Gone are the days when social media was all about marketing through Twitter and Facebook. Brands are increasingly using the medium to be responsive and contactable and to resolve customer issues in real time.
Social media has provided new ways for brands to connect with customers via marketing, customer service and PR.
For media companies in particular, having a presence on social channels gives them the opportunity to promote shows and product offers, as well as broadcasting news about programmes and the company.
They can get direct feedback from consumers, tweak offers and learn about and fix any service issues. More importantly, they can communicate with customers in a more proactive and transparent manner.
"The benefits of using channels such as Facebook and Twitter are that you have happy customers, and that can lead to a more positive response to your promotional marketing," says Simon Collister, consultancy director at We are Social.
"But social media shouldn't just be used as a broadcasting medium. If you promote the party line and people get back to you challenging this, it's harmful to leave these comments alone. This undermines your promotional activity, enabling negative customer experiences to go viral."
To assess how media companies are using social channels to better their brands, Revolution looked at what Sky and Virgin Media – two of the UK's biggest companies in the sector – are doing.
Chris Buckley, director of social engagement at Tullo Marshall Warren, reviewed Sky and Virgin Media's masterbrand portfolios against 10 criteria. Virgin Media narrowly emerged as the winner, scoring higher than Sky for conversation channel, product information and user experience.
Virgin Media uses social media in a number of areas, with a significant focus on customer care, though it has been building its presence from a PR and marketing perspective since it launched its official presence on Twitter in 2008. Alongside this, it has a presence on Facebook and its own community forums.
It doesn't work with a specific agency to manage its social media output, but uses its existing PR and marketing agencies, which contribute to planning and execution, while seven social media advisers and one team manager operate internally.
Asam Ahmad, head of consumer media relations at Virgin Media, says using social media effectively is not just about listening to customers' service issues, but understanding the effect of this on their daily lives.
As an example of how this works in practice, Virgin Media responded to a complaint on Twitter where a child was unable to enjoy 'Peppa Pig' programmes due to technical difficulties. This resulted in an engineer arriving at the family home with a 'Peppa Pig' toy to make up for the TV service not working properly.
"This approach goes beyond traditional customer service and fosters a huge amount of advocacy with our customers, with many of them reflecting their positive experiences to other customers," adds Ahmad.
Sky, which works with agency Jam on its social media activity, impressed with its integration, social customer services and innovation.
Kathryn Drought, head of digital and social media at Sky, says social has proved to be extremely useful, enabling it to speak directly to customers about content highlights and new products for subscribers, as well as resolve any service issues customers may be experiencing efficiently.
"Within social media, traditional departments' roles and responsibilities that have usually been exclusively owned by either marketing or PR can become blurred, so we've put a lot of thought into working collaboratively on projects," she says.
"We've focused on the most important aspect – to communicate to our customers on their terms and in a way that they find most useful and involving."
An example of Sky's integrated social offering is the activity it created for series three of 'Glee', which aired in the UK for the first time on Sky 1.
The first step was to create a Twitter page with consistent, ongoing community management and a clear editorial strategy. It then gave people a reason to think about 'Glee' coming to Sky by creating and seeding the hashtags #gleeonsky, #wewantglee and #fullofglee for a range of competitions.
Key influencers were engaged through Sky's PR contacts, and it used promoted tweets, accounts and trends at significant intervals in the run-up to the launch.
The 'Glee' Twitter feed peaked at more than 15,000 followers, while the giveaway competition, #wewantglee, was entered 5,000 times in 12 hours. During the first episode, there was an average of 400 mentions on Twitter per minute.
Drought adds: "As a company that spends more than £2bn on content each year, we have to ensure we fully utilise the opportunity social provides to talk to our customers in an environment they want to chat to us in, and make sure they are aware of all the great content that is included in a subscription."
Alex Miller, managing director of Jam, says that as social-media marketing is unpredictable, with no control over what people will say, to succeed you need to plan for every eventuality and be ready to respond with lightning speed.
Sky has popular content and a huge customer base, which is a good place to start, but the trick is getting the latter to talk about the former.
"This requires Sky to be in tune with its customers, have its finger firmly on the pulse and find ways to express its passion for the content," he says. "To achieve that we need to come up with lots of creative ideas, together with a solid business case and measurement criteria to justify investing in things that have never been done before."
For media companies and other industries, giving a better customer experience through social media will increase trust and save them money in the long run.
Resolving issues through a couple of tweets, for example, means brands are less likely to need call-centre operatives battling to field customer queries. And once they have engaged people, they can cross and up-sell naturally – talking with customers, rather than broadcasting messages at them.
