Claire Galea, Digital Marketing and Portals manager, Go

Today’s smart choice is not to own but to share

Q: How has social media influenced and changed telephony?

A: Social media has influenced the way we search for information and how we communicate. Nowadays, for instance, we no longer need to write corporate invitations and follow up by a phone call – instead, with social media, creating a private event on Facebook and inviting the entire ‘press list’ can be done in just a few minutes.

Moreover, people are less inclined to pick up a telephone and call for information. They don’t want to wait or be told that an operator will be with them shortly – they just want to send you an e-mail, a text message, or post on Facebook.

Nonetheless, although social media has influenced the usage of telephony, phone conversations are still important to society since they are more personal, familiar, and at times more convenient.

Q: The success of social media is largely based on trusted influence. At Go, how do you manage to foster and maintain this quality?

A: We foster trusted influence using three social media ingredients: trust, transparency, and reciprocity. Just having a Facebook page already informs people we are willing to form relationships based on trust. When we go out of our way as a business to educate, help and share, we are reaffirming that we are trustworthy and credible.

At Go we build trust by responding quickly to our Facebook posts, since we believe that a participant judges trustworthiness on how efficient we are.

For instance, it is better to respond to a Facebook message, thus acknowledging you received the message than waiting until there is time and knowledge to send a more thorough first message.

The fact that Go offers numerous services creates a multitude of queries. This means that at times, a thorough answer requires an in-depth investigation – therefore, acknowledging our participants’ messages is a practice we use to maintain trusted influence in our social media communication.

As for transparency, when a customer posts a problem on our Facebook page, our 32,000 fans see it. We need to handle it well.

It is our policy to never remove a negative post and ask a customer to go back and post anything after we’ve resolved the problem. But when a customer decides to post a positive message on our Facebook page, that is a great message for all our fans to see – that is what we call reciprocity.

Q: Social media generates huge amounts of data – how do you use this data to provide targeted products and services?

A: Social media generates more information in a short period of time than was previously available a few generations ago, and we are grateful for that.

At Go we use customer data in a number of ways – we identify the likeliness of all new products, services and offers in real time by customer profile, and we also provide our product and development team with suggestions and ideas for customers to share on our page.

Nonetheless, we still have a long way to go, since the volume of data creates challenges in managing it and even greater difficulty in identifying insights.

Q: How do you use social media for advertising purposes?

A: On Facebook alone, there are 192,220 Maltese people who have an account, making the audience for advertising purposes very attractive.

We use social media advertising on many of our products and services, targeting our customers from age, sex, interests and education perspectives.

There are four elements to a successful advertising campaign – the right keywords, targeted audience, control on budget, and tracking and adjusting marketing material accordingly.

This is the basis of any outstanding online sales record, since social media advertising can also be tracked, monitored and adjusted.

Q: Would you say social media is a form of collaborative production or consumption?

A: One day we will look back on the 21st century and wonder why we owned so much stuff. Today’s smart choice is not to own but to share.

Social media enables trust between strangers and this helps remove the middleman in the exchange process. As a result, collaborative consumption will possibly disrupt traditional business models.

Social media is a form of collaborative consumption that has created a rapid explosion in swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting on a scale never possible before. For instance, renting a power drill via Snapgoods for the one day you need it is a lot cheaper than buying it.

In an era when families are scattered and we may not know the people down the street, sharing things – even with strangers we’ve just met online – allows us to make meaningful connections.

Engaging the audience

Joseph Aquilina, CEO, Smart Technologies

Listening, learning and adapting are some of the real values of social media

Q: What are the main benefits of social media for businesses?

A: Any business is dependant on the supplier of the product or service and the end consumer. So it would be a lie to say social media platforms are not beneficial to businesses.

Increased awareness, better management of the brand’s public perception, monitoring of public’s changing perceptions, ability to attract more traffic and improved insights about the target audience are only a few of the benefits. More engagement with the public may lead to new opportunities not only in improving the product or service but also to inspire new developments and hence increase new business.

Social media may also help businesses get early warning of potential issues in their product/service. But the real challenge lies in how a business harnesses the extreme potential social media has and adapting this potential to the specific needs of the business.

Q: Would you say social media is a form of collaborative production or consumption?

A: Social media is frequently used to engage in knowledge exchange and as a channel for public communication. It also has big implications for how researchers and people in general communicate and collaborate.

