Barbara Meskin from Jim Beam presented how that brand learned how to engage customers through social media on a global scale. The journey that she decribed included the following steps over two years, although these things were not done linearly all the time:
- Social Audit – here they had to figure out what they had and how social media was used across the world. They found 28 Facebook pages, all with inconsistent message, inconsistent branding and multiple personalities
- Stakeholder Alignment – at this stage they had their audit data and could go out to stakeholders to internally sell the need for change. They also put a lot of time into regional coordination to make sure local marketers would buy in to and follow the program.
- Develop Strategy & Goals – establishing goals and objectives helped guide everyone globally to
- Develop Supporting tools – to make sure everyone followed the plan, they developed global style media guide and implemented Buddy Media for everyone to use to publish and monitor content
- Organize for Success – her team needed to make sure that the stakeholders had access to the tools, content guidelines and training
- Global tools & Content – This included seeded content, optimized labels in Buddy Media, and common global analytics that could be tracked and reported
- Continuous Improvement – finally, now that the program is in place, they are look for ways to continually improve their social media presence. This includes making sure marketers are content planning many weeks in advance, sharing best practices sharing, testing new concepts and learning as they go.
Results showed that they increased their global fans 63%, which is tremendous. They also now have consistent global branding and messaging, along with local in-country specific content.
Take a look at Jim Beam on Facebook and let me know if you think they have been successful.
