The Conversation Manager

Monthly Archives: March 2011

• Social media marketing creates new coordination challenges for global brands.

  by Christian Lemanon March 31, 2011in the categories Branding, Conversations

  [By Christian Leman and Joseph Halverson - Many thanks to Suzanne Burley]

  The session “Social Media: Just US?” last month at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas offered a valuable insight on international social media.

  On the one hand, global brands are increasingly relying on social media marketing, which is all about conversations. Marketers are eager to leverage the amazing collective intelligence accumulated by online communities to gather market intelligence, to support customers, to use fans as promoters, to test products or campaigns. Doing so, they also realize that these conversations require real people to interact; social media is not the place for scripted dialog and automated responses. Only local teams that can perfectly apprehend the nuances of language and culture can interact with communities at the proper level of sophistication. In addition, several countries such as China, South Korea, Brazil, and The Netherlands have adopted country‑specific social media platforms as alternatives to Facebook. It is often impossible to manage those platforms otherwise than locally.

  Tags: Advertising, Conversation management, Conversations, Facebook, International, Social Media, SXSW Conference Read more »

• Personal branding through conversations

  by Steven Van Belleghemon March 31, 2011in the categories Conversations, Skills, Social Web

  In these social media times, we are all thinking about our personal brand in some way or another. In this post, I want to share a philosophy on how to deal with personal branding in a structural way.

  Tags: personal branding Read more »

• Smarter Marketing to Mobile Users

  by Timothy Moutonon March 30, 2011in the categories Mobile

  The time is now to start with Mobile Marketing. The growth of the group of smartphone users that shop and search for local information; offers many opportunities for creative and clever marketers. Google has put some data into a lovely infographic.

  

  Tags: google, infographic, mobile marketing Read more »

• It’s about time we start re-inventing direct marketing

  by Polle de Maagton March 30, 2011in the categories Conversations

  
  
  Direct mailings and direct marketing face some pretty interesting challenges. New technologies make it easier than ever to be personal and relevant. It’s focus on compelling copy and converting tactics gives the industry some great skills to enter the digital era. It is tempting, however, to adopt suboptimal direct marketing gimmicks, as was shown brilliantly by Sander Spolspoel in his Proximus clip (Dutch language).

  With cases Swedish Postal Service Magical Christmas Cards, KLM Surprise, BPost SMS cards and some other less obvious cases to illustrate how the industry could and should change.

  Tags: Conversations, direct mailings, direct marketing, polle de maagt, presentations, SlideShare Read more »

• Adidas most successful German brand in social media

  by Clo Willaertson March 29, 2011in the categories Conversations, Skills, Social Web

  According to a survey by communication agency Vierpartner, German sportswear company Adidas is the most popular German brand in social media worldwide. Adidas has 17.6mn of internet fans, subscribers and followers worldwide and is thus the company using social media online most successfully. Adidas employs 25 staff for its conversation management, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The internet is the company’s key marketing medium, especially to reach consumers under 19. The survey by communication agency Vierpartner includes the DAX 30 companies.

  Top 5 German brands:

  1. Adidas 17.632.221
  2. Siemens 10.351.950
  3. Volkswagen 8.966.364
  4. BMW 6.411.064
  5. Deutsche Telekom 5.683.377

   

  • Facebook.com/adidas
  • YouTube.com/adidas
  • Twitter.com/adidasrunning

  Source: Social Media: Adidas hat die meisten Fans im Netz @ wiwo.de
  Orginal post: http://www.conversity.be/blog/adidas-most-successful-german-brand-in-social-media/

  Tags: adidas, germany, Social Media Read more »

• The conversation manager, working 9 to 5?

  by Ilse Himschooton March 28, 2011in the categories Conversations, Skills
  

  Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with some friends of mine. They were a bit complaining about some colleagues of them who were working after office hours, during night and thus arriving late at the office every day.

  It reminded me of Dirk Dewulf, Conversation Manager at Rabobank, telling how he solved a crisis online at New Years’ eve: (/2010/01/26/Rabobank-participates-in-conversations-and-stops-a-crisis/) and how he spent New Years Day monitoring the forum and answering consumers’ questions.

  Tags: Conversation management, working hours Read more »

• Are you your fans’ fan?

  by Steven Van Belleghemon March 28, 2011in the categories Conversations
  

  Late November Prince gave a concert at the Antwerp concert hall “Het sportpaleis”. The press and 15,000 ecstatic fans unanimously declared that Prince gave his best and the concert was top.

  A small group of diehard fans was even more enthusiastic however; a few days earlier Prince had given them a surprising pre-show in a small Brussels concert hall. Those who were present had the evening of their lives. Apparently, there was dancing on stage and the ambiance was unique…

  Tags: Brand fans, Prince Read more »

• Toyota sets the price of the car via Facebook

  by Steven Van Belleghemon March 25, 2011in the categories Social Web

  In Australia, Toyota offers its fans the chance to buy the new FJ Cruiser cheaper if a sufficient number of people ‘Like’ the brand on a new mini site. Each time a consumer clicks on the ‘Like’ button, the car price drops 5 Australian dollars. This car’s catalogue price is $50,334. Toyota is prepared to sell the car for a minimum price of $30,000. But to get there, at least 4,000 people have to click on ‘Like’ before March 28. If there are more ‘Likes’, Toyota will add a few free extras as well.

  Tags: Toyota Read more »

• Search Marketing is changing

  by Timothy Moutonon March 25, 2011in the categories Conversations, Skills

  Google is no longer the only search engine to focus on in a search marketing strategy. Yes, Google still has more than 70% market share, but a lot of searches that start on Google end up on other platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Youtube has become the 2nd largest “search engine” in the United States.

  Tags: content, content marketing, google, search marketing, SEO, social search Read more »

• Why I think the entire privacy discussion is pointless!

  by Steven Van Belleghemon March 24, 2011in the categories Conversations

  Recently on the news: “A company fires an employee after posting a negative message about his employer on Facebook”. What happened? An employee told his friends on Facebook how dissatisfied he was with his employer. The employer was reading along and, based on that message, decided to say farewell to its employee. To some people it seemed like the world briefly stopped spinning.

  Tags: companies, consumers, Facebook, Privacy Read more »