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What is a good social media strategy for new product development?

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Question added by Divyesh Patel , Assistant Professional Officer- Treasury , City Of Cape Town
Date Posted: 2014/11/28
Irina Chepel
by Irina Chepel , Personal trainer , Freelancer

Yes, above answers are fully describe that. Of course, life of any product will depend mostly os social media as almost all people are involved in it and use it, therefore it give continious in-touch.100% promotion

Muhammad Adeel
by Muhammad Adeel , Sales And Marketing Executive , TANZEEM HEAVY EQUIPMENT RENTAL LLC

Agreed with all expert's answers.

Launching New Product + Social media strategy + Creative content = BRAND LOVE

Based media strategy to attract consumers all studied through the use of specialists (psychologist) for the highest capacity and the picture to make the consumer purchased or satisfied is checked

zafar abbas minhas
by zafar abbas minhas , Freelance Writer , DAILY MASHRAQ

AGREED WITH MR. AL JAFALI SMART ANSWER.................

Rahmat Ullah Khan
by Rahmat Ullah Khan , Administrative Asst , Trojan Holding

Of course,  social media is very important for marketing. Agree with all. 

Mohd Asif Ansari
by Mohd Asif Ansari , HR Administrator , Al Nasseej Al Arabi Factory Co. Ltd.

Social media strategies

As companies focus on effectively leveraging social media platforms, there are a few critical things to keep in mind. Here are the four strategies that have achieved superior results: 

1. Develop a comprehensive social media strategy. While Facebook And Twitter are the most used social media platforms, a comprehensive social media strategy should incorporate additional social media platforms where customers, prospects, employees and candidates could be talking about the company. Some examples include:

  • Business networking and hiring platforms such as Linkedin
  • Industry-specific platforms, e.g. travel forums, automotive message boards
  • Specialty multimedia sharing sites such as YouTube and Pinterest
  • Country-specific platforms such as Renren.com

To be able to know which social media platforms to incorporate as part of its social media strategy, a company needs to systematically track top platforms where the company and its brands are being discussed.

2. Establish a two-way communication model. Companies who use social media just to disseminate information to customers may not see high returns from social media usage. Instead, companies who use social media platforms as a two-way communication medium tend to have a more successful social media approach. There are several tactics that can be used to establish two-way communication, including:

  • Posting questions and surveys related to the company as well as general topics of interests
  • Getting customers, prospects, employees, and candidates to share their queries and experiences related to the company and its products, as well as themes related to the company’s business (e.g., best travel stories). This can even extend to the sharing of photos and videos
  • Set up dedicated customer service pages, tabs, or handles, as well as dedicated candidate query pages, with a promise of high responsiveness

Doing this requires constant focus on generating new ideas and content for social media, as well as the ability to post content and responses in a highly efficient and streamlined manner.

3. Retain control of content being posted on behalf of the company. Some companies tend to outsource their social media asset management to their advertising partners. In such situations, however, companies should make sure they retain control of and full editorial rights to what is being posted on their behalf. Companies can do this by putting in placed automated approval workflows and escalation processes between their partners and internal teams.

4. Set targets and measure performance. It is critical for companies embarking on social media initiatives to set targets, measure performance against those targets, and compare their performance against competitors. What is measured gets improved. Some of the key performance indicators to track include:

  • Share of social media conversations for the company/brand vis-à-vis competitors
  • Positive and negative sentiment for the company/brand vis-à-vis competitors
  • Monthly addition in number of social media followers
  • Average time taken to respond to comments by social media users by type of comment (e.g. positive feedback, customer service issue)
  • Percent of résumés being sourced via social media, and percent of positions being closed through social media 

Vinod Jetley
by Vinod Jetley , Assistant General Manager , State Bank of India

Consumers, who purchase and use products /services of companies, decide its success or failure. But in most cases, customer involvement in product/ service development process is negligible or limited. Since the success of products/services is mainly dependent on its customer acceptance, it’s highly logical to involve them in each process of development when creating offerings for them. Social media has made it easy to access the loyal customers/ prospects   and it is imperative for companies to leverage this platform while developing offerings. Following are some strategies that can help companies develop offerings using social media.

