Managing Shareholder Engagement on Facebook
Cord Blood America, Inc. (OTCBB:CBAI) is one of the over 350 companies we track in our ongoing research study on how public companies are using Twitter for Investor Relations. They use Twitter to keep their followers up to date on both company and industry-related news and overall do a great job of engaging with their followers on this channel.
Similarly, they also use Facebook to connect and engage with shareholders and also populate this channel with company news, frequently post commentary on happenings in their industry and provide links to relevant sites.
So in a continuing effort to share how public companies are using social networks, I contacted Mike and Trina Elliott of NETGENPR, who helped CBAI develop their social media strategy. Of particular interest to me is how they manage their Facebook community; on the discussion board one of the topics is entitled “Removed Posts Board” where they archive the posts deemed inappropriate under the Discussion Guidelines and Terms of Use and give the reasons why they were removed.
What follows is a discussion with Mike who is Co-Founder & Head of Digital Strategy. We talked about how CBAI’s strategy unfolded, how success was measured and how the “removed posts board” evolved.
SJ: You predominantly work with OTC clients – can you take us through a case study on Cord Blood?
ME: Sure, Cord Blood was officially our first public company client. Their CEO, Matthew Schissler deserves a lot of credit for being an early believer in social media and embraced the possibilities with a great deal of patience and determination. He was also committed from the beginning to providing us with the time and resources we required to do our job. I don’t think I can stress enough how important it is to have buy-in from the CEO. There are those that may want to give social media a try but lack the resolve and patience to stick with it when no meaningful ROI has materialized after a month or two of activity. It really requires some vision and patience from Management and Mr. Schissler had both.
We knew a comprehensive strategy was going to be one of the keys for success. Setting up a Facebook Fanpage and a Twitter account and then feeding in some automated content mixed with random posts or Tweets just wasn’t going to cut it. There had to be a sense of purpose and social media objectives had to somehow relate directly back to business objectives.
The depth of the analysis is important on many levels but most of all it gives us a common reference when strategizing about communication. We can train, facilitate and in some cases manage the social media channels for our clients but at the end of the day we can’t tell their story for them. We also can’t build relationships with their constituency for them either.
After conducting our initial audit we formulated a two pronged engagement plan consisting of:
- Content component which was comprised of the digital multi-media content stream we would produce and distribute online; and an
- Interactive component which consisted of the conversation and community building for the brand.
Social Media Engagement Plan
For our initial course of action we used (and do for all of our clients) a document called the Social Media Engagement Plan (SME). The SME is the roadmap that helps our team and the client’s team stay on the same page with regard to social media communication. It also serves as a reminder of the purpose of the engagement from the standpoint of how it benefits the client’s target audience. In many cases the tools and technology take center stage and there is a lack of focus on purpose. We try to help our clients focus on the reason they’re occupying the online social networking space to begin with and what value they will strive to bring to their audience.
Once that purpose is articulated, the SME breaks down the objectives by target audience segment, message theme, platforms used, distribution strategy, media type, topics and complementary interactive strategy. Each objective is built around fulfilling a brand need and an audience need so they align communication in a mutually beneficial manner.
SJ: How do you manage their Facebook Community?
ME: The deployment of social media tools implies a desire to serve your ecosystem in a diplomatic manner conducive to positive social interaction. Within any social setting there are inevitable questions, comments, etc. that materialize which have the potential to cause alarm and discomfort. Our intention as we help our clients build communities is to present to them the possibilities that community can provide long term.
Online conversations need to be managed diplomatically, openly, honestly and in a neutral manner. If this is done consistently it will begin to earn trust for the brand. Organizations must understand that people trust the opinions of their peers more than any other because they’ve been subjected to subterfuge from the commercial realm for so long that they’ve come to expect it.
CBAI was very proactive on Twitter announcing and linking updates on Facebook. Soon after they gained a substantial fan base on Facebook and some fans became quite active on the discussion board. Some comments emerged that needed to be moderated which made it necessary to publish a set of Terms and Conditions to layout the expectations for appropriate dialogue. This provided the “rules of the road” and gave us a common reference for removal of posts which violated those Terms. We wanted the audience to get the sense that we weren’t just removing posts because they were questions that made us uncomfortable but because they violated a specific rule which had been clearly spelled out.
When someone posts a negative comment or asks a difficult question if it’s framed as constructive and addresses something specific it can be addressed and in doing so will earn trust in that community. We then decided to archive the posts and the reasons they were removed – this shows a willingness to be transparent rather than hide things or “sweep them under the rug”.
In this manner we were able to turn some detractors into advocates. While their initial posts and inquiries were uncomfortable when they saw that we were listening to their concerns it had a big impact because they just don’t expect it.
SJ: How do you measure success?
ME: Success was measured both qualitatively and quantitatively. We of course focused on Social Media Metrics, i.e. number of users, number of sources, source distribution, sentiment, retweets, postrank score, video views as well as website Metrics like visits, average visit time, traffic sources and then overlaid that data with Business Metrics.
While those metrics are important we also focused on qualitative and engagement metrics. For example Facebook provides some great traffic and engagement data whereby we were able to view post quality, number of interactions, and number of active contributors. Those numbers are a stronger indicator of success than raw follower numbers in our opinion. Since the intention is or should be to actually engage the audience in two-way dialogue.
SJ: Any words of wisdom for others looking at Facebook for IR?
ME: If the last 18 months has taught us one thing more than any other it’s that companies are going to have problems in this space unless they embrace social media in a holistic manner and incorporate it throughout the entire organization. Isolated efforts by outside agencies on behalf of brands will soon become a thing of the past in my opinion. Suffice it to say that the Agency value proposition has to be geared toward empowering organizations to take charge of their social media presence on the Web and teaching them how to formulate a best practices approach to doing so.
As we’ve also discovered most companies are initially inclined to do it themselves to at least some degree so why not help them down the most natural path. This isn’t to say that using outside Agencies initially or for supplemental support isn’t justified in some cases. What I really mean is every brand needs to take primary responsibility for its Social Media presence and establish strict guidelines for how that presence is managed. Cord Blood America has implemented the proper disclosures on its Website, it’s Facebook Fan Page in addition to creating a formal Social Media Policy. They’ve really led the way as far as I’m concerned in a compliant, best practices oriented deployment of these platforms for a public company.
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