The Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas are truly something to behold. Full of spectacle and amazing visual experiences, fans of the shows know that Cirque experiences are special indeed.

Over the last 25 years, Cirque du Soleil’s brand has been built largely on the power of word of mouth and the enthusiastic recommendations of their audiences. So when Cirque got started in social media, in many ways, it was like returning to their roots.

Brand and Community

“Our fans are an extension of our brand,” says Jessica Berlin, Cirque du Soleil’s social media manager. “The great part about social media is that we can now participate in conversations directly with our fans, in the communities and on the sites where they’re gathering.”

Cirque empowers their online community to be brand ambassadors by giving them access to insider information, special promotions and discounts, and tickets to the shows.

They recently hosted a Cirque-n-Blog where Berlin invited a dozen Las Vegas bloggers to attend their Zumanity show and post reviews of the performance. To them, it was proof that social media - and the community around it - matters a great deal to their brand.

“When we tracked the coverage of the show in Radian6 across social media, Zumanity emerged as our most talked-about show overall. And as a result of the blogger event, our coverage and reach on microblogs like Twitter was much higher than usual, bringing us awareness and interest from new audiences and creating conversation among our existing fans.”

Building Loyalty through Listening

Social media monitoring with Radian6 has become a key component of Cirque’s social media strategy, largely because they can identify influencers and evangelists that are passionate and want to be engaged with their brand.

In May, Cirque du Soleil announced their “Summer of Cirque” promotion to celebrate their 25th anniversary. As part of the promotion, they’ve been offering ticket specials, and they launched a contest to win a trip to Las Vegas and tickets to all seven of the Cirque shows.  In the first two weeks of the promotion, all of their communication was done through social media, and they could directly track the conversation - and sales - that resulted.

Over the course of the next several months, Cirque is using what they’ve learned about their community through listening to build excitement for future shows. Instead of traditional audience outreach, Berlin and her team are using social media as the primary means to distribute insider, sneak-peek information to their audience members. By following Cirque on Twitter or joining them on Facebook, fans will get exclusive content and special discounts that they can’t get elsewhere.

Berlin will use Radian6 to track the buzz around the promotion, measure the reach and impact of their efforts, and understand what content drives the most awareness and ticket sales. They’ll also learn the role that their evangelists and brand ambassadors play in spreading the word about the promotion, and identify new fans of Cirque du Soleil to continue to build their community.

Measuring Success

By tapping audiences exclusively in social media, Berlin and the team at Cirque du Soleil have been able to prove the power and reach of social media for their brand.

“We’ve had great success giving our online communities exclusive access and special offers for our shows,” Berlin says. “The ROI for our social media outreach has been better than for any other form of advertising for us.”

And with the Radian6 dashboard, Berlin has been able to generate reports around various social media metrics and present them to her marketing team in terms that they understand. From measuring the number of conversations in specific online channels to identifying influencers and seeing how their promotions are trending and tracking across social media, Berlin and her team can demonstrate to upper management that social media is a wise investment of both time and resources.

“Building our brand in social media has been rewarding and successful for us at Cirque,” says Berlin. “Our fans are our greatest brand ambassadors and it’s now become a priority for us to closely monitor what is being said. By listening and engaging in these conversations, we can only improve the Cirque du Soleil experience.”

“We’ve always believed that our fans are what make the Cirque du Soleil experience fantastic, and what keeps our brand vibrant and healthy. By not only participating in social media but tangibly measuring and communicating our success, we can harness the power of our online community to keep Cirque du Soleil shows in demand for another 25 years.”

One of the hallmarks of the social web is how it’s shifted the expectations customers have of the companies they do business with. We as consumers know that the tools, channels, and mechanisms exist for companies to engage with their customers. And as a result, we’re not only asking for them to be present and responsive online, but we’re expecting it.

The team at Molson knows and recognizes that, and they’re using social media to humanize their brand, connect with their fans and customers, and build brand equity and loyalty to drive future sales.

“Our goal is to be the ‘go-to brewer’ in North America, and to do that we need to demonstrate a willingness to quickly respond to consumer questions, concerns, comments and love for our brands,” explains Adam Moffat, Manager, Marketing & Brand Public Relations for Molson. “We want to add value to their experience with our company and beers by being present, engaged, and human.”

