How a social media cam­paign helped HP Israel’s PSG Group gain momentum

When Blonde 2.0 began to assist HP Israel’s Per­sonal Sys­tems Group with their social media mar­ket­ing efforts, we found they had no rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the social media world. A com­mu­nity had not yet been built for the group and their cus­tomer base did not have a proper net­work to turn to for ques­tions and answers.

Let me tell you what we did. Over the course of a few months’ time, Blonde 2.0 and HP quickly exposed HP Israel’s PSG group to the social media world and began engag­ing with cus­tomers and poten­tial cus­tomers to increase the group’s brand aware­ness in the community.

When you build a com­mu­nity from scratch, the tar­get audi­ence you pri­mar­ily want to attract are com­mu­nity lead­ers, early adapters and other movers & shak­ers in your indus­try in order to gain some momen­tum. Blonde 2.0 launched HP Israel’s Face­book Fan Page in Sep­tem­ber and started from a zero fan base. Since close to a third of Israel’s pop­u­la­tion has a Face­book pro­file – 2.5 mil­lion Israelis and the demo­graphic groups we wanted to tar­get were found on Face­book — this social net­work was a great place to start build­ing a com­mu­nity around HP. We also turned to Twit­ter to reach out to HP’s com­mu­nity, as no other net­work allows for real-time mes­sage updates nor engage­ment with Israeli indus­try lead­ers from the high-tech and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing worlds as Twit­ter does.

By the end of first month, HP’s fan base on Face­book grew to 150 fans and we noticed an expo­nen­tial growth each week. By the end of Octo­ber, HP had 619 fans and by Novem­ber we reached 810 fans. This quick growth was based on the inter­est­ing con­tent we uploaded and our engage­ment with the fans on the page. We dis­cussed com­put­ers, lap­tops and pro­vided assis­tance with HP prod­ucts. We also cre­ated all types of inter­est­ing activ­i­ties and con­tests for the fans to take part in.

Pro­vid­ing incen­tives for fans and fol­low­ers to take part in the com­mu­nity is a must when brands take a part in the social media world. A brand should be ready to com­pen­sate fans who pro­mote its name both by social incen­tives as dis­cussed in this post and also by giv­ing fans prizes.

At the end of Novem­ber, early Decem­ber, we unleashed HP Israel’s first give­away cam­paign, ask­ing our fan base to par­tic­i­pate in a cre­ative con­test that would offer them a chance to win a new HP Mini lap­top (the Mini 110c). We wanted to empha­size the product’s eas­i­ness of mobil­ity and asked our fans to tell us where they would take their lap­top if they won it. We encour­aged fans to be as cre­ative as pos­si­ble, giv­ing them the option to upload videos, sound clips, pho­tos and graphic mate­ri­als to the fan wall as their con­test sub­mis­sion. The response rate was over­whelm­ing and we were amazed at how much fans invested in their cre­ations in order to win. We received over 630 entries within 3 weeks’ time.

The win­ner of our com­pe­ti­tion was a cre­ative song writer named Nadav Harel who wrote an enthu­si­as­tic song about HP: HP song: Cute Lit­tle Com­puter. Nadav received recog­ni­tion and praise from the com­mu­nity (social incen­tive) and a new lap­top. The HP lap­top con­test did won­ders for our activ­ity and growth of the HP Face­book Fan Page. Our com­mu­nity grew to over 2,580 fans.

Cam­paigns held on Twit­ter also encour­aged HP fans to become more involved in our com­mu­nity. We asked our fol­low­ers to tweet us a per­sonal expe­ri­ence they had with an HP prod­uct. The cre­ators of the three most cre­ative tweets of per­sonal expe­ri­ences they had with HP prod­ucts were awarded a Blue­tooth mouse known as The Dragon. Dur­ing the two weeks of our Twit­ter cam­paign, HP Israel’s twit­ter com­mu­nity grew by more than 140 fol­low­ers. With Twit­ter, we con­tin­u­ally mon­i­tor what peo­ple say about HP PSG’s prod­ucts and pro­vide assis­tance in real time. Below, a user com­plained that he had not received his com­puter from the ser­vice lab on time. HP Israel quickly inter­vened to fix the prob­lem and every­one came out of this story happy.

It is always excit­ing to build a brand’s com­mu­nity from the ground up and watch our mar­ket­ing efforts and activ­ity grow within the social sphere. We’ve learned a few lessons along the way and con­tinue to learn daily from our val­ued com­mu­nity members.

Tips on hold­ing social media campaigns

A few tips for new­com­ers who haven’t yet led any social media campaigns:

1) Lis­ten to what peo­ple have to say about your brand and be respon­sive to their needs. Don’t be defen­sive. Be attentive.

2) Always remem­ber to be trans­par­ent and hon­est with the mem­bers of your com­mu­nity. Make sure that if you promise some­thing, you make it hap­pen. Don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong – peo­ple appre­ci­ate that from a brand.

3) When cre­at­ing con­tests, make sure the rules are loud and clear. There’s noth­ing worse than bit­ter fans angry after a contest’s rules weren’t made clear in advance.

4) Remem­ber that build­ing a com­mu­nity takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and nei­ther is an online com­mu­nity. Enjoy each one of the phases you go through when build­ing your com­mu­nity and learn from them.

We live in a won­der­ful age today where brands can inter­act and have an open com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel with cus­tomers and poten­tial cus­tomers. I am happy to share our expe­ri­ences with the build­ing of one such com­mu­nity. An online com­mu­nity just like an offline com­mu­nity needs to be nur­tured with del­i­cate care and fed with con­tent, activ­ity and live dis­cus­sion at all times in order to keep it buzzing and this is what we aim to achieve above all.Ayelet Noff is founder and CEO of Blonde 2.0, a con­sul­tancy spe­cial­iz­ing in help­ing brands use social media tools such as social net­works, the blo­gos­phere and social soft­ware to cre­ate brand aware­ness, recruit employ­ees or achieve any other goal. See her busi­ness pro­file, con­tact Ayelet, fol­low her on Twit­ter or leave a com­ment below.