Tag: brand love

Hootsuite’s Vision On Brand Love And Community

Posted on by Natasha Shumny

Hootsuite’s meetup events (Hootups) and brand ambassador programs help them gain global reach with amplification. They empower engaged users to act as brand advocates. Product releases shared with ambassadors drive 200% more engagement and reviews. The Brand Advocates share regional insights, offer product feedback and support in 22+ languages and support their 15,000 registered customers in the Support Forum with 80% response rate. They drive localisation efforts by hosting 200+ events in 62 countries. Hootsuite uses gamification incentives for engaged users to go above and beyond for their brand. Grow the love for the brand by providing your influencers with exclusive content and insights.

Jeanette Gibson, VP of Community and Customer Experience at Hootsuite, believes strongly in getting your employees involved in listening and understanding customer care. Customers say that half of brands are doing a poor job at communicating with them:

  • Build relationships with key members of the community, and each other
  • Nurture customers and develop engagement strategies
  • Add extra value via inspiring, educating, and entertaining customers with thoughtful moderation, relevant content and both online and offline experiences
  • Engage employees to make your brand personal and accessible to customers
  • Deliver insights about your customers and use data to continually improve, grow, and foster your community

In terms of community’s impact on business, it costs 80% less to retain a customer, than acquire a new one. Increasing retention rate by 5% can increase profits by 95% over long term, and increased engagement on community sites can result in 25% increase in revenue.

Run social campaigns to allow your community members to tell their stories. Timely content creates conversation and drives engagement with stories, experiences, and momentum. Inspire your fans by curating experiences and stories that surprise and delight. Allow the community to be the storytellers greatly impacted Herschel Supply business and brand sentiment. The #WellTraveled photo contest gained 480k new Instagram followers, a 60% increase in positive brand sentiment, and provided the community an opportunity to tell their own visual stories.

Dr. William J. Ward, Education Strategy at Hootsuite and Social Media Professor at Newhouse School and Syracuse University, emphasized how employees can build brand love. “52% of customers say they trust employees.” Motivate with purpose, not profits. Mobilize with education and provide the tools. Make sharing content simple and easy and bring employee ideas front and center.

Natasha Shumny (@NatashaShumny), Corporate Digital Marketing and Social Media Manager at Triumph Hotels (@TriumphHotels) Discover Triumph’s seven unique and historic hotels in New York City, each offering a distinct experience inspired by its neighborhood, from TriBeCa to the Upper West Side.

Three Tips to Build Community And Grow #BrandLove

Posted on by Nicole Brown

Three Tips to Build Community and Grow #BrandLove

It costs 6 to 7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, according to Bain and Co. Pause and let that sink in for a moment. Your customer relationships are crucial, not only to driving consistent revenue for your business and saving you money, but also in creating a lovable brand. The trick is creating a unique experience for your customers, so they become truly invested in your business and will advocate on your behalf.

To find out more, we spoke to Jeanette Gibson, VP Community & Customer Experience at Hootsuite. Here, she shares 3 steps you can use to build #brandlove around your business:

1. Get to know your customers

Learn your customer care-abouts and pain points. The first step is to take a step back and listen. Luckily, social media allows us to listen in on relevant conversations in a scalable manner. This allows you to narrow in on the key interests, communication styles, and issues of your customers.Here at Hootsuite, we use geo-targeted searches to learn more about our customers in different regions. From here we’ll add our key customers to Twitter Lists so that we can seamlessly engage, share, and retweet their content.

Now you’re better equipped to serve your customer community. Your customers are talking about you on social media, whether you choose to take advantage of this or not is up to you.

2. Flex your personality

Once you’ve learned more about your customers, you need to equip yourself with an ongoing engagement model with your audience. This is different for every business. At Hootsuite, we maintain a 24/7 engagement model where we’re interacting with our community all day every day. After all, social never sleeps.

Take your business’s personality into account with every customer interaction. Are you a fun-loving and casual business or more professional? Whichever you are, consistency is crucial.

Context is also important. Are you talking to a long term, loyal client, or a new somewhat sceptic customer. Consider using slight shifts in the tone of your messaging and always tailor it to your audience.

3. Create culture around engagement or ‘Create an Engaging Environment’

There’s a time and a place for different mediums for engagement. However, when it comes to building a loyal community around your business, it’s important to provide a mixture of online and offline experiences.

At Hootsuite, we use a combination of channels and resources to interact with our audience. This includes private communities for different customer groups (for example, our 850+ Hootsuite Ambassadors). You may not require a private community, but find other ways to surprise and delight them.

Offer specialized programs for your regular participants. Exclusivity is key here! You want to create scarcity and demand for these programs, or else they don’t work. Consider building in ways to uplevel their reputations. Finally, you need to reward these community members both online and offline. At Hootsuite we do everything from offering LinkedIn recommendations to our Ambassadors, to meeting our customers in real life at Hootups or other events. When you take a digital relationship offline, you completely shift the connection and garner immediate brand equity.

 

Learn more at Hootsuite’s #Brandlove Masterclass during Social Media Week in New York City, hosted by Hootsuite’s Jeanette Gibson, VP, Community and Customer Experience and Dr. William Ward Director, Education Strategy. Join the conversation with #HootSMW.

Date: Tues Feb 24

Time: 1:00 – 2:00pm EST

Location: Highline Stages – Innovate Stage