They recognized that more and more of their audience were gravitating toward online sites and tools to communicate, both in terms of sharing experiences and communicating with companies - and each other. Molson saw first hand how social media was starting to shift consumer expectations from companies online, and they knew they needed to be there.

“Extending customer service and customer relevance to the online world is a very natural extension of our marketing and customer communication,” explains Moffat. “It helps us get closer to our drinkers, and lets them see the people and personality behind our brands. Stronger relationships lead to increased customer loyalty, which ultimately drives sales.”

Using Radian6

As the Molson team got more deeply involved with social media, they knew they needed to measure analyze their efforts, so they turned to Radian6 to help.

Moffat and his social media team make significant use of Radian6’s regional and language filtering capabilities. “We have a great portfolio of brands at Molson that are enjoyed internationally, and we needed visibility into the conversation in other areas of the world.”

Radian6’s flexibility was also key for the team. They’re continuously tweaking and shifting what conversation they’re monitoring based on their current campaigns, events, and promotions in addition to monitoring the larger conversation around their brand. The ability to adjust their topic profiles quickly and easily, and deliver turn-key reporting on the go makes their team more nimble, responsive, and able to share their results across the company.

“We also really appreciate that Radian6 collaborates with clients to update, test, and introduce new features. It’s great to be able to contribute ideas and feature requests to help improve the platform so it’s even more valuable to us.”

Why Listening Matters

The Molson team is using what they learn through listening and monitoring to actively inform marketing decisions about messaging, and even to bridge new media to more traditional channels.

“It’s easy to monitor an interesting online conversation about our brand or our industry and use that to craft a compelling, targeted pitch to traditional media,” says Moffat. “We can be sure that the coverage we’re seeking is really aimed at the topics, issues, and conversations that our customers care about.”

They’ve also been able to adjust their strategy for campaigns and promotions based on what they learn through monitoring. By tracking how consumers are responding to their communication efforts, the Molson team can change tactics, messaging, or outreach focus in full stride, which they’ve never been able to do before. Sharper focus for them means more valuable, impactful campaigns and promotions for their customers and potential customers.

As for their social media ROI, Moffat says it’s an age old question, and a definition they’re still refining for themselves.

“We’ve always had a similar issue trying to quantify the impact and value of traditional PR measurements. What’s the dollar value of an impression? But we’re also considering ROI in terms of the Return on Ignoring. Can your organization really afford to not be present and engaged when customer expectations have most certainly changed? ”

Want to know more about what Molson is up to? Connect with Adam on Twitter, check out their blog, and hear how they’re tapping the potential of the social web.

If you’ll be in Boston for Enterprise 2.0, or if you’ll be local on the 24th for any reason, you aren’t going to want to miss our party, The Rockstars of Social CRM, hosted by Chris Brogan. The event will be held at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront on Wednesday, June 24th from 8PM to 11PM. RSVP on the Eventbrite page to reserve your spot!

But never fear if you can’t make it live - we’re live streaming the whole event as part of our new Twebinar format. Both events are free, and both are going to be an absolute blast. Sign up for the Twebinar on the Eventbrite page and we’ll email you simple login instructions next week.

Why Social CRM? You’ll hear more from us about that this week. But in short, Social CRM is the new dynamic in building long-term, fruitful relationships for your company. It’s a new way of approaching and cultivating customer relationships that’s focused on people instead of tools, collaboration instead of control, and valuable experiences instead of transactions.

During our fun and fast-paced panel discussion with some of the leading minds in this field, we’ll discuss how these new expectations in customer relationships are changing the game, and what role we as social communicators play in the evolution.
Join:

• Chris Brogan, President, New Marketing Labs and author of ChrisBrogan.com
• Marcel Lebrun, CEO, Radian6
• Frank Eliason, Director of Digital Care, Comcast
• Paul Greenberg, Author of CRM at the Speed of Light, President of The 56 Group, LLC
• Brent Leary, Co-author of Barack 2.0 and Co-founder of CRM Essentials
• Michael Thomas, National President, CRM Association

And throughout the event, we’ll have drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and fun interviews with Chris Brogan live on the web. And after the brief discussion and some exciting announcements from Radian6, jam out and be your OWN rockstar with Rock Band 2 live on the big screen. (We’ll even take your song requests in advance. Just email us here and we’ll do our best to get your song so you can wow the crowd.)
We can’t wait to see you there, either live in Boston, or live on the web. Questions? Just let us know. See you in Boston!