Social Media Activity
Sky
Brand visibility
Sky has a strong presence across key social media sites including Twitter and Facebook, but the brand's portfolio comes across as a little fragmented.
8/10
Brand purpose
Latest news, information and offers from Sky as well as customer services through Twitter and Facebook with a very corporate tone of voice.
7/10
Audience
Small in comparison to the subscription base. Core pages have 66,000-plus Facebook "likes" and 13,000-plus Twitter followers for @skyhd.
7/10
Conversation channel
Divided between broadcast-led and personal @replies for customer services. There is limited conversation but some cross-sell of additional portfolio offers.
7/10
User experience
Not socially led – it feels like Sky actively refers the user out of social. When "Live Chat" is down, users are referred to the Help Forum rather than a social channel.
6/10
Platform appropriateness
Essentially broadcasting the same information across Twitter and Facebook while dealing with customer service issues in the appropriate channel.
7/10
Product information
Listening programs are paying off as they proactively deal with customer complaints, but little attempt to improve user experience or product knowledge.
7/10
Social customer service
@skyhd service hours are 7am-11.00pm, seven days a week, while Sky's call centres are open 24/7. They actively monitor channels and forums.
8/10
Integration with services
Sky doesn't integrate its services across the core brand channels but it does recognise "second screen" through programme-specific content and promoted hashtags.
8/10
Innovation
Sky relies on forums rather than real-time diagnostics. Main channels could benefit from integration and an injection of content form Sky's most successful products.
7/10
Overal total (analysis provided by Chris Buckley, Tullo Marshall Warren)
72/100
Sky summary
Sky's established broadcast presence and original programming provide a wealth of social currency, but it has not yet established a coherent social media presence where it can comfortably or effectively curate its portfolio of programming.
The diversity of the offering seems to have got the better of Sky, and the remit of the masterbrand page has suffered as a result.
Undoubtedly, aspects of Sky's portfolio have an increased social presence – perhaps a fear of overlapping these audiences prevents Sky from offering a gateway page on its social spaces.
Sky's next opportunity lies in finding an audience-centric way of pulling together its disparate strands of social content. Signposting users to relevant channels or content is a small change that would make a big difference.
Virgin Media
Brand visibility
Good visibility across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. No integration of social tools such as Facebook or Twitter into website, however.
9/10
Brand purpose
Conversational customer services through Twitter and Facebook with a more rounded tone of voice than Sky. Strong emphasis on self-help, but tone of voice helps here.
7/10
Audience
Small in comparison to subscription base. Core pages have 31,000-plus Facebook 'likes' and 28,000-plus Twitter followers for @virginmedia.
7/10
Conversation channel
Facebook landing tab links up current TiVo TV spot, but limited conversation. PR push around TiVo needs support from editorial content to survive.
9/10
User experience
TiVo service brings YouTube, eBay, Twitter and other apps to your TV, but current offering does not feel social by design.
7/10
Platform appropriateness
Content feels more platform-aware with dedicated product and help tabs as well as use of Facebook's native functionality – such as Facebook Questions.
8/10
Product information
Social representatives are well versed in solution-led answers and the tone of voice is colloquial and personal. TiVo product demo videos increase customer knowledge.
9/10
Social customer service
@virginmedia available from 8am-6pm, while Virgin's call centres are open 8am to midnight, seven days a week. Virgin also actively monitors channels and forums.
8/10
Integration with services
No integration of services but traction with apps through TiVo hardware may change this. Lack of original programming means Virgin has to work harder.
6/10
Innovation
Virgin hasn't found the social innovation that its other services promote, but is slowly finding its social feet, discovering YouTube and other social opportunities.
6/10
Overall total (analysis provided by Chris Buckley, Tullo Marshall Warren)
76/100
Virgin Media summary
Some strands of the Virgin business have established a successful social media presence, and it seems strange that the Virgin Media masterbrand sites don't make the most of this.
Comfortable in the functional side of customer service, the masterbrand sites lack the spark that Virgin (and Sir Richard Branson's personal Twitter feed) are known for.
The masterbrand presence could learn a lot from others in the Virgin portfolio, such as @VirginAtlantic.
Virgin's recent PR push for TiVo appears to have spurred a rediscovery of social media. Greater integration of social elements and greater generosity with content would see Virgin Media move from knowledge and utility into offering the opportunity for entertainment and personal expression that social media demands.
.jpg)
.jpg)