Red Bricks Media: Glee Live and Social Media Marketing - Vincent Ma - MediaBizBloggers

I'm a Gleek. For the uninitiated, a Gleek is a fan of Fox's musical comedy-drama TV show that focuses on a ragtag group of teenagers in an Ohio high school show choir. The show features great music and as a former band geek, I find it particularly easy to root for this band of misfits. The show is wildly popular, boasts more than 5.5MM Facebook fans and completed a successful live tour across the US earlier this summer; a tour that, I'm not embarrassed to say, I attended at Radio City Musical Hall. As a Product Manager in a digital marketing agency, I couldn't help appreciate how well of an oiled brand machine Glee is. There were definitely aspects of the Glee live show phenomena that translates well to a successful social media campaign.

Listen to your audience

The opening act of the Glee Live show was a dance troupe called the LXD. Each LXD member had a routine to showcase their skills which included a dance competition between two of the more acrobatic dancers. The dancer that received the loudest applause was crowned the winner.

We've all read that success in social media requires companies to be actively listening to their customers and developing a deep understanding of the conversations around their brand and where these conversations are taking place. There is a plethora of paid solutions and free solutions that allow brands to actively monitor social media mentions around their brand across the social web. However, technology is just one piece of the equation. That's the easy part. How do you make sense of all that chatter around your brand or product? Beyond the technology, here are two additional elements of social media monitoring that we see that are important in extracting maximum value of social media listening and social media in general.

Data Analysis

o Context is key: A number or metric in isolation is a sad sight. As with any other data analysis, three tactics that helps to add color to any metric are (1) analyze time over time, (2) set baselines and target goals to track over time and (3) compare against your competitors results and general industry terms.

o Coordinate to understand the why: Seeing a spike in mentions or followers is usually a good thing. But when most people see a spike the natural reaction is to ask why. This is where coordination within your organization (e.g. PR team for press releases, Marketing for new promotions or sales, and Product Management for new product launches or patches) comes in handy. Set up systems that pull in metadata from blog RSS feeds, internal project management systems, and advertising platforms to automate some of this integration.

o Sentiment Analysis: Currently, automated sentiment is spotty at best. It is typically not actionable, but trended analysis of metrics like a Net Sentiment Score (% of positive mention of total - % of all other mentions of total) is a quick and dirty brand health metric which can show how your brand is performing across time. In terms of qualitative analysis, there is nothing that replaces (at least for now) having smart folks in your organization taking periodic looks at your conversation streams. You don't have to review it every day, but don't forget to set triggers in your system to alert users of outliers to designated employees to stay on top of things.

Organizational Factors

o Share the love: Listening is great, but if the customer insights derived from your listening program is stuck in one part your organization, there is a lot of value lost. Make sure that all the groups within your organization have easy access to the social media intelligence data provided by your social media listening platform. Be an evangelist for the data. Consider a weekly or monthly digest of customer insights distributed to others in your company.

o Enable people: Don't forget you're listening for a purpose. One of the hallmarks of the classic Total Quality Management system popularized by Japanese automakers is the idea that anyone on the production line can stop the process if he or she notices. We're not advocating that everyone should have his or her hand in your twitter account, but make sure that all your employees are empowered to use and benefit from social media intelligence. Consider making it a part of your regular brainstorming sessions to include insights from your social media listening program

*As a friendly reminder, don't forget about tracking and analytics tools. Make sure your social media campaigns are properly tagged with the appropriate tacking codes.

Be part of the show

After the impressive opening act, a number of Glee performers dressed in cheerleading uniforms started to handout airline sickness bags to the audience. We soon realize that the bags were a prop for a pre-recorded video that kicks off the show. The narrative of the video and the show in general was designed to pull the audience into the world of Glee.

Companies with sound social media strategy understand the shift from one way communication to fostering and maintaining dialogs with customers. Effective social media marketing is about influencing and actively engaging with your customers. At the very least, make sure your content (blogs, statuses, videos, etc.) is fresh and relevant. For your social network pages, consider going beyond simple "house" apps provided by the social network and experiment with rich media applications such as branded games or integrated contests. Our clients have seen substantial lifts in engagement, traffic and email captures when implementing Red Bricks Media powered sweepstakes and quiz apps.

Show me the money

As the show ended and we started making our way out of the venue, I noticed a number of strategically placed merchandising booths flanking all the exits. Gleeks were lining up to buy t-shirts, posters, and everything in between. Fox had spent a lot of time, resources and effort building a passionate group of followers and are not shy about monetizing the Glee fan base.

It is easy to fall in love with volume metrics like # of fans or followers, but marketers have to have a social media strategy grounded in business goals like increasing sales. A recent Morpace study cited by eMarketer showed that 41% of Facebook users join company fan pages to show their network the products they support while 37% join specifically to receive coupons and discount offers. There is a great opportunity for traditional paid media and e-commerce in the social space. If you sell online, consider the following options:

· Paid Media: Facebook paid ads or Twitter promoted tweets. We have seen a number of our clients drive a considerable amount of conversions at very low costs when compared to traditional search engines. Coupled with rich demographic and interests based targets, Facebook paid ads is something most companies should at least experiment with.

· Social eCommerce: Many technology SaaS vendors provide retailers with a cost effective way of adding shopping and checkout services directly in your social networking page. In addition, couponing and promotions applications can be a great way to clear excess inventory, drive sales or reward your most loyal fans.

You don't have to be a Gleek to understand the benefits of a strong brand and a passionate fan base. You have a great product and your passionate supporters are out there on the social web; make sure you have the tools and resources in place to connect and interact with them.

Vincent Ma is The Product Guy at Red Bricks Media. He is an experienced product manager with a proven track record of developing processes and applications that drive value for companies of all sizes. He can be reached at vma@redbricksmedia.com

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