Researchers have much to gain from engaging with social media in various aspects of their work. However, one common mistake occurs when marketers and businesses rely only on social media as their sole source for research.

It is true that social media can change the ways in which research takes place and open up new forms of communication and dissemination – but businesses should constantly compare the feedback generated from social media to other feedback that results from closer relationships with consumers.

Social media is frequently a reflection of the public’s general perception, which could also be influenced by third parties and result in misinformed opinions. Sharing opinions is healthy but nothing beats the more human and sometimes more traditional forms of promoting one’s product or service.

Q: Has social media made service providers more open to customer feedback?

A: Social media is all about admitting you are open to your public – both to your current customers and to new clients. If a business is really open to its public, it means it is open to any feedback its clients are willing to put across.

One good reason to engage in social media is to learn more what customers have to say about your product/service, how they look at it and how they would like it to be more relevant to their particular needs.

If a company is willing to consider what clients are saying about its product or service, and is willing to regularly keep looking into its clients’ expectations, then the company automatically becomes more accountable.

Q: Has social media added value to businesses?

A: Social media provides a valuable tool with which to promote what companies/organisations offer and to gauge public reaction. Yet it presents a big challenge – to remain focused on issues that truly matter and remain ‘social’.

Talking isn’t the only thing that makes social media social. Adding Facebook, Twitter and other sharing buttons will not magically transform static content into shareable experiences. Listening, learning and adapting are some of the real values of social media.

Q: Your business does not demand that you integrate your operations on a social media platform. Can a business be successful without being active in social media?

A: Every business story is weaved around a unique identity, brand promise and values. Smart Technologies has been successful due to reasons that go beyond dependence on social media strategies. We started off with a concept we believed could work and it did.

Social media is important but has its limitations. Today’s biggest brands started off when the term ‘social media’ hadn’t even been defined. These brands made it because they were close to their customers and understood their expectations. Customers want to know they are being heard. Certain companies need to truly socialise, listen, engage, learn and adapt.

Q: Despite not being active in social media, how do you foster and maintain quality?

A: We maintain quality by personally bridging the gap other companies try to bridge using social media. We remained true to the human aspect of business – the priceless beauty of interacting and understanding the customer.

Our company is successful because we remained focused on the social side of our operations; by listening to what clients have to tell us and from feedback we reassessed our operations to offer a better, more relevant service.

This led us to create new products and services. These developments happen because we understood the need and saw an opportunity.

In community we trust

Joseph Cuschieri, head of Commercial Operations, Vodafone Malta Ltd

I see social media and mobile communications complementing and enriching each other

Q: How has social media influenced and changed telephony?

A: Both mobile communications and social media fulfil the human need to communicate and share information. Social media has revolutionised the way we interact – it has practically eliminated all distance barriers, with news and information becoming available instantly.

Technology is a catalyst to drive innovation in the way we communicate with each other. Mobile voice communications is steadily replacing traditional fixed telephony by giving people the freedom to talk from anywhere at any time. Similarly, social media has given people the means to communicate and socialise online at a peer or group level anywhere and at any time.

Social media and mobile communications services complement and enrich each other. Mobile technology has made it possible for people to consume and interact with social media through their smartphone or tablets.

Vodafone continuously invests in infrastructure and new technologies to provide customers an unmatched experience in internet browsing, social media platform access and data downloading. For the second year in a row, Vodafone has been established by independent entity P3 as the fastest and best data network in Malta.

Q: At Vodafone, how do you manage to foster and maintain this quality?

A: Social media is based on social circles – you remain in a community or circle of friends if you feel you belong there and if you feel you can trust that community. Once you’re in that circle of trusted influence, you feel and share the power and benefits of that community.

We continuously challenge ourselves to optimise everything that we do, operating with speed, simplicity and trust. There is no secret formula – we just have a formidable team of people who give the best possible service.

Q: Social media generates huge amounts of data – how do you use this data to provide targeted products and services?

A: We take customer privacy very seriously. We are very strict about this and do not access or process customers’ content, be it traditional voice telephony, SMS or social media services. Social media may be a modern marketing channel but we do not use it as a data source for analysis and product development.

Q: How do you use social media for advertising purposes?

A: The power of social media is that it is not a one-way communication channel – it’s not about what brands have to say but what consumers have to say about the brands.

