Kate Webb, online marketing manager at Vision Express, explains how the multichannel retailer prioritises its use of social media to meet business goals. The Interview Q. How big an impact has the increase in popularity of social media with consumers had on Vision Express? Kate Webb: It's had quite an impact in terms of time and resource, especially in the early days. As a company we're relatively new to social media; we've only been active for just over a year. We spent a lot of time during the first three to six months listening, watching, and learning what consumers were saying about our brand/looking for from our brand, to decide on how we should communicate, and where - which platforms. During this time, we have seen our follower/fan numbers grow, but more importantly the engagement with our customers is increasing and we feel that our customers are really starting to converse with us as a brand. Since being involved in social media we have seen an increase in the number of customers who mention us directly, or seek us out, rather than simply mentioning our brand name in passing conversation. To us this is an important development in building our customer relationship. At Vision Express our social media activities are based on engaging with our existing customer base; we want to improve on relationships, or continue offline relationships, with our customers, online. In the optical industry we have a long purchase cycle, on average our customers come back to us every two years, so it is a long period during which to maintain our social media relationships. We have found that for probably about 1-2 per cent of our customer base, social media is their main point of contact with us. The type of communication varies between the different social media platforms, for example we find that Twitter is more of a customer service tool, while Facebook is a fun and engaging platform, suitable for promotional outreach. There is still progress to be made, especially as social media grows and platforms are developed/changed, but we're confident we're on the right track to providing the same high level of service that our customers get in our stores, online. Q. What do you see as the key parts of a social media strategy that require management? Kate Webb: I find that too often businesses think that social media is just about posting messages about the company on Twitter or Facebook, or getting an agency in to handle everything for them. But the key to making social media work, for me, is to have a strong strategy behind it, and to manage that strategy. For me the key areas of focus in this strategy should be: Brand/business persona: I feel it's key to define a persona or personality for your business and to identify how you want to position your brand on social media, is the brand/business fun/funky, calm/serious, sensitive/nurturing or brash/loud? You need flexibility to evolve this over time as your relationship with customers grows. Which platforms: There are hundreds of social media platforms that we could all be involved in, so it's key to identify which platforms support your business objectives, and which ones you are going to get involved with. Otherwise, resources and communication will simply be spread too thinly. Goals/objectives: It is important to ensure that your social media objectives or goals are aligned with that of your organisation. What is it that you want to achieve via social media? For Vision Express, our three critical goals are to: -- Add value and service to our online customers, via informative dialogue, responsive customer service and feedback. This also works as a two-way path, in that we then pass onto our store network all/any feedback we have received from our online customers. -- Engage with our online customers and build relationships with them. In order to do this effectively, we are working towards a one-customer-view database, which will enable us to match social media activity to in-store activity by our customers, thus enabling us to provide a tailored approach in our conversations. -- Build brand awareness and consumer knowledge about our service offering. We want our customers to understand our company, and to recognise our values, ethics and personality, online and offline. Analytics/results: Be this sentiment or engagement levels, reporting on results/analytics needs to be regular, managed and analysed in order to adapt future strategy. Technology advancements: Social media platforms are changing all the time. Because of this it is imperative that we understand and gain knowledge of how these advancements/changes will affect our business's social media presence going forward. To integrate these activities into different departments correctly requires management support, the management structure need to understand why/how/who social media impacts on and affects both internally and within our customer base. As a result, so far, we've integrated social media into a couple of key departments within the business, with the online marketing team as social media 'owners', in that we will identify the next strategic steps, bring in agency support, provide understanding of new developments and report on analytics and progress. We have involvement from our customer care team, who respond on a day-to-day basis to customer enquiries/queries and feedback. We integrate social media into our marketing planning activities from the outset, identifying whether a promotion is suitable for social media and, if so, which platform it suits best, and we have our product department involved to provide a great level of product information and advice. To have social media as purely a marketing tool/activity will restrict a business in providing the right level of customer care, and will lead to sporadic/untimely and unfocused outreach. Source: Digital Marketing, Strategy, Implementation and Practice; Chaffey and Chadwick; 2018 QUESTIONS: 1.1Examine the impact of social media on Vision Express consumers. (15) 1.2Elaborate on the focus areas of Vison Express social media marketing strategy. (15) 1.3Examine how Vision Express integrated the focus areas identified in question 1.2. (10)