As marketers, we know how important it is to reach our “real audience” in social media. It seems everyone and their grandma (literally) is on social media, but they aren’t all using it in the same way. Engaging a niche audience can be tricky and that’s why we are excited to feature Ashley Riggs-Zeigen, staff coordinator for marketing and communications at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. in this month’s expert interview. She has tackled arguably the most elusive audiences in social media, the B2B customer and technology developers.
Ashley shares an excellent Qualcomm case study on ways they’ve connected with their real audience. Plus, you’ll pick up one of her secrets to engaging content.
BWF: What social media channels does your brand focus on?
ARZ: Qualcomm uses social media for various audiences, including tech enthusiasts, media, B2B customers and even employee recruitment. The channels for each of these programs varies, but my team largely focuses on reaching mobile app developers. We use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+ (which has a lot of active users who are Android developers.)
BWF: How does your brand build online community and connect with developers?
Humor shows developers that we understand them and what makes them unique.
ARZ: We try to offer excellent support for our developer community, which helps build brand advocacy and loyalty. I’ve also found that sharing humorous content with developers helps us connect with our community. Humor shows developers that we understand them and what makes them unique.
BWF: How do you measure success?
There are many ways to measure success, but they all depend on your objectives.
ARZ: I track metrics like followers, impressions and engagements almost daily. All of our paid media is tracked daily as well, to help optimize campaigns. There are other metrics that I track monthly that align with our marketing objectives. There are many ways to measure success, but they all depend on your objectives. Cory Edwards from Adobe has a great recap of different ways to measure social media marketing, based on your objective in his presentation, Social Media Bootcamp (see slide 28).
BWF: What tools do you use?
ARZ: I use Sprinklr for publishing, monitoring and some real-time analytics. It’s great for large organizations, which have lots of collaboration across teams.
BWF: Where do you get content? Do you incorporate user-generated content?
We feature a different developer each month.
ARZ: We use a mix of owned and curated content. One way we incorporate user-generated content is by featuring a different developer each month. We have a written Q&A with each Developer of the Month, which we publish as a blog post (similar to this post). Then, we feature the developer on our website and across our social media channels. It’s been a great way to connect with developers and showcase the great work they are doing with the rest of our community.
BWF: Share one trick for creating more engagement?
I write as if I’m communicating to that individual directly.
ARZ: I think it’s important for all of us to humanize our brands as much as possible and especially so for big companies. This can be challenging, because often times when you’re creating content (e.g. in your office at work), it’s in a much different environment than people are consuming it (e.g. on their smartphone when they have a few minutes free). I find it helpful to imagine a specific person who may be interested in reading my content and then writing as if I’m communicating to that individual directly.
“I think it’s important for all of us to humanize our brands as much as possible.” ~@ashleyriggsz #Qualcomm http://t.co/soNE3lEt70
— Fandom Marketing (@FandomMarketing) August 19, 2014
BWF: What one big lesson have you learned that you wish you could teach others?
Without defined objectives and a vision, it is difficult for any social media marketing program to succeed.
ARZ: It is important to begin with the end in mind (one of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits). Covey was not thinking about social media marketing when he wrote it, but I think it’s very applicable nevertheless. Without defined objectives and a vision, it is difficult for any social media marketing program to succeed. It may sound simple, but too often people think about tactics with social media (e.g. let’s start a new Twitter account), instead of what they would like to achieve. It’s important for any social media program to be part of an integrated plan with measurable objectives.
BWF: How do you stay current on social media trends?
I use a lot of online resources.
ARZ: Like most of you I use a lot of online resources, like Hubspot and MarketingProfs, and attend conferences. I also read a lot of books. They can become outdated quickly, but some I’d recommend are Likeable Social Media, Real-time Marketing and PR and Content Rules.
Meet Expert: Ashley Riggs-Zeigen
Ashley Riggs-Zeigen is a marketing communications professional at Qualcomm, where she manages social media, email and other digital content marketing for the Qualcomm developer community. Previously, she was responsible for marketing strategy for both B2B and B2C products at Qualcomm.
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