Many companies are going wrong when it comes to social media. Lots of people go wrong with SEO and they watch these SEO training dvds. I don’t blame them, this stuff is new, it’s a complete paradigm shift, on of the biggest you’ve ever seen, so I’m with them and feel the pain. Some of the places they may stumble at first, they may just assign it to interns, they’re young, they get it, let them figure it out. Most have progressed beyond that but some get caught. They either haven’t progressed from that or some of them say, let’s just give this to the marketing department, let’s give it to the PR department, or let’s just assign three people who are focused on social media. Really that’s a big mistake, because it touches every piece of the business from customer service, to customer research, to product development, to sales to marketing, to public relations. This SEO company is important too.
It really has to come from the top down. It has to come from the CEO down because it affects everyone and get everyone on the same page. Sometimes they develop strategies that are not in line with the entire strategy of the entire business.
There are companies out there doing it well. This SEO course is doing well too. I think one company that is really interesting to look at is if you look at Ford Motor Company. Sometimes when people ask me what is the ROI of social media, I’ll give some glib response like, what is the ROI of your phone? If you took that call in from your customer, do you always give an ROI of what that is? Should you get rid of your phone? Sometimes I’ll say the ROI is that your business exists five years from now. Ford is a good example because they went full on, whole hog with social media. From the top down, the CEO said, I’m not an expert on this and I’m not a digital guy but I know that it matters more what people say about us than what we say about our product and service.
They have some smart folks in James Farley and Scott Marnie and they’ve done some fairly progressive things in social media. That is what I learned with these podcast interviews. What they’ve been able to do is essentially, what is the ROI of changing the complete culture of a company like Ford? If you look at them, they were at $2 stock where now their stock is at $13 - $14. They’re the only US based automotive manufacturer that didn’t take a government loan. There are other things beside social media, don’t get me wrong. When you look at Alan Mullaly, their CEO is speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this year. Those spots are normally reserved for the Steve Jobs of the world, the Bill Gates of the world. All of a sudden, if you had told me, the CEO of Ford is going to be speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show, if you’d told me that three years ago, I would have lost a lot of money because I would have taken that bet every day of the week.
Now they’ve changed their culture by doing some progressive things where they give a lease of their car for free for six months to a hundred influential bloggers, and say, look, if this car is rubbish, tell us it’s rubbish. All we’re requiring you to do is write about the car and take photos for six months and you have a free lease. They do this with their Ford Fiesta, and before this product even comes to the United States, they did this internationally and all of a sudden thirty percent of generation Y is aware of the Ford Fiesta before it’s even launched in the United States.
They’ve shifted their marketing spend so that twenty-five percent of their marketing spend is in the digital and social arena, whereas most auto companies spend less than ten percent in the digital and social arena. That to me showcases the beauty of social media. It is not just a one off campaign but it is a holistic approach. Now they’ve got their product developments aligned with their marketing department because they’re taking all this information. Now they’re developing a digital cockpit so that if you’re driving you can actually verbally speak and it sends out a tweet. When you pull into your garage, the music automatically syncs in with your iTunes music at home, so it syncs up with your car.
That’s some of the beauty of some of the things that’s actually affecting how the product is being developed when you have that cultural shift. It has worked beautifully for Ford.
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