SMW Community Building

Why and how to build online communities

Agenda

• Introduction

• Before you start building your community

• Defining a community

• Our communities

• The role of the agency in communities

• Summary

• Whisky education

Introduction

Introduction

Who I am

• Joe Hughes Digital Marketing Manager

• I oversee all online activity for all of brands including:

• Websites• Social media• Online advertising

• Prior to Joining MDB I was Strategy and Research Director for a social media agency

Introduction

Who are we

• Morrison Bowmore Distillers – One of Scotlands’ leading single malt whisky makers

• Main brands are Bowmore, Auchentoshan and GlenGarioch

• We also look after Midori in Europe

Midori

Before you start your community

The basics of social media

• Social media is vast, targeting is key, biggest doesn’t always mean best

• Think about your audience not your platform

• Go through all the content you organisation already produces and see if that fits – reduces costs and keeps the messages close to other marketing

• All content is useful somewhere

• Remember that social is multi country and multi lingual

Does my brand belong in social media?

• The obvious answer is yes – but think carefully.

• Whilst most brands will be able to gain a following of some description are these followers going to purchase your products? Do they already?

• who are my audience? Do they exist in social media? Are they influenced by it?

• Do audiences want or need educating about my brand(s)?

• Do I have or can I get the resources to manage social education properly

Setting KPI’s and objectives

Measurement

• We use objectives which are long term statements of intent as well as KPI’s

• Our objectives are very simple but underpin everything we do

• KPI’s are worked out on an individual project basis and link directly to the investment placed into that project

• Some form of KPI’s are essential for social media

• They must be meaningful to the business and measureable

Our Objectives

• Raise the profile of our brands with the 2 billion strong online audience.

• Build true brand loyalty by constantly communicating with consumers and fans

• Support and amplify our traditional marketing activities

Defining a community

What is a community?

• Before you can set objectives, KPI’s or goals for your community you need define what it is?

• A Facebook Fan page? • The subscribers to your YouTube channel? • The members of your custom social network?

• Your community shouldn’t be defined by a platform

• It should be defined by who the people are and who they want to interact with you

Multi platform communities

• Most brands won’t actually have one community they will have multiple communities often on the same platform

• It is vital to recognise the nature of your communities as this should inform both content and conversation

• It is important to try and not alienate one community at the expense of another

• Geographic boundaries can also play a part particularly if you are using competitions or events as part of your content strategy

Our communities

• Bowmore has Five main communities

• Hardcore whisky fans

• “Trade up whisky” people

• Foodies

• People with an interest in Scotland

• B2B on trade

MBD communities Bowmore

•Auchentoshan has Four main communities

• Hardcore whisky fans

• Cocktail drinkers

• The “Auchentoshan man”

• B2B on trade

MBD communities Auchentoshan

•Glengarioch has two main communities

• Hardcore whisky fans

• “Trading up”

• Specialist whisky retailers

MBD communities Glengarioch

Talking to our communities

Bowmore

• An exclusive community created for our Hardcore Fans

• Featuring exclusive content

• News, • Exclusive bottlings • Other benefits

• Talked about in other social media

• Deliberately high barrier to entry

• Next year we will be adding offline elements

MBD communities Bowmore Inner core

MBD communities Bowmore Inner core

Auchentoshan

MBD Auchentoshan Presents

• The size of audience we can now “hit” with these messages has increased by orders of magnitude

• Between, Facebook, Blog and Video coverage we have had over 50,000 people exposed to education around Auchentoshan by their peers

• We use Facebook events to help promote and our new converts are actively spreading these events with their friends

MBD brand B2B Switch

• The switch program is primarily aimed at bartenders

• All entrants have to upload videos to YouTube

• 19 finalist are selected by Judges the 20th gets in by having the most video views on YouTube encouraging them to act as education ambassadors

• We have received double the number of entries we were anticipating

Glengarioch

MBD communities Glengarioch Limited editions

Agency role

Things to consider

• What role does/should your agency play?

• We manage almost all day to day community interaction in house

• We also create the majority of content

• For us agency are about adding either adding extra hands or extra skills linked to specific projects this can include:

• Education• App build• Microsite/web build

Summary

Summary

• Prepare properly, Know what you want out of a community being setting the right KPI’s

• Remember you will almost certainly have multiple communities sometimes within one platform

• Identify these communities is important to understand future strategy

• Ensure content as much as possible doesn’t alienate one community over another

• Ultimately communities are only worth what you can measure

Questions

And now to the whisky

Bowmore Production

Malting

Kilning

Milling

Mashing

Fermentation

Distillation

Maturation