The Next Step: How to unlock the full potential of social media – Synopsis

 

                                           

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The Next Step: How to unlock the full potential of social media – Synopsis

 

                                           

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Synopsis

Next step for Maersk Line: Unlocking the full potential of social media “What in the world is a container shipping company doing in the social media?!” We have been asked this question repeatedly since we announced our presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more almost a year and a half ago. The short answer is: because it adds value to the bottom line. Had this not been the case, we would (almost) not have any reason to be there. Until now, social media have primarily been the domain of our communication department, but we are currently moving into the second phase of our strategy which will involve incorporating them into the actual business. In order to determine what role social media should play in our business in the long term, we recently completed a study. In addition to evaluating our current value creation, this study also outlines our next step. In this document we will attempt to extract the key aspects of the study in the following pages. But before we get to that, it makes sense to outline what we have done to date, during the first phase of the programme. The first year and a bit We currently have a presence on 12 social media sites, two of which are Chinese. We use these platforms in very different ways, with respect for the different users out there. However, a common trend spans the entire spectrum, namely that we regard it as a communication tool as opposed to a marketing exercise. This does not make it boring, quite the contrary. Our presence is characterised as being very visual, narrative, trustworthy, based on that which is current and close to the business. Our aim is to engage and enter into dialogues. And we endeavour to humanise our somewhat hardware-driven business.

In Maersk Line, we’ve made a virtue of being proactive and of sharing the bad news as well as the good. In this example, news about a whale that was scooped up by a Maersk freighter on its way into the port in Rotterdam is being shared on Facebook. Above: The album on Pinterest entitled “In memory of the Maersk Norwich Whale”. Left: The post on Facebook describing Maersk Norwich’s encounter with a whale. Note the so-called ‘like-to-share’ ratio which is almost 1 to 1.

The Next Step: How to unlock the full potential of social media – Synopsis

 

                                           

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We have over 790,000 fans on Facebook, on which our engagement rate consistently falls between 5-10%. In other words, we are 3-5 times better at engaging our Facebook fans than celebrated social media brands such as Red Bull, Coca-Cola and Converse. We have 38,000 followers on Twitter that we interact with consistently, almost 24 hours a day. We share news, we answer questions, and we communicate everything that is relevant to our target groups. We also have a panel of employees, including directors and captains, who tweet. We have 30,000 followers on LinkedIn, with whom we share hard-core business news. We also facilitate a number of forums, i.e. LinkedIn groups, in which relevant, business-critical issues are discussed. This is where we engage with serious users, including our customers. In addition to all of this, we have 22,000 followers on Instagram. We have received considerable praise for our use of Instagram (and photos in general), even from Instagram themselves. We recently succeeded in being upgraded to suggested user, which means that we are now one of approximately 300 profiles that Instagram recommends to its approximately 100 million users as worth following. All of this has not gone unnoticed. We have won awards for our achievements, and we have become a case which is being covered by magazines, shipping media, bloggers and students. Furthermore, both Harvard and M.I.T. are currently writing case stories about us as part of their syllabus. One of the reasons for all the fuss is that we have done it all internally, using internal resources. This ensures that it is credible and incorporated into the company culture. And it also keeps costs down: we have spent less than USD 100,000 on external resources over the past 18 months. From mass media to corporate journalism But what is it worth? Perhaps nothing? We don’t know for certain. But we believe we know that there is much more to social media than... social media alone. Social media is merely a concept. It is a measure of where the media landscape and technology have brought us, specifically to the point where technology has become so sophisticated that it is capable of mirroring our behaviour and the actual structure of society right down to the individual level. In other words: a society consists of individuals who are interconnected. The same can be said about the role of social media. Away with mass media; today, that space belongs to the users. And in that space we all become editors of our own lives. How do I wish to present myself? Who am I? How do I want to spend my time? With whom? Where? Etc. What is interesting for companies is that they are also, or have the opportunity to be, publishers of their own stories. Companies have become news media agencies in their own right. But they will not get very far unless they are trustworthy. This is where the concept of corporate journalism comes in: the most digitally-advanced companies have started to employ people who report on what goes on in the company with journalistic integrity.

