At Next Berlin 2012 Will Sansom of Contagious Communication spoke about People Power. The title of his presentation was ‘From Social Marketing to Social Business’.
Today’s smartest brands are not those which do social media well, but rather those which are capable of behaving and doing business in a fundamentally social way.
Will gave a number of examples of how social tools are now being added to business on all levels, from product design to e-commerce. More than just another channel that you can use for promotion.
During his presentation we got an interesting view on how you can use social in your company. That is why wanted to do a short interview to go a little bit deeper into the topic so you can see how you can become social as a company.
Watch the interview with Will Sansom and learn why it is important to transfer your business from just social marketing to a social company:
Twitter for keeping stock at Hippo
Will Sansom shares the Hippo success story that uses Twitter in a totally different way:
Hippo, a snack food in India, which turned to Twitter when it learnt that consumers couldn’t get hold of Hippo Baked Munchies. Distributed to over 400,000 stores across India, stocks kept running low or running out, because the snack proved so popular. Hippo asked consumers to tweet @HelloMeHippo whenever they couldn’t find the snacks in stores.
The brand promised to re-stock any empty store within hours. With tweets coming in from 45 cities around India, Hippo established a central Twitter monitoring operation which passed stock details directly onto the sales and distribution arm of the business. Hippo then notified its followers once it was in stock again at that location.
This boosted sales by 76%.
See Most Contagious 2010 (pdf) or mxmindia.com/2011/10/keeping-stock-with-twitter/
See this video on the case study:
Consumers profiting from showing your products
Another example Will used was that of Vancl Star http://offbeatchina.com/a-revolutionary-move-vancl-tires-out-e-commerce-2-0 shoot a picture of yourself with Vancl and get a commission.
Vancl, China’s biggest online garment retailer, launched an e-commerce 2.0 campaign March 2011. The campaign, Vancl Star, follows a Web 2.0 business model. Users can register a free star page at star.vancl.com, a social networking community. The site allows users to show off Vancl purchases and new ideas for how to mix and match clothing.
Each photo contains links to sites where users can purchase the featured garments. When people click and buy through links in your pictures, you will earn 10 percent on each sale.
A similar example is that of Magazine Você with franchises on Facebook and Orkut https://www.magazinevoce.com.br/
Watch the video of Magazine Voce
You can find Will Samson on the Contagious website, LinkedIn and Facebook. He is not active on Twitter but you can follow the Twitter account of Contagious magazine @contagiousmag.
Share your case study
For small business it is easier to use social media in all parts of your business. Do you have a great example how you use social media more than just promotion or marketing?