It’s a pretty common question: “What, exactly, am I listening to if no one’s talking about me or my brand?”

Companies that are small, new, or just not as plugged in to the online environment can sometimes feel as though they’ve got nothing to gain by monitoring social media because the mentions of their brand are few and far between.

But the “listening” step of social media is important beyond that. In fact, it illustrates a fundamental principle of a successful social media foundation: thinking and participating around and above your brand.

We’ve Got Company

Unless you’re in a super-niche or groundbreaking industry, you’ve got competition. You’re likely not the only game in town, so if someone isn’t talking about you, they may very well be talking about your competitors, and you can learn a lot about what they’re saying.

From insights about what customers love or don’t love about a competitors offering to who’s engaged in the community on behalf of the competitive brand, conversations can tell you a ton. And understanding your Share of Conversation within the larger industry you represent - especially as compared to those competitors - is an important insight.

One thing to note: trolling for your competitor’s customers and fans in social media is a big no-no. It’s one thing to connect with them and build a genuine relationship (good). It’s another thing entirely to be chasing down your competitors customers or engaged prospects and using these channels as an opportunity to poorly butt in and pitch your stuff (bad). Tread lightly.

Finding The Tribes

A key to understanding where to spend your resources in social media is the basic knowledge of where your potential customers are gathering online. Are they bloggers, or do they favor Twitter to have their conversations? Are they using forums to hold discussions? Or maybe they’re not using these sites much at all?

You can monitor for discussions that swirl around your industry at large instead of about specific brands to understand how those audiences are using (or not using) social sites. For example, if I’m a lawn care company, I’m going to be searching for discussions on lawn maintenance, landscaping, and the weekend warriors out cutting the lawn or sharing lawn care tips among their friends. Where they’re talking is where I want to be participating. Instead of a shotgun plan, I’ve now got a focused idea about where my social media outreach should be aimed.

Problem, Meet Solution

Problems, needs, and wish lists from your potential customers or your competitor’s customers are being tossed out to the social web all the time. From product reviews to casual statements about what’s not working right, customers are giving you loads of intelligence about what problems they need you to solve.

Think bigger than your brand, and tune in to conversations that are about the kinds of issues and challenges that your product or service is aimed at solving. If you’re a virtual assistant, maybe you’re listening to people who are drowning in email and learning how to help them to refine your service offerings. If you’re an accountant, you might be putting together a list of the most commonly asked questions from people setting up a small business and doing a podcast about it.

We call this “listening at the point of need” and it’s about understanding how your business solves problems for people, and then connecting with them in a meaningful, helpful way when they need you most. It’s not about a sales pitch. It’s about creating a solution for someone that they’re asking for. And by listening to the feedback from people who aren’t yet familiar with your brand but know your industry, you can learn how to create better and more relevant offerings that address the pain points these folks have and talk about most.

It’s Bigger Than Your Brand Name

Simply put, conversations in social media aren’t just about finding mentions of your brand. It’s about finding relevant conversations from within the communities you serve and understanding how those impact your business and its growth potential. Listening is a holistic activity with great potential to bring you intelligence, insight, and focus for your social media efforts.

What else would you be paying attention to, and how can you be listening above, around, and nearby you brand to improve your business?

More case studies today, and this time we’re talking about our friends and clients at AMD.

As a tech leader, AMD had always been on the forefront of the technology behind social media, and they were continually evolving their communication to make the most of these platforms. So their focus, instead of the foundation, was the “what’s next” for them in social media.  Refining their approach, and measuring more comprehensively.

Their field test for that earlier this year was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where they used a listening strategy to track buzz about some of their product launches.

Download the case study and read about what they learned, and a bit about how they’re building and using their internal social media council to guide strategy for the future.

Thanks to Chris James and the AMD team for sharing their experiences!

Here at Radian6, we keep talking about the importance of integrating social media across the enterprise for it to be truly valuable, and to truly understand the impact it has on all areas of the business.

