What brands will need to be careful about as Social Media grows!

As social media becomes a buzzword in the Indian Mainstream Media, more brand managers will be calling more Digital Agencies to craft more strategies that include social media. Some brands may get it right (Mitsubishi did & the Royal Challengers seem to be getting it right as well) and some brands may go horribly wrong – examples are Virgin Mobile who started but then stopped functioning and living in social media (example listed below where the brand hasn’t logged in for 5 months). Manu Prasad also has a good post on brands getting it right on social media.

Some other brands may get affiliated with the wrong kind of partners who do can go into practices such as spamming or engage in mere eye wash where the brand does not go beyond the personal network of the social media practitioner (in many cases a power social media user – a lot of the people initially attached to social media are guilty of the same, yours truly included. One really has to question people when they float group of 500 members for a mass brand and then boast about ‘engagement’ on it) – an example is one Titan Fast Track community i saw on Facebook managed by an agency who is spearheaded by a popular blogger.

The most important thing that brand managers need to be careful about is the handover process when the change social media agencies. I heard of a recent case in the handover of the Royal Challengers Bangalore account where the existing agency refused to hand over the Facebook Fan Page admin rights to the new agency. Maybe the handover process can be a part of paper work.

I also think that it will be increasingly important for brand managers to be a part of the admin process/ be the creators of the pages/social media accounts and thus the effective owners or else it leaves too much power in the hands of the social media agency who in India especially have been behaving in an extremely unprofessional manner.

Ofcourse the whole idea of gearing your organization for social media goes way beyond just creation of social media properties – that’s something that anyone can do. The real power of social strategy is leveraged when employee, partner, consumer, supplier are all connected socially to create fluidity and understanding and help accentuate the overall business process. In terms of a marketing perspective, idea led social media campaigns that have touchpoints of intake and promotion at multiple media outlets are likely to succeed. Having said that, there is some importance in social media properties and it seems like brand managers are not as aware/ not bothered about ownership issues at this point of time.

As social media agencies, closure consulting also becomes an important part of the process of activating companies on social mediums. Closure consulting would typically involve:

i) Handover procedures of social media properties built to another agency/ to the brand manager.

ii) Creating processes of automation of content generation if another agency has not been appointed.

iii) Deliberation on demolition of social media properties built if they are just going to be left aside.

Closure consulting should also include a brand audit in the online space.

For example Virgin Mobile India(smooth criminal) has 2 Twitter accounts. They don’t talk to each other. Both have been managed by different agencies and showcase a confused brand voice online.

As a final step, closure by social media agencies should include solidification and consolidation of all properties built on social media.

This largely includes binding activities together.

If the brand owns a website then the database transfer is another element. If the website is moving from a ’social media’ led website to another form (simple brochure/ beyond Web 2.0) then also, the transition needs to be put in place in the right fashion.

This is something brand managers can consider and social media agencies can follow. Is there anything else one would add for the steps to be taken by agencies during the closure  of accounts?

Cross posted on my personal blog