This post is a summary of the Twitter Chat hosted by @TheSocialCMO. The guest was Wendy Clark – SVP, Integrated Marketing Communications & Capabilities at Coca-Cola, know on Twitter as @wnd. (You know she’s an early adopter because she has a three letter handle!)
I’m pretty jaded about Twitter Chats because most of them are vapid. Not this one. I went to the TheSocialCMO Blog to read the transcript of this #MMChat and discovered some great information and insights. It is pretty hard to read b/c of all the re-tweets, so I thought it worth excerpting the questions (@TheSocialCMO and answers (@wnd). Nice job all around.
Q1: What are the 7 Secrets of Social Media Success?
#1 Be Shareworthy. In a social world it’s abt an initial audience u can reach sharing ur content w/ an ultimate audience they reach
#2 Listen & Engage. Brands are listening but listening alone is not enough. We must engage in the dialog of our brands-in real time.
#3 Think big, start small, scale fast. Key to rapid innovation is testing, learning, failing, fixing – & then scaling
#4 Social’s an amplifier not a silver bullet. We’re big believers in the power of social to make everything else we’re doing better.
#5 Content is the new currency. Social network cache & success are incredibly important to teens & young adults. Create accordingly.
#6 We might be shepherds, stewards and guardians of our brands, but we no longer control them. Co-create & participate w/ your fans.
#7 Be Flawesome = awesome w/ your flaws. Consumers aren’t interested in ur corporate veneer. Brands must be real, authentic, human.
Q2: How easy or hard is it to really drive adoption of social media at a company the size of Coca-Cola?
A2: The key is supportive leadership. With our most senior leaders as believers we’ve been able to fuel change & adoption internally
A2: Another key is employee engagement. Our PR and Employee Comms teams have been masterful at training our associates
Q3: There’s been some press recently on Social not working as hard as you’d like it? Is this true? How do u determine ROI on Social?
A3: Social works really hard as an integrated part of our Connections plans. As studies point to, Social + other media = better ROI
A3: Our core metrics for social are reach, engagement, brand love & brand value. All of which we achieve through integrated plans.
A3: Social works really hard as an integrated part of our Connections plans. As studies point to, Social + other media = better ROI
Q4: You’ve also said publicly that corporations particularly have to embrace failure. Say more about this?
A4: We must fuel a company culture that accepts and learns from failure, if not we will miss key learnings as we innovate.
A4: I feel really strongly about this. Failing to learn is the real failure that I fear, not failure itself.
A4: Our CEO Muhtar Kent says it’s ok to fail once, it’s not ok to failure twice at the same thing. Not learning is the failure.
Q5: Is there a failure Coca-Cola’s made in Social that you’d like to share?
A5: Ha! How long is this chat?
A5: Plenty. That’s how you improve.
A5: Early on we replicated successful content. Of course those versions didn’t spread far. We learned originality is critical online
A5: We also thought early on that we could plan real-time engagement — turns out real-time is, er, real-time.
Q6: How does Coca-Cola feel about user generated content?
A6: I’d say 80%+ of the content & conversation online around our brands is not from us, so UGC is a big part of our engagement
A6: That said, I don’t think brands should completely delegate their proxy to consumers. The best UGC is co-created.
A6: Brands and consumers participating and co-creating together can be a 1+1=3 scenario.
Q7: Can you talk more about the innovation model Coke’s using in terms of 70/20/10?
A7: 70/20/10 is a now/new/next model to ensure we’re innovating in our marketing investment.
A7: 70/20/10 = 70% on what we know works now; 20% on things that are new to our plans; 10% on complete unknowns (next)
Q8: 61MM+ Facebook likes makes Coke FB’s largest brand fan page, how did you grow to that size?
A8: We’re humbled by the size & growth of our FB page. We don’t take it 4 granted & try to fuel a Community that’s of & for our fans
A8: #CocaCola is among the most well-known & ubiquitous brands in the world, our growth on FB has been largely organic.
A8: #CocaCola’s FB fan page typically grows by about 1MM Likes every 10-15 days.
A8: BUT! When we activate poorly or don’t put our Fans First in our FB Community our disconnects can go up by 4x. #BeShareworthy
Q9: How do you think about aggregating Social as a company operating in over 200 countries?
A9: At #CocaCola Social is executed locally. We use internal publishing tools to aggregate, clear & share good content across mrkts
A9: The currency of conversation on social networks manifests locally. It might spread globally, but social is inherently local.
Q10: Are there brands you envy in the Social space? Who do you benchmark?
A10: We envy many – we try to constantly innovate & improve in the space – b/c standing still & the status quo is unacceptable to us
A10: We had Troy Carter (@ladygaga’s manager) at our global marketing mtg. There’s much to learn from the way celebrities use Social
I have been working in and around social media since 2003 (before Twitter . . .) and this is some of the best advice I have seen.
@tomob
Posted by tomob 
A Human Voice 