account and there's
no Apple related group on LinkedIn managed by a current employee. At
least none that I could find. And Apple is not alone. Neither Canon,
Nintendo nor Philips - also all top 50 brands - have corporate blogs
either. And Philips ("royal_philips") has a pretty weak Twitter
presence as well, with a ho-hum 94 score on Twittergrader.
As I noted in my comment on Prem's thread
maybe Apple has reasons for how they are approaching social media. For
the rest of the players above (not including Dell, HP, MSFT, Sony) it
looks like they are missing the boat.
Great stuff! Cool to see Marvel using concept art to help generate buzz for their upcoming films!! http://www.outbackbikers.com/
Posted by: Zsam Dota | 04/01/2011 at 02:33 AM