Qube’s very first client project – over 6 years ago – was a ground-breaking social media campaign for Connexions Sussex to help engage young people online and encourage their participation. We have continued to work with young people online ever since with other clients including West Sussex County Council, East Sussex County Council, Sony BMG, Electronic Arts and Greenwich University.

This experience has helped us hone down why social media should be at the heart of any council’s strategy for engaging with young people.

1. Efficiency: Connect with young people in the most cost effective way
Social media allows you to create and engage with communities of young people online – something which is easier, much cheaper and possible on a much greater scale than in real life. It removes the difficulty of creating real-life communities across wide geographic areas, of hiring infrastructure or equipment. Using social media to communicate means huge savings in design, printing and media costs. It means faster reaction to young people’s needs and enquiries.

2. Reach: Engage with young people where they actually are
Today’s young people – often known as Digital Natives – have grown up using the internet and social media to connect with each other. The numbers of young people using social media are vast and increasing. It is completely natural to them and increasingly their media of choice, while TV and printed media are all in decline. Trust in advertising is also declining – they see it as a broadcast, one way activity with no opportunity for response or interaction. They increasingly build their opinions and make their choices based on their friends’ and others people’s views online – even when they are strangers.

3. Improvement: Converse with young people and create better services
Having a two way conversation with young people enables the Council to listen to the views of young people on a regular basis and understand how they feel about the services they are offered. It allows their participation in the creation of better services and ensure money isn’t wasted on services which they don’t like or want.

4. Reputation: Proactively manage the council’s reputation where young people are talking about related issues
Social networking sites, Facebook, forums, blogs, Twitter are all places where young people talk about issues that matter to them. These often will include issues such as jobs, education, what’s happening in the local area. Where these conversations become negative about the Council it can effect the Council’s reputation, particularly if left without response. There is the opportunity with social media to ensure that not only do you know about these opinions but that you can change them into positive actions.

We all agree that loyal customers are a good thing right?  We also accept the growing evidence that advocacy is a brands holy grail – and that advocacy is at its highest with loyal, happy and delighted customers.   The many theories around loyalty and advocacy seem to all point to two key dynamics for consideration – your customers expectation and your customers experience – and if the two are high then you get a delighted customer.  Excuse the marketing matrix, but it goes something like this:

Based on this is surprises me that still so many brands ignore the significant opportunity social media offers to both enhance a customers experience and understand their expectations.   Social media allows you to listen to what your customers say about you and understand more about their needs / expectations, it allows you to have a direct dialogue with them before during and after the more traditional purchase contact has been made, and crucially it allows you to respond to those that are falling in the disappointed or worse, in the disgusted boxes.

Social media puts customers and conversations with those customers at the heart of your business.  It offers the potential to both manage your customers expectations and deliver an enhanced customer experience, to basically deliver delighted customers.   I think it goes beyond just customer service (that term feels more about satisfaction than delight) but its a familiar place to start for most and i think Fresh Networks summed it up perfectly in a recent post about how customer service is the new marketing.

If you want delighted customers to come back for more and spread the word, then maybe social media is the answer you have been waiting for….

Things go wrong. That’s fine though, as learning from mistakes is an important part of becoming bigger and better people.

But it sure makes it an easier pill to swallow when there is someone else to blame, that’s why we pick one every week so no one gets picked on here.

The problem is, in a connected and empowered society everyone wants their voice to be heard and negative ‘buzz’ travels fast.

30,000 complaints to the BBC is only the tip of the conversation iceberg:

- 924,726  views on YouTube with 11,514 comments (and thats only 1 of the 57 related videos on YouTube)
- 265 Diggs with 73 comments
- 127 Twitter mentions on one day (Lesley Douglas only got 27)
- 180 blog posts tagged Jonathan Ross on one day (Gordon Brown got just over 200 on the same day)

For a flash in the pan bit of bad publicity that’s quite an impressive number of conversations mounting up!

Connected communities of people are having millions of conversations everyday and these can offer rich opportunities for any brand.

It’s risky though to wait until you make mistakes to take notice of these conversations, but if you do, then make sure you learn from them and avoid being everyone’s blame of the week.