The Saints Win the Super Bowl: Will Brands Capitalize Through Social Media?

The New Orleans Saints just won Super Bowl XLIV. They beat the Indianapolis Colts in dramatic, yet dominant fashion. Drew Brees will ultimately be immortalized in the city of New Orleans as the first QB to play in and win a Super Bowl for the team, doing it only several years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Jonathan Vilma, the defensive captain and middle linebacker for the Saints, will also be remembered as a folk hero because of his role as a leader both on the field and in the Haiti relief effort.

The story lines are great and continue well beyond these two players. Now the question is how will brands capitalize on the great stories and immense popularity of this year's Super Bowl winners. Sports Illustrated will inevitably do a special commemorative edition with matching championship hat, Disney will ask Drew Brees to visit one of its amusement parks and Wheaties will seek out at least one or maybe all of the Saints to be pictured on a new box of their cereal.

We've now seen brands use social media for their Super Bowl commercial spots, but will we see social media be used in these post victory promotions? Should we expect to see live streaming video of Drew Brees taking his son to Disney World? Will be get to see a Flickr photo album of Reggie Bush posing for the new Wheaties box? Will Sports Illustrated offer a discounted rate for their commemorative edition to their Twitter followers?

I tend to think we're not quite there yet, but we're getting close. This year saw more advertisers leaking their commercials on YouTube than ever before, more social media communications about the brands participating than ever before and more attention being paid to that online conversation than ever before.

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What if Twitter fails?!?

I was recently speaking on a social media panel in Georgia. The room was filled with marketers from large brands like Napa Auto Parts, Coca Cola, Best Western and Aarons. Even though these were marketers, they almost all fell closer to social media novices on the spectrum.

As is usually the case when speaking with people that aren't extremely knowledgeable about social media, the conversation became focused on the most popular tools and in particular Twitter and Facebook.

After discussing the benefits of these technologies to the marketing process, a very fair question was asked...

"What if Twitter fails?"

It really is a great question. Brands have a legitimate concern of a social media platform like Twitter going under after they spend significant time and resources building of a valueable presence.

The core of the answer is very simple: SOCIAL MEDIA IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEOPLE

If marketers approach this communication realm in that way, they will be able to transfer the conversations they're having on Twitter to any other social media platform when needed. If people/consumers trust you, enjoy your content and feel like they are a part of something real they will follow the conversation from Twitter to Facebook to Ning to a discussion board on the brand website. It is truly about the strength of the relationship with readers and consumers.

While building a community on a specific platform, be sure to cross-polinate your messaging on at least 2-3 platforms total. For instance, if your primary communication spot is Twitter you may also want to have a Facebook fan page and a blog. Send your followers to all of these locations throughout your entire communication process. This will train your readers to visit your other platforms if one of these technologies fail overnight.

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Step by Step Social Media Guide for Brands

Most brands and companies have at least dipped their feet in the waters of social media at this point, but if they haven't it can be daunting for them to start. First, social media is confusing for those that aren't intimately involved in it. There are thousands of communication platforms, a set of new languages and some technical skills required. Second, the brands that aren't using social media are behind the curve and therefore might feel like they can't catch up.

There is no doubt that your brand's social media experience should be completely unique. It should depend on your service/produce, your audience, your goals, your budget and many other variables. With that said, this list is meant to provide a general guideline on what needs to be done to truly leverage social media:

1. Monitor And Listen

This is a vital step. You have to listen to your communities of interest. You need to figure out what they're saying about you and your competitors, as well as determining where they are saying it. Is there a large contingency on Facebook, or is the bulk of you audience congregating on Ning? Are they on 7 different platforms?

Listening can be time consuming or costly (depending on your choice of monitoring method), but as I said before it is vital. Monitoring enables your brand to go straight into a strategy with insight and intelligence. It removes a large part of the guess and check of social media.

If you have no budget, you can start with Google alerts about key terms. If you have a budget their are great monitoring tools out there ranging in price from a few dollars a month to a few thousand dollars a month. The price range is affected by the level of insight you are getting from the monitoring company. If you're looking into hiring a monitoring company or licensing their program, I highly recommend one that provides both quantitative and qualitative insights.

2. Develop A Strategy

Now that you know what your target audience is saying and where they are saying, it is time to put a plan in place. Do you want to build a Twitter account, create a blog, comment on popular sites in existence? These are all questions you have to ask.

In addition to the action items, it must be determined who will be doing the social media work internally. It is pointless and potentially harmful to create social media landing pages and profiles for your brand if the content and engagement isn't going to continue. You should figure out ahead of time who will be in charge of the accounts and consumer interactions moving forward.

3. Construct Your Landing Pages

Now it is time to take action. You've done your due diligence, you've decided on the plan and who will be in charge, it is time to set up your landing page(s) and/or profiles. Most social media platforms are pretty easy to set up. This is even more true of social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and several others. Video/photo sharing channels, Ning accounts, discussion board account, and social bookmarking accounts are also easy to create. Blogs are a little more difficult. The most basic blogs are fairly easy on blogger, wordpress and typepad. If you want to get creative with your blog you might want to seek the help of a knowledgable source.

4. Establish Your Social Media Point Of View

Okay so you have the landing pages or profiles. Now yo have to put up content. Whether is is a blog post, a tweet or something else, you have to produce regular content. This will prove to your audience that you're there to stay, while showing them what value they will be getting from you.

5. Network And Engage

After you've posted content regularly for some time, you need to network with people in your audience. Reach out to the most influential people, share your posts with other sites in your industry and register your Twitter account or blog on directory sites.

It is also key to engage your audience through these communication channels. Ask them questions, respond to inquiries, talk about the things they post about and anything else that might fit.
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This is just a basic layout. If you want to get a little more detailed or have critiques of this social media to-do list please reach out and let me know.

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