Value Guideline! — Gain via multi-channel innovation real benefit from social media!

New forms of communication for improved and effective commercialisation of technology and innovation in the Age of Mobile Internet. Focus: A smart and clever multi-channel innovation approach!

By Andreas Weber, Mainz/Germany

Status quo

Paradox? — Despite its evident technical skills, the printing and publishing sector is struggling much more than other sectors to achieve a fundamental understanding and use of digital forms of communication, in particular with social media. It is overlooking the effects that can be achieved with Twitter, Facebook & co., especially in printing, in order to maintain and expand contact. Moreover, important concepts and market developments are being variously and mostly wrongly interpreted, which often leads to absurdity. Social media are considered a time-consuming toy although for a long time now all relevant innovations have first made their mark via social media and mobile Internet!

Current case studies demonstrate not only that wide coverage is possible but that, much more importantly, interaction also occurs that permits easy, targeted follow-up of successful communication by marketing and sales. The important thing here is that successful digital communication is not aimed at selling but instead facilitates sales and marketing work thanks to clever positioning, rapid familiarisation and immediate demand.

Aims

1. To create a context with the aid of digital media between the opportunities of technology and innovation and the specific situation of the customer/interested party.
2. To develop content in line with well-established and tried and tested forms of contemporary “story telling” that focus on user interests. In social media, this works best with integrated text and image animations and films.

Recommendations for the successful exploitation of the advantages of digital communication opportunities

Important principles to grasp

1. The new form of social media communication goes way beyond the usual PR and communication opportunities since it brings about direct interaction and networking (and not just a news push effect via third party media) und can be professionally measured in real time.
2. It is no longer necessary to chase after readers/users via leads and address profiles.
3. There is no dependence on third parties such as specialist media who publish the material more or less correctly and effectively and more or less quickly, if at all.
4. With the elimination of losses due to scatter, target people and target groups identified by the selection of the right topics are reached with one hundred percent success. So you can reach everyone who is actively interested in technological innovation, information management, digital transformation etc.
   Tip: This is hundred percent guaranteed by hashtags (“#”) and the use of keywords and links in blog articles.
5. Thanks to the great popularity of Twitter and Facebook, in particular in B2B, organically scalable coverage leads to high interaction levels that by far exceed traditional B2B media services. What is more, in contrast to online media, with print media you cannot tell precisely which story is being read or how, if indeed it is.

How do social media act compared with traditional PR?

In general, the role of social media is different to that of articles in the press or newsletters:

1. They draw a subjective, personal image and are especially trenchant thanks to their terseness.
2. Good Twitterers enjoy a high level of attention from their followers i.e. their Tweets are actually read (which is often not to be expected at all of traditional specialist articles).
3. It is blogger relationships that can always be expanded on prestigious occasions such as customer events, exhibitions and the like. (Thanks for the clever tip, dear @jbenno).

The foundation stones of a successful approach:

1. Development of a fundamental concept for content in the form of concise, very precise messages with images and links to suit social media. And above all with video animations.
2. Integrated activities including a strategy on content that is not directly advertising-based, which highlights your own content and activities (such as demos, open houses, exhibitions etc.) so as to profile yourself as a source of expertise with first-class company-specific customised solutions.
3. Establishment of Twitter as the main medium supported by blog posts and effective activities on Facebook, LinkedIn, XING and Google Plus. Here YouTube serves as a secondary platform for providing film material.
4. Synchronisation with established PR measures to expand marketing communication activities and integration of original company content with the new content to be created.

Conclusion / the next step

If our guideline has aroused your interest, we suggest going into these subjects and your specific requirements in more detail in a workshop. And in particular to look at and discuss some case studies together. And to develop the right approach for your requirements.

If you want to learn more about multi-channel innovation join #xug15eu and the surrounding activities.