I have been getting back into the world of “Social” since returning from my trip and was questioned by my friends as to why I had not been very “Social” online whilst I’d been travelling. When the phone operators finally sort out offering some decent rates for mobile internet connections I will be one of the first converts but unfortunately the phone rates alone were £1.80 per minute from South America and I needed a break anyway.

 

For those who have been able to take advantage of wi-fi zones whilst on the move there have been some interesting developments. I read in Wired this week[1] that mobile use of Facebook has now climbed to 200 million members which is a staggering 40% of their base and it’s interesting to see which fans are using which platform (Android, iphone etc.) when they make a comment. I’m just waiting for Facebook to share that aggregate data with us so we can prioritise which apps to build first.

 

A staggering statistic I also read in the same Wired article from Comscore was that Facebook already accounts for 23% of all display ad impressions in the US, compared with just 2.7% for Google. I mentioned some months ago that Search was going Social and even in the UK 1.75m users were referred from Facebook to one of the top 200 ecommerce sites in October 2010 which is about 7% of the total UK Facebook population. I noticed that Google and iphone have been busy reorganising their executive teams ready for the battle ahead with Facebook.

 

There are more brands now starting to realise the power of Social and my prediction is that this is the year that the Community Manager will be the person with most of the customer insight, driving the future CRM plans for the business and also sharing power with their “Customer Champions” recruited from the fan base to help drive up greater engagement levels.

 

However the biggest challenge is not only building the number of fans but developing engagement with them. We all know that often 95% or more are happy to lurk but not to contribute in online communities. This is why we have to innovate to find new and easy ways for them to take part in the online conversation.

 

Kevin Partner at PCPro[2] likens Facebook to the AOL walled garden and talks about the opportunities to build games in Facebook to achieve better engagement. There are now brands which are taking the lessons learned in the gaming world such as rewarding those who engage with the right quality of content. I can see that all the lessons learned from games such Farmville, which has been very successful, will help to improve engagement and understanding of our customers. As Facebook has now encouraged us to make the page our homepage and to hang out within their walls I can see that major advertisers (e.g. Unilever and Proctor & Gamble) are looking at new ways to engage with their key audiences. As Kevin rightly points out we just have to remember that the walls may come down at any time restricting applications and the costs of reaching the fans within them may go up at any time.

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Having just returned from my very enjoyable travels around Columbia I thought I would take the opportunity to tackle a topic that comes up each year. As we set our New Year resolutions and settle on our agreed annual objectives I wanted to share some thoughts on how to determine if you have the right skills in your team for the year ahead.

 

Several clients are keen to know how to structure their marketing departments in light of the challenges and opportunities that social media brings so I thought I’d discuss a few new roles that have emerged and some of the skill sets you may be looking for this year. You may recall last year that I talked about the emerging role of the Chief Listening Officer[1] which has come to light in companies such as Dell and others.

 

In this blog I talk about the importance of data mining expertise and making sure that customer feedback and intelligence gleaned from social media is fed to the right part of your organisation so it can be acted upon. In addition there is also a need to be monitoring the conversations that are going on about your brand and market and there are a number of solutions out there which can help to do this in addition to the free tools like Google Alerts. Fresh Minds have two helpful free whitepapers which evaluate how good each monitoring tool is.[2]

 

The other key skills that I think you really need which may be already sitting in your existing customer service team and need to be leveraged are those of community management. The role of Community Manager is a really important one and needs people who understand relationship management and react fast to customer needs and engage with customers in a compelling and personable way. The need to have guidelines is important but the Community Manager is someone who has a free rein to be themselves and is not bootstrapped with too many brand guidelines which restricts them from using certain words but is given a Social Media Policy which gives them concrete examples of how to handle each type of situation they are faced with but without being over prescriptive. They are likely to be the Customer Champion within the organisation campaigning for changes which will win them repeat business and some new friends.

 

People buy from people who are a pleasure to communicate with and sometimes we forget about the importance of the quality of our conversations. Columbia is a great example of best practice – their charming people welcome you to their country at every opportunity and respond with a smile and “con mucho gusto (with pleasure) to most customer requests.

 

There is much we can learn from our South American colleagues to improve our online dialogue. I’m not sure if many budgets will stretch to South American customer training for our new breed of Community Managers. However I understand they have a booming customer service business, providing Spanish customer service agents overseas and I now know why. 

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