Build a community of loyal customers /prospects Building a strong community of social media users from the target demography could help organizations to continuously generate market intelligence. This could help an organization to build the base of loyal customers and prospects to generate ideas and conduct a market test of it. To build the confidence and sense of belongingness among the group members and encourage them for proactive participation in product /service development process, companies should provide continuous feedback and recognition for the contributions made by each member of the community.

Generate ideas and screen them Social media platforms users such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest etc. profoundly leverage these platforms to discuss their experiences with products or services of the companies. Companies can use this data to analyze sentiments to know the positive, negative or neutral sentiments about their products/ services to get a sense of performance of their current market offerings. Consumers also discuss the “delightful features” that they expect in offerings on social media. They contribute in terms of product reviews with good and bad things about the market offerings. Often times, such forums also provide a rich source of information about what the competitors are offering in their products/ services, thereby enabling the company to gather competition information in a cost effective manner. Such discussions and customer feedback can be analyzed further using natural language processing to extract the desired features that customers want to see in offering.

Poll and survey tools of the social media platforms can effectively be used to conduct market research. Companies can develop a customized questionnaire intended to understand the customers’ wants and get information on desirable features, expected purpose, expectations and affordability directly.

Build and Validate Business Case New offering development program needs to be supported by a strong business case. What is your target market, who are the prospects and what is their buying and consumption patterns, what would be the overall business opportunity in target market segment etc., are some of the inputs those are required to build a strong business case.  Social media users’ profile information could be a good source to understand the details such as region, age, gender, profession, etc. of loyal customers/ prospects. Natural language processing can help to dig further to get insights about the users such as what is his/ her lifestyle, what is his/ her buying behavior and usage pattern, personal traits such as whether he/ she is a leader/ influencer, etc.  This information could be utilized as a base to understand the size of the target market opportunities.

Conduct Offerings’ Market Testing Companies can select community members who had contributed significantly during the idea generation process to test their product. They can send the product to members for trials and ask them to fill an online feedback form with pre-defined testing parameters.

Execute Commercialization Plan Companies can run targeted promotional campaign on social media platforms to generate awareness about the product/ services. Community members could further play a role of brand ambassadors for the companies to promote company offerings to other communities which they are part of; by sharing their experience talking about offerings and company promotional campaigns.

Case StudiesVirgin Media Virgin Media uses social media to encourage customer collaboration and involvement in new product development and idea generation. The Virgin Media Sofa – a closed online community made up of customers — identified as being Virgin Media “Superadvocates”.

Community managers, as well as Virgin Media staff, regularly engage with community members to keep them informed about company news and to seek their inputs about new products and ideas, ensuring that the community remained at the forefront of a collaborative innovation process.  Community members also received regular updates about existing products and services in order to learn more about Virgin Media’s offering. The Virgin Media Sofa also hosted a range of polls and surveys where customers could submit new ideas, as well as vote for their favorite suggestions.

Coca Cola2Coca-Cola utilized Vitamin Water’s Facebook fan base to design a new flavor. Vitamin Water’s flavor “Connect” was developed by the company’s Facebook fan base. The competition allowed Vitamin Water’s Facebook fans to develop all aspects of the product, from selecting the flavor to designing the packaging and naming the product. More than2 million Vitamin Water Facebook fans participated in the new product development effort.

Satish Koottala
by Satish Koottala , Accountant , City Diamond Contracting LLC

For any product development the first thing we have to concentrate is the TARGET AUDIENCE. Then a Survey is necessary about what kind of Social Media is the TARGETED AUDIENCE involved in. Then we can say if we need to promote by facebook, email,sms ,what app or one to one interaction, etc etc.

VENKITARAMAN KRISHNA MOORTHY VRINDAVAN
by VENKITARAMAN KRISHNA MOORTHY VRINDAVAN , Project Execution Manager & Accounts Manager , ALI INTERNATIONAL TRADING EST.

Agree with the answers given by Mr. Vinod Jetley.

souha safir
by souha safir , إدارية , قطاع التربية

Thanks to colleagues

hossam azzam
by hossam azzam , Fast food restaurant,s manager. , alexandria-egypt

Thanks for the invitation

Good question

Agreed with both answers given by

Dr.:Aljafali & Mr.:Jetley as well too

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