The growth in the number of fans of Maersk Line’s Facebook page (facebook.com/MaerskLine)  

Engagement-score comparison between Maersk Line and the leading social media brands.

 

The Next Step: How to unlock the full potential of social media – Synopsis

 

                                           

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After all, if you fail to divulge your mistakes, no one can learn from them, in which case the company stagnates. But what is it worth? Yes, getting back to our study. In light of our current minimal use of resources, we decided to complete the study by internal means, i.e. we wrote it ourselves. But we also decided to try involving leading international experts through a number of so-called Hangouts on Google+. This was a success. The very first question we were able to answer concerned the value of our past and present value creation via the social media. This exercise was almost absurd. First of all, it is impossible to quantify added value of this kind conclusively, since it originates both directly and indirectly, both in the short and long term. Value creation is no longer (and probably never has been) singular. It is quite all right to measure singular outcomes, but if one wants to document the total business value, simply looking at a few quantitative parameters is pointless. Nevertheless, we were able to determine that the Return of Interest (ROI) from our Facebook page is approximately 1500%. And the results are even better on Twitter, where we have barely used any resources but have a base of followers which has a 15x greater pull. In other words, our average Twitter follower is 15 times more influential than the average Twitter user, and when we share something on Twitter, we therefore tend to find that it ripples out into the networks of most relevance to us. Jay Baer, who played a major part in the study, said: “It is of little value to look at the value of what you have achieved, or of what you are achieving right now for that matter. The important thing is what you intend to do going forward. Only then you will find out what it is worth, and that will depend on what you do now. Through your explorative approach to social media, you have managed to bring the company culture with you. You have generated momentum, and that is the most valuable of all that you have achieved, because that is what you need to build on.” He continued: “Bringing the culture with you is by far the most difficult task. Even large companies, which are one-tenth of your size, cannot get it right. They are afraid to let go, as a result of which their social media programme dies before it has even begun.” Michael Chui, who was the driving force behind the social media study published by McKinsey last summer, made it clear that social media can no longer be ignored. It is imperative for all large companies to adopt social media as an integral part of the organisation, or, as he said to us in one of the first Hangouts: “It will be detrimental for companies that are unable to adapt and exploit the social technologies and the associated optimisation opportunities. This may not happen this year or next year, but it will not be long. If you do not do it, your competitors will, and then, sooner or later, you will be outperformed.” Next step: to get it out into the business That was the evaluation part. We then shifted our focus to what we should do in the future. The McKinsey study outlined 10 ways in which social media or technologies can create value for large

Jay Baer, one of the world’s leading social media consultants according to both Forbes and leading on magazine Mashable, talks

about what we’ve done in social media in ‘year one’.

The Next Step: How to unlock the full potential of social media – Synopsis

 

                                           

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companies. Of those 10, we identified the four we considered to be the most prudent for us to focus on in the coming years. Besides our current area, in which we communicate via the official Maersk Line channels, which as mentioned is an approach rooted in our communications department, we must focus on our customer service, sales and internal use of social technologies for collaboration purposes.