Using social media purely for direct advertising purposes is a recipe for failure from a marketing perspective. Rather, it’s all about listening to what customers have to say, engaging with your community in an appropriate, informal and timely manner, and responding to customer needs.

If whatever you do is of value to your customers, they will talk about it and will help you grow the community. For example, we use our Facebook page to advertise our latest offers and products. The main aim is customer feedback. We follow what customers say and reply quickly.

Q: Would you say social media is a form of collaborative production or consumption?

A: Social media can be an enabler for collaborative production and consumption, but it’s neither of the two. Social media can play an important role in establishing market or general public demands or needs.

Technology evolution is heavily influenced by market needs and is subject to economic factors such as cost of production, which could imply that certain products or services are not made available even though there is demand for them and even if consumers organise themselves socially to influence availability. But in certain instances, collaborative production is possible and has had a significant impact on industries such as open source software development.

I see a lot of potential in social media as an enabler for collaborative consumption, but culture is an underlying driver for collaboration. In its simplest form, social media can be used for age-old activities such as bartering and lending, but it takes more collaborative effort to use social media for applications such as car pooling or crowd funding other than for charity fundraising events. The key word here is ‘collaboration’ – in a globalised world stressed by economic difficulties and intense competition; we have to look at open collaboration rather than work in silos.

Collaborative consumption is hardly evident in local social media circles and this could be symptomatic of a traditionally closed culture. Locally, we are still sharing photos and commenting on trivia on Facebook, and several local businesses are still more concerned about competition across the street than about how to collaborate to compete in a globalised world.

We are past the service economy based on the competitive advantage of the digital communications revolution, and entering an era where collaboration on all fronts is key to success.

The always-on factor

Malcolm Briffa, head of PR and Strategic Projects, Melita

What some people see as a stupid status update, for others is a way of feeling part of the community

Q: How has social media influenced and changed telephony?

A: Social media has influenced the way we communicate and the way we build and foster relationships on a personal as well as professional level. In some instances these new forms of media or networking methods are helping increase the demand for electronic communication tools, while in others they’re just putting further pressure on what are seen as older technologies.

In the case of the fixed line, the biggest pressure is coming from the commoditisation of mobile services and not necessarily from social media. On the other hand, social media increases the demand for broadband connectivity at home, office and while mobile.

Q: The success of social media is largely based on trusted influence. How do you manage to foster and maintain this quality?

A: It is difficult to pinpoint one reason for the success of these forms of communication. Partly, social media is driven by the availability of the technology and access to always-on connection. The most important factor, however, is people’s inherent need to keep in touch.

What some people see as a stupid status update, for others is a way of feeling part of the community.

Q: Social media also generates huge amounts of data – in what ways do you use this data to provide targeted products and services?

A: Melita’s use of social media is very focused and used as an additional customer contact channel. Facebook enables the company to give instant feedback to customers, whether selling a promotion or a response to a query.

While customers may express negative feedback on some issues, it gives us the opportunity to change that into a positive experience rapidly and publicly. To this extent, our social media activities are a joint effort between marketing and customer experience teams.

Q: How do you use social media for advertising purposes?

A: From a promotional aspect, it is important to tread carefully – people subscribing as fans or followers on Facebook does not give a company carte blanche to bombard people with advertising. Beyond regulations and rules applicable, there is also a certain social media etiquette that needs to be respected, not to mention the fact that people treat their Facebook wall or Twitter page almost as an extension of their lives.

Keeping this in mind, marketing messages are specifically designed around the medium used, and website designs and messages are enhanced for social media reproduction. Moreover, we are careful about the frequency of messages and which messages fit on social media and those that don’t.

An important aspect of social media communication is the tone used. Social media executives or managers need to be careful in gauging their tone when pushing information or responding to comments.

Q: Personally, how has social media changed the way you work and play?

A: On a personal level, social media coupled with mobile broadband and high-speed home bandwidth revolutionised my work and personal life.

The always-on concept has been extended dramatically and the expectation is that we are available all the time, anywhere.

Those I collaborate with can see whether I am sitting in my office or in a taxi in London. Moreover, at any point in time I would be managing in between multiple messaging systems and social networks, be they more personal (like Facebook or Wordpress) or more professional and collaborative (Linkedin, Slideshare or Prezi).

These applications also create a greater awareness of security, especially since we tend to share a lot of our personal and professional experiences over such social networks.