damage control – Momentum

Online strategies aren’t just about setting up accounts on the right platforms – your strategy needs to involve true engagement.

Driving online community engagement requires planning, risk management, and a cohesive objective that is clearly stated to all of your key staff members.

1. Word-Of-Mouth Only Goes So Far

You need a plan. Simply signing up for an account on any given social platform does not mean your organization has fulfilled its obligation. Social connections via your chosen networks are not obligations but opportunities to engage directly with your members, prospects, fans, or clients.

As your message spreads and your community grows, how will you feed the appetite for more? Will you be equipped as an organization to create and disseminate your message?

This direct connection requires a clear plan with regard to infrastructure, integration, and, most importantly, a set of rules and policies for disseminating your message. There is nothing more important than a planned and coordinated process for responding to inquiries, comments, and requests.

2. Identify Your Advocates and Feed Them

The key to any community is the full engagement of its members. Early on in your campaign you will discover those advocates who are willing to share your message and push that message to their respective networks. With every Facebook post, tweet, or blog post, your advocates wait to share what your campaign is providing.

Gaining the trust of your online advocates and providing them with a continued stream of shareable content provides ever expanding reach; in turn pulling in more campaign advocates from their respective networks.

Reward their efforts. Recognize and identify your advocates publicly. Thank them whenever, wherever, and however you can. These individuals are the backbone of your campaign’s success.

3. Trust Your Community

Astute observers of successful online campaigns understand the nuances of online communication. Well planned, effectively executed online campaigns have assessed the risks at hand and understand how to mitigate those risks when required.

Just as your community trusts and advocates your campaign, you in turn must trust your community when negative comments or posts arise. Well-fed advocates who have been provided with the right tools will assist in regulating your community – most times without direct intervention.

Ask yourself before you begin: Do you understand how to mitigate risk? Can you identify those in your community who are your advocates? Can you identify those in your community that are Influencers?

4. Rules Of Engagement – Rules / Fears / Clarity Over Control

The rule of online engagement has shifted, placing the power of the message in the hands of the viewer, consumer, or visitor. The intention of a Rules Of Engagement policy is not to handcuff those posting and engaging online.

The intention is to provide a set of guidelines for disseminating content, insuring all messaging is on brand, on target, and true to the core message. Direct brand connections create deep inherent value and keep visitors and advocates coming back.

Community engagement using social media requires a shift in the way organizations view themselves and their relationship with the public. The shift is happening on a cultural, organizational, and individual level. Before committing resources to a social media program, organizations need to know how to mitigate the risks while maximizing the rewards.

The first step is to create a safe space for staff, volunteers, and other stakeholders through clear, effective social media policies. Clarity over control.

When everyone involved knows the purpose of the organization’s social media initiatives—if each individual is clear about his or her role in achieving that purpose and the parameters in which they can participate—those social media initiatives will be that much more successful from the start.

Do you understand the nuances of your community? Have you provided your key internal staff and your community manager with a clear community engagement objective?

5. Tools Don’t Build Communities – People Do

Many times online community engagement continues to fall back on the tools an organization commandeers to share their brand message. However, those tools don’t drive themselves. It’s the people that organize and implement the campaign who are the key to a successful campaign.

Your community manager, the advocates, and the influencers will make or break the success of your online initiatives.

Can you identify those in your community who are your advocates? Can you identify those in your community that are Influencers? Have you empowered your key internal staff with the tools they require to create a successful online campaign?

…if it stands for something you can’t stand behind.

The image appearing on social feeds across the globe is one that is still hard to erase.

The shock is still palpable to masses of Kashi cereal lovers, including myself, who woke up over the past few months to the fact that the all “natural” breakfast food they loved and trusted was found by the USDA to contain genetically modified soy, and that certain grains contained pesticides that are known carcinogens and hormone disruptors.

Undoubtedly consumers everywhere need to wake up to how our food is grown and processed and to take responsibility for what we put on our family’s tables. That’s a matter for another article.

But, from a marketing perspective, why was there such a massive consumer backlash on social media?

Kelloggs – the corporate parent of Kashi – maintained it did nothing wrong. Finally, on Facebook, they blamed food supply and then the USDA for not regulating the term “natural.”

Kashi clearly missed the point. They did not understand and value the true connection they had enjoyed with consumers all this time.

Consumers felt betrayed because they believed Kashi shared their values. The products were being marketed as “natural” at a premium price point ($5-$8.00) through reputable health food and organic retailers. Health professionals touted the benefits of switching to Kashi cereals to their patients. Friends told their friends, and so on. Kashi was a company you could trust to help you live a healthier life.

Instead of understanding the power of this connection with their followers, Kashi remained silent for days. When they did speak, Kashi went on the defensive and denied wrongdoing instead of taking responsibility in a head-on approach crisis as a “partner in nutrition.”

Kashi missed a priceless opportunity to share the values – even in a time of crisis- with the one group of people with whom they had an opportunity to build consensus; people who are relatively aware of and are concerned about the presence of unhealthy ingredients in the food chain; people who were already putting money where their mouths are.

What can be learned: It is so important to take stock in what makes your brand tick. Are you fortunate enough to share certain beliefs with those who use your product? Do you fully appreciate how your consumers view your brand? Does your brand live up to its actual or perceived brand promise? Have you reviewed every aspect of your operation to ensure all the elements are in alignment and you can stand behind what you stand for? And are you prepared with a proper social media crisis plan when the unthinkable happens?

If you answered “no” to any of the afore mentioned questions, you had better get ready or risk getting “Kashi-ed!”

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