Will King, founder of King of Shaves, on why social media is changing the rules of engagement for marketers
Social media is enjoying explosive growth, and as brands and companies struggle to embrace what this means to them (and how they use it to grow their business) I’ll give you an idea of what we’re doing at King of Shaves.
I’ve been ‘blogging’ since 2001. Back then, not many did, but it seemed an easy way to give people an insight into King of Shaves: what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and putting a face to a name. And the best thing? Blogging is free (well, it takes a bit of my free time) and posts get search indexed by Google, which, if you reference your brand, helps with search engine optimisation (SEO).
Facebook started to gather major momentum in 2006-8 and now has over 420 million people engaging in 'digital dialogue' worldwide. Through its ad target mechanism, adverts can be served to people you want to see them – unlike old-fashioned ‘brand broadcast’, i.e. TV advertising, where the return on investment (ROI) could be difficult to ascertain, the importance of C2C (consumer-to-consumer) comment, recommendation and criticism of brands cannot be underestimated.
The only issue is that marketers aren’t in control of the conversation, consumers are. So you’d better have a great product or service and earn love in the connected community. And, if you don't use advertising (but build up audiences via fanpages) it’s free.
Twitter is also hugely powerful; as long as you’re clear why you’re using it. I post largely on shaving and business related items, using language that we can own, and have built up 1,600 followers who are 'genuine followers'. Twitter’s all about quality, and building quantity. My Twitter feed (I tweet at www.twitter.com/KingofShaves) drops into my facebook page, and I use it for all manner of stuff, from customer care to hiring people (seriously!). It’s free too.
The advent of social media is a huge game-changer, for brands, for marketing and advertising agencies and for consumers. For the first time, consumers can share opinions and comments without the intervention of a moderator. So be honest, talk about useful and interesting stuff, use it to love your customers, and in turn, your customers will use the ‘word of mouse’ to tell others about you.
It’s the future.
Will King is the founder and CEO of King of Shaves. www.shave.com