A recent awards show indicated how firms are now using social media to promote themselves

INDIVIDUALS USE Facebook and Twitter to share their lives with friends and family, they don’t expect a return on investment.

For businesses, though, the only reason companies invest in social media is to connect with more customers and ultimately sell more stuff.

So which companies are making the best use of social media to promote their businesses?

Singled out for praise at the recent Social Media Awards was mobile phone network Meteor. This wasn’t a huge surprise, as Meteor brands itself as “your social network” and the company’s primary target market is young people.

It follows that Meteor has to have an impressive digital presence to support the brand identity.

In practical terms, making the most of social media can mean leveraging off mass marketing such as television advertising.

For instance, Meteor’s TV commercial last Christmas centred on a Scrooge-type boss. This was backed up with edgier but related content posted on YouTube. On Facebook, Meteor devised a game using the characters from the commercials and it attracted 20,000 players.

On the effectiveness of this activity, Deirdre Currid, Meteor’s communications manager, says: “Facebook generates significant levels of traffic to the Meteor website, which saves substantial amounts in search and display advertising.”

Social media is of most relevance to transactional websites. Social features integrated on the website can improve e-commerce revenues and boost consumer loyalty. Such features include Facebook like, follow or share; e-mail to a friend; share and follow links; product reviews by customers; Twitter tweet or follow and Facebook store.

Web consultancy Amas recently reviewed 100 Irish e-commerce sites, ranking them by how many of 10 social features the websites were deploying. On the Amas criteria, the most social websites are Amazon, HMV, CD Wow and Littlewoods.

Among Irish retailers, the most sociable are Dabs, Elverys, Carrolls Irish Gifts, ESB, Meteor and Micksgarage. A fifth of the sites surveyed had no social media features at all, including, ironically, Bord Gáis, sponsor of the Social Media Awards.

Twitter is a lot simpler communication medium than Facebook but there’s no point in a business making the effort unless it garners followers.

One boss who seems to have cracked the medium is Michele Neylon, owner of website registrar and hosting provider Blacknight.

In the view of the awards judging panel, Blacknight’s Twitter activity is the best in the State in terms of marketing a small business. Blacknight has 5,900 followers, helped no doubt by the fact that Blacknight itself is following a staggering 3,500 Twitter feeds.

“Twitter is important because customers use it,” Neylon says. “If you want to market effectively, you need to be doing it where your customers are. Twitter helps us provide customer service to our clients while also helping to drive sales and get feedback on new product and service ideas.

“If you’re tweeting for business, you should spend a bit of time customising the avatar and background to fit in with your company’s branding. You need to be able to give value in some way or another in order to get people to listen to you and share your message.”

The widespread usage of social media has meant that advertising agencies have had to learn new tricks. Irish International won a couple of social media gongs after impressing with its work for Maltesers chocolates and Bank of Ireland.

The bank activity related to BofI’s sponsorship of the Leinster rugby team, with the agency overseeing a website called Blue Magic, which features lots of video clips of the Heineken Cup champs.

Leo Moore, Irish International’s planning director, notes that social media channels are always on and require constant attention. Utilising social media properly also requires brands to place control in the hands of consumers.

“This really scares brand owners as they are used to controlling the message and the conversation,” says Moore. “For this reason, it is essential to have really strong community management for all social media activity.”

Moore adds: “The last few years has seen a shift from a downloading culture to an uploading culture with people being much more comfortable creating their own content than ever before.

“We tapped into this impulse with the Blue Magic site, creating opportunities for fans to upload content both to the site and to Twitter and Facebook, helping to sustain the conversation over the season.

“The main reason consumers visit is to interact and feel a sense of belonging. It is essential to make consumers feel like they co-own the brand and can use the brand to express themselves. That way, consumers are more likely to advocate your brand. It is important for brands to act like friends, not corporations.”

For this reason, Michele Neylon cautions that many companies are better off ignoring Twitter and Facebook. “Excuse the analogy, but if you’re never going to answer the phone or make a phone call, would you continue paying line rental?”

siobhan@businessplus.ie