BYO social media? Why brand-owned social networks make sense

Marketers are no strangers to the power of social media as a tool to showcase their brand to the world. But going down the social networking sites route, their options are fairly restricted to the popular ones - Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest et al. While the brands do connect with the users and meaningful insights emerge, companies do not ‘own’ the users. A brand-owned social media site does just that. According to a report by Constellation Research, branded social networks have emerged as a powerful approach that leading marketers have launched to drive business value. “In successful businesses, marketers traditionally have had to be adept at customer acquisition and lead conversion rates. However, top marketers are now helping their brands reap the business value of using branded social networks to drive enhanced customer engagement/experience,” explains Natalie L. Petouhoff, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, author of the report. [caption id=“attachment_371751” align=“alignnone” width=“380”]  Representational image: AFP[/caption] Public social networks have failed brands on many counts, says the report. For instance, in social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, the brand doesn’t “own” the data about their customers. Those type of social networks purposely limit the information provided to brands and instead keep it for themselves in order to provide better results for paid ads or posted stories within those social networks. Also, brands can engage with customers on a superficial level and does not get access to deeper insights from the user that can make the engagement contextually relevant. A brand-owned social network can avoid all this and continue interacting with their customer base by replicating the social experience on their own website. That way, the experience is customisable and consumers are that much closer to their brands. “The democratization of technology now allows brands that once relied on social networks for communication in the social sphere to instead offer that experience themselves. A company’s website can offer photo and video uploading, commenting, contests and sharing—and is no longer governed by the whims of algorithm changes or the rise and fall of individual social media sites,” says this report. So what are the requirements for branded, private enterprise social networks? To realize the full value of company-branded and company-owned social networks, brands need to re-think enterprise social community platform and processes. Some steps that Constellation Research suggests are: - Evaluate and purposefully release the content people receive, so that it’s not overwhelming but is contextually relevant to the target audience, both inside and outside the office. - Integrate all the technologies a brand uses into one platform, so participants aren’t constantly checking multiple systems to get the latest information. - Share information to solve issues or questions, real-time and right-time, and more relevantly connect the various audiences or stakeholders. - Maximize all the intelligence and skills of the various stakeholders to assemble ideas and harness the collective knowledge, globally. -Provide data security whether the technology and system are built on premise or in the cloud. “The business value of branded social networks comes from the simple idea that forward-looking brands should reimagine their businesses as social networks of customers, fans, partners and many stakeholders who share an enthusiasm for the brand and thus provide the essential elements of a top-performing, revenue-generating brand,” says Petouhoff, summing it up.