One company that’s really embracing that approach is Embarq, a telecommunications company base in Overland Park, KS. In an industry where customer service has become pivotal, Embarq and their agency partners at Metzger Associates are jumping in with both feet and using social communications to support their customers, raise awareness for their brand, and engage with their community to understand how to serve them better.

The case study is far too comprehensive to post in its entirety here, but do yourself the favor of download the PDF version here, reading it, and sharing it with your colleagues and teams. Learn what the Embarq crew is doing to leverage and manage their social media engagement, a few of the ways they’re measuring their success, and what they’ve learned along the way.

Special thanks to the Embarq and Metzger teams for sharing their story and their learnings with us.

Social media is evolving the public relations industry, and Golin Harris is keeping stride with the changes.

Jeff Beringer, SVP and team leader for the firm’s Dialogue integrated media practice, joins us this week on The Engaged Brand to talk about how he and his firm are embracing and leveraging the advantages and challenges that social media has presented to the PR industry.

Full of great examples of both B2B and B2C companies and their listening and engagement efforts along with a healthy take on the social media ROI discussion, Jeff’s interview is full of insights and first-hand experiences about social media in a business framework.

If you’ve got 30 minutes to spare, listen to the episode (or download it and listen to it later) and hear what Golin Harris is up to in the social space.

Special thanks to Jeff for taking the time to chat with us!

Interested in chatting with us about how your company is listening, engaging, and making the most of social media? Drop us a note.

One of the reasons we discuss listening and engagement as two sides of a similar social media coin is because they’re so interrelated. And while listening is something you can do passively and behind the scenes, beginning your engagement strategy is something to consider carefully because once you’re out there, reverse gear is hard to find.

I was speaking with someone this last week at IMS Dallas about her company’s social media work. They’ve been listening and monitoring their brand and to their great credit, they’re really on top of the conversations happening around them. They’ve determined that they have distinctive groups of people in their community that they’ll want to talk to, and they know that they’ve got both fans and detractors that they’ll need to address.

One thing they’ve been trying to figure out, however, is how they can engage with select groups of their customers individually and separately. And my answer? You really can’t.

The trick is that customers don’t put themselves in buckets. They look at their relationship with your company holistically, and don’t delineate between what department they should be dealing with or where you park them in your CRM system. To your community, the relationship they’re building with you is universal.

What that means in terms of engagement is that you’re going to have a hard time trying to engage with one “sector” of your community, but not another. Once you’ve opened the door to communicating and engaging with your community, they’re going to want to talk to you, no matter where in your customer segmentation they fall. If you’re talking specifically to your corporate or enterprise clients, your individual clients and customers are going to see that. And they’re going to want to talk to you, too.

If you start a blog, folks are going to leave comments, and the unspoken expectation from them is that you’re going to respond. If you’re reaching out to your customers on Twitter, they’re not going to consider how they’re classified in your customer index, they’re just going to want to talk to you (and have you talk back).

I know that’s hard. Social media *can* be hard. But here’s where the listening bit really helps.

If you spend the time and effort to listen and monitor, you’ll be able to identify trends in the conversation and understand - *before* you engage - what your customers might be expecting from you once you get there. The intelligence you mine through listening becomes the foundation for your engagement strategy, and making the case for getting your entire organization involved - from customer service to marketing to technical support and sales.

So yes, the challenge is that once you engage with your community, going back is hard (if not impossible). Starting that dialogue is an open invitation to your community, and they’ll take you up on it, and expect that you’ll continue - even if that means that you have to learn along the way.

But don’t let that deter you. Use your listening practices strategically. Take the time - weeks, or even months - to inform yourself about all the what-ifs of engagement for your company and how your community is likely to react when you start conversing with them.

That way, instead of being surprised by the influx of people who want to talk to you, you’ll be able to confidently and consistently connect with your customers, wherever they are, and evolve your engagement strategy along the way.

So what about you? Are you listening but not yet talking? What challenges are you facing getting started, and have you been surprised by the response from your community (for better or worse)? Can’t wait to hear from you in the comments.

Non-profit and community service organizations are always pressed for time, budget, and resources. But their focus is on fulfilling their mission, and their daily efforts are dedicated to connecting and supporting those that support them.

