A recent study by Weber Shandwick and Forbes Insights shows that internal focus and consistency of vision are areas where substantial improvement must be made by most brands.
Most executives are still looking outwards to external forces - winning the approval of the right media, achieving a target number of “Likes” on Facebook and dominating coverage of certain topics. As a result most organizations still struggle to build a brand with a distinctive social identity.
Global brand executives believe that sociability is growing rapidly as a contributor to a brand’s overall reputation, from 52 percent today with a projected estimate of 65 percent three years from now, according to the report.
Yet, a large majority (84 percent) report that their brand’s sociability is not yet up to world class brand standards, despite the fact that nearly all of them (87 percent) say they have a social media brand strategy.
Key Takeaways:
- Put your brands in motion: World class companies do more than build an inventory of social media tools. They apply their tools in more social ways than the average global company. For example, they are 44 percent more likely to offer brand-related mobile content, 43 percent more likely to participate in “check-in” apps, 41 percent more likely to do proximity marketing and 40 percent more likely to have their own branded YouTube channel.
- Integrate or die: World class organizations are much better integrators of brand personality — they are nearly twice as likely as other organizations to have a consistent brand personality across all social and traditional media channels and are much more likely to include a social media element to their traditional print or broadcast messaging.
- Make social central: 61 percent of world class brands have a dedicated social media strategist or manager, vs. 41 percent of all global brands. According to one global executive respondent, “The most important thing we can do is to centrally plan social media activities across all channels to amplify key messages.”
- Listen more than you talk: World class companies fine-tune their messages to customers and integrate what is on their fans’ minds into their brand stories. Nearly twice as many world class brands have changed a product or service based on fan recommendations compared to the average global brand.
- Count what matters — meaningful engagement: World class brands place more weight than other brands on their number of contributors when measuring social media effectiveness. Social contributors are ranked #1 by world class companies but #6 by other companies as a key metric.
- Think global: Executives managing world class brands consider global reach as important as customer service as a driver of corporate reputation while the average global executive ranks global reach last.
- Go outside to get inside: World class companies are nearly twice as likely as average global companies to engage outside support to measure their brand’s social performance.
- Be vigilant: To protect their social brand integrity, world class brands are always on high alert. They are 85 percent more vigilant since Wikileaks has been in the news and are 58 percent more likely to be concerned about privacy violations.
View the report's Executive Summary
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