By Chris Lee

Brand pages on Facebook or corporate Twitter feeds have been with us for years, but how many brands are actually giving their public what they want? A new study by the CMO Council seems to suggest that the gap between what consumers want from brands on social networks and what brands think that consumers want is large.

The CMO Council interviewed 1,300 consumers and 132 senior marketers over the last quarter of 2011 to get a consensus on where brands and consumers stand.

According to the findings, social media-savvy customers are a hard bunch to please, expecting very quick response times from brands. While more than half (52 per cent) of marketers interviewed reported their brands have enjoyed greater influence thanks to their presence in social networks, just 17 per cent said that social media is fully integrated with their brand’s wider marketing strategy.

Consumers said they engage with brands through social channels largely to “learn about new products (55 per cent), enter unique promotions or contests, or to play games (65 per cent) offered specifically, and often exclusively, through these channels. Most consumers use social specifically to connect with other fans (25 per cent) or to share positive experiences (32 per cent).”

Like minds

Research from online marketers Content and Motion found that, similarly, more than half of people want to follow brands on social media to get news, belong to like-minded communities and get access to deals and offers. 60 per cent of these are happy to share their brand information with their friends and the majority want to do so because they feel it increases the social value that their friends feel for them.

According to Roger Warner, managing director of Content and Motion, this notion of “social capital” and a behavioural understanding of why people want to engage is absolutely key.

“Every brand needs to appreciate why people use social [media] in the first place and to start to build its marketing programs around these principles,” Warner told NMK. “People don't use Facebook to engage with brands. They use it to connect with people. Most marketers think about and use Facebook solely to connect people to brands. Their interests (and expectations) are wildly at odds with their audiences. Thinking like a real person is the next big thing. This isn't radical, but it's the single biggest change a brand can make today to enjoy more success via social [media].”

Warner said that brands need to find ways to become communications vehicles, not destinations.

“The most effective campaigns and programs are small, light, iterative, very ideas based and ephemeral,” he said. “So, the next frontier for a marketer is to be more gonzo. Get inside their customers' heads, understand how they are using social [media] to communicate and start building fast moving creative assets around them. They also need to live a life of data - as a working process to influence the direction of a creative programme, not just as a set of information to measure at the end of a campaign.”

Improving “Social CRM” is a marketing tool

The fact that so many consumers turn to social media to make complaints about their experience with a company’s service or products is an indication of how far the traditional customer service landscape has shifted. Companies like Dell have excelled at “Social Customer Relationship Management” (Social CRM), which in turn leads to good “word of mouth” marketing.

According to Stephen Waddington, managing director of PR firm Speed Communications, if a company creates a social channel as a marketing vehicle it is inevitable that customers will use it as a mechanism for customer service and sales.

“The simple fact is that for consumers complaining via Twitter is a lot simpler than visiting a retail store or dealing with an offshore call centre,” he told NMK. “The willingness for consumers to embrace social media is one of the reasons that many sectors such as retail banking have been slow to embrace social media. They simply wouldn't be able to cope with the demand from customers seeking to engage directly.”

For brands it's an issue of customer service as well as reputation, Waddington added.

“Organisations are having to quickly integrate their social channels with other operational parts of the business giving rise to the social business. But consumers also need to temper their expectations. Reengineering businesses so that they put social communication at their core will take time,” he said.

According to the CMO Council, brands who gain social business advantage in 2012 will be those who feed unmet consumer appetites for:

1. Deeper engagement with each other and the brand

2. Purposeful engagement with social support and ideation

3. More rewards with special offers, greater privilege, rank, and reputation

4. Better experiences with games, contests, and other online engagement apps