Customer service: the efficient person behind the machine Within customer service, there is a crucial 1:2 ratio. As a rule of thumb, it is said that two call centre staff can be replaced by one employee providing customer service via social media. The increased efficiency stems from accessibility and learning: by bringing customer interactions out into the open, for example via a dedicated customer service profile on Twitter, companies experience genuine call-deflection, because customers are able to find answers to their questions among previous responses. In other words, the information is no longer hidden in closed 1-to-1 channels such as telephone or email. However, making the system more efficient is not the whole story. It is also about humanising the interaction points. Just a few years ago, efficiency gains through digital media were considered to be all about automation. In other words, the idea was to make machines more intelligent in order for them to take over people’s work. What is interesting, and surprising, about social media is that they have shown us a different way, that is to say that we can become more efficient while at the same time continuing to interact with our customers in a personal and relevant way. In other words, Maersk Line has a two-fold objective in terms of what we want to achieve through customer service via social media: we want to optimise our procedures and increase customer satisfaction at the same time. Having a person behind the machine has proven to be imperative. Our customers want to have a relationship with us. And they want to be heard. Sales: to teach where our customers learn It will probably take longer to feel the effects of our planned efforts on the sales side. Maersk Line is currently in the process of restructuring the methodology in our sales organisation. We are in the process of moving from so-called reactive to proactive sales, from price-oriented to value-oriented sales. In other words, we do not want to sell the cheapest product, we want to sell the product that provides the best possible value to our customers. This approach demands that we understand our customers’ requirements better than ever before, and in many cases, better than they do themselves. Social media, or so-called social selling, fits perfectly into this strategy. It is not about bombarding the masses with generic marketing messages and thereby generating thousands of new leads. Such an approach would directly contradict our understanding of how social media work. Instead, the idea is to select and train a number of sales people in how to use social media in their work, which, among other things, includes them being able to position themselves as experts in their

In November 2012, Maersk Line produced a little hand-held video recording with one of its employees in order to answer a question about Hurricane Sandy that

came in via Twitter. The video took two hours to produce, was picked up and published on Forbes.com and broke all of the shipping company’s own records

for most views in 24 hours.

The Next Step: How to unlock the full potential of social media – Synopsis

 

                                           

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field. They are not going to start selling via the social media. Their role will be more of an educational one. They are going to be standard-bearers within their field and in that way influence customers early in the purchasing process, even before the customers are aware of their need to buy. This is an example of how one creates a pull. The sales people need to make their (at times highly specialised) knowledge available as a means of building credibility and trust, and, in turn, be able to sell more and do it better.

Internal use: to inspire optimal behaviour Finally, we have our internal use of social media. The McKinsey study accounted for an optimisation potential of 20-25%. More specifically, the point is that office employees spend more than 60% of their time writing emails and attending meetings, and many of the problems they solve by doing this could be solved more rapidly and efficiently by means of internal social platforms such as Chatter, Yammer or Jive. Let me just reiterate what I have said before: internal social media can free up 20-25% of an office employee’s time. This type of efficiency saving would have a massive impact on the bottom line, and that would improve the company’s competitiveness. At Maersk Line, we have already implemented an internal social platform as an extension of our intranet, but this is not enough. Achieving the huge competitive advantages envisaged by the McKinsey study demands more than simply making the technology accessible. Our own research shows that strategies fail approximately 90% of the time due to companies adopting a so-called ‘provide and pray’ tactic. Only a ‘provide and pressure' approach delivers worse results. So, what is the alternative? How do you achieve 20-25%? We suggest that it is about encouraging the culture to adopt the right behaviour. This is not achieved by regulating, but rather by inspiring, by communicating the good stories in order for others to learn from them, and perhaps also by communicating some of the less positive stories, if they are educational. From ‘me’ to ‘us’: why a cultural journey is necessary On a more general level, a cultural journey is necessary if we are to reach our destination. In order to reap the full benefits of social technologies, one has to cultivate behaviour characterised by the employee thinking more about ‘us’ than ‘me’. This requires collaboration and a more holistic view of value creation. In this environment, being good at knowledge sharing, as opposed to keeping and protecting it, gives you status.

Maersk Line’s use of Instagram has become a textbook example of how companies can use this popular photo sharing network, not least thanks to its collection of countless beautiful photos. The company’s presence has even sparked a #maersk spotting trend: when people see a Maersk container on the street, they hasten to take a photo and share it with their network, with the world, and with Maersk.

The Next Step: How to unlock the full potential of social media – Synopsis

 

                                           

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Ultimately, this is probably the social media’s most important contribution, specifically that they have managed to get us to recognise that we are in fact social beings and that we can all achieve much more if we share our knowledge. At Maersk Line, we are keeping our fingers crossed that our social media study proves to be a good example of the advantages of this paradigm shift. On that note, we would especially like to thank all of the talented and generous people who have given their time and thoughts in connection with our study.

Jonathan Wichmann Copenhagen, March 2013