Social Strategies of a Top Brand
This blog is a summary of an article from Website Magazine (go to http://www.websitemagazine.com for a FREE subscription):
Hard Rock
How do you manage your public relations via social networks? Isn't it like trying to plug the hole in the proverbial dam with your finger? I mean, your finger is in the dam but you can't move with any sense of mobility to get to the other holes that are popping up!
How do you do it?
"Rather than managing all social accounts from its corporate headquarters, Hard Rock Cafe empowers its worldwide locations to manage their own social presences." (1)
Every location in the Hard Rock World knows its own target market and so they also know the social strategy that it must employ to be successful in communicating to that audience. This is a no-brainer, and yet many brands try to lasso the information from corporate headquarters, and fail miserably in the process.
Remember that each corporate location has a different calendar and different geographic and local issues — if you are not on top of this from the corporate main office, then you have no business trying to maneuver it.
It's a lose-lose scenario . . .
So, at Hard Rock, Kim Matlock (senior director of Hard Rock digital marketing) shares content with all of its locations and then lets them customize it to their local needs.
How perfect — how precise . . .
Each location does adhere to the corporate content calendar, which includes both timely messaging and content that is not time sensitive. (2) This is a corporate MUST, but it works.
Case Study: "Imagine No Hunger"
An example of how this works from the top down goes something like this — a deadline driven promotion about childhood hunger follows through on John Lennon's "Imagine" hit. The promotion is called "Imagine No Hunger," which is an annual campaign that has many moving parts and is focused on defeating childhood hunger and poverty. Matlock's team creates a digital guide for all key "on-brand" and advertising components, including hashtags, graphics, messaging and other content to use to roll out the program locally. The level of detail goes all the way down to Yoko Ono, who gets pre-approved messages to tweet at specific times on Twitter, with branding guidelines to follow, and she does!
Matlock's team takes scheduling to the nth degree by systematically scheduling all tweets, Facebook messages, Instagrams, YouTube, text messaging, etc. They use a platform called Olapic to increase engagement through pinpoint accuracy and curator showcasing.
"Top Brands like Hard Rock are creating quality content that engages their audiences in meaningful ways and finding ways to bring back customers to their websites, where, from a conversion perspective, they really belong." (3)
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1 Website Magazine, May 2014, Des Plaines, IL, page 34.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
How do you manage your public relations via social networks? Isn't it like trying to plug the hole in the proverbial dam with your finger? I mean, your finger is in the dam but you can't move with any sense of mobility to get to the other holes that are popping up!
How do you do it?
"Rather than managing all social accounts from its corporate headquarters, Hard Rock Cafe empowers its worldwide locations to manage their own social presences." (1)
Every location in the Hard Rock World knows its own target market and so they also know the social strategy that it must employ to be successful in communicating to that audience. This is a no-brainer, and yet many brands try to lasso the information from corporate headquarters, and fail miserably in the process.
Remember that each corporate location has a different calendar and different geographic and local issues — if you are not on top of this from the corporate main office, then you have no business trying to maneuver it.
It's a lose-lose scenario . . .
So, at Hard Rock, Kim Matlock (senior director of Hard Rock digital marketing) shares content with all of its locations and then lets them customize it to their local needs.
How perfect — how precise . . .
Each location does adhere to the corporate content calendar, which includes both timely messaging and content that is not time sensitive. (2) This is a corporate MUST, but it works.
Case Study: "Imagine No Hunger"
An example of how this works from the top down goes something like this — a deadline driven promotion about childhood hunger follows through on John Lennon's "Imagine" hit. The promotion is called "Imagine No Hunger," which is an annual campaign that has many moving parts and is focused on defeating childhood hunger and poverty. Matlock's team creates a digital guide for all key "on-brand" and advertising components, including hashtags, graphics, messaging and other content to use to roll out the program locally. The level of detail goes all the way down to Yoko Ono, who gets pre-approved messages to tweet at specific times on Twitter, with branding guidelines to follow, and she does!
Matlock's team takes scheduling to the nth degree by systematically scheduling all tweets, Facebook messages, Instagrams, YouTube, text messaging, etc. They use a platform called Olapic to increase engagement through pinpoint accuracy and curator showcasing.
"Top Brands like Hard Rock are creating quality content that engages their audiences in meaningful ways and finding ways to bring back customers to their websites, where, from a conversion perspective, they really belong." (3)
________________________________
1 Website Magazine, May 2014, Des Plaines, IL, page 34.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
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