The American Red Cross is no different, and they’ve embraced the power of the social web to help raise awareness, connect with their donor base, and understand how they can better support the communities that they serve.

The Cause

The American Red Cross is the nation’s premier emergency response organization. As part of a worldwide movement that offers neutral humanitarian care to vulnerable people, the American Red Cross distinguishes itself by also aiding victims of devastating natural disasters. Over the years, the organization has expanded its services, always with the aim of preventing and relieving suffering.

Today, in addition to domestic disaster relief, the American Red Cross offers compassionate services in five other areas: community services that help the needy; support and comfort for military members and their families; the collection, processing and distribution of lifesaving blood and blood products; educational programs that promote health and safety; and international relief and development programs.

Wendy Harman, Social Media Manager at the Red Cross, has been using and leveraging Radian6 to help her organization measure their outreach efforts, collect intelligence and feedback from their community, and understand the issues that are important to their community.

The Strategy

“It wasn’t easy to adapt to social media monitoring, actually,” Harman says. Initially, the organization was concerned with some negative comments that were being posted across the web, and they were just using their monitoring capabilities to fi nd and try to stem the negative tides.

But quickly, it became apparent to the Red Cross that there was more to monitoring than simply addressing
criticism.

“We quickly learned that people are talking about the Red Cross every single day, and not always howwe expected them to,” says Harman. For example, the ARC often described themselves as dedicated to “collecting time, money, and blood” when discussing how their community could participate and support them.

But when they listened carefully to the conversations happening around their brand, they realized that their stakeholders were using words like “volunteer”, “help”, and “donate” when talking about their work with the Red Cross. Learning that helped the Red Cross refi ne their communications to focus on language that would be relevant to those that wanted to be involved with them.

Outreach through monitoring is also giving the Red Cross a human touch, and providing personalized points of contact to their supporters.

As an example, listening taught them that their blood donors were frustrated by the level and frequency of calls to donate. By sharing that information and feedback internally, they’re looking at better and more personalized ways to reach their blood donors in the ways that they want to be communicated with, and improving their internal processes to accommodate those needs.

They’ve also learned that they have a passionate community of fans and advocates, and listening to how those people are talking about the organization is continually helping Harman and her colleagues understand how best to engage those advocates in their work and recruit volunteers. And with a half a million enthusiastic volunteers, the American Red Cross can empower them to be passionate evangelists for their work and cause.

The Platform

Harman and her team use a number of Radian6’s features in order to manage their day to day monitoring as well as report results internally. They’re working to integrate monitoring and outreach into their daily operations so that they can not only engage and respond but use the intelligence to strategize for the future.

The River of News is Harman’s first step in the morning; she immediately downloads mentions and categorizes them, and checks out the social profiles of some of the people posting about the organization. The profile feature helps Harman understand and evaluate how connected any given person is in the community and how engaged they are in the social web.

She also looks closely at the Conversation Cloud and Topic Trends widgets to see what words and subjects are trending in relation to her organization. If she sees anything that’s outside the norm, she makes a note and investigates further and reports back to the team.

Taking a look at key topics this way also helps Harman and the communications team understand how well their messaging and communications are penetrating the community, and how topics are trending over time. The team has even built a visibility calendar that helps them concentrate on specific issues and topics on a monthly basis, and the trend information they collect through monitoring helps them focus on topics that are relevant and timely.

“Radian6 has given us metrics to work with and ways to measure the effectiveness of our community outreach. It’s shortened the timeframe for us to gather and analyze the information we collect so we can focus on turning those learnings into actionable strategies for our organization,” Harman says.

Goals and the Future

As with many community organizations, the Red Cross is dedicated to cultivating their next generation of supporters, and social media is one of the primary strategies they’re exploring to do that. By tapping into the social communications of the younger generations, the Red Cross will be better able to plug into their lifestyles and ensure that the Red Cross is visible and of interest to them.

“We’ve definitely come to understand how much the social web is relevant to our efforts,” concludes Harman. “It’s exciting to us to proactively engage our community through social communication and make their experiences with the Red Cross personal and relevant. Our community is reacting so positively to the personal outreach, and we’re looking forward to keeping the human element of our work front and center.”

Would you like to share this great story with your boss and colleagues? Easy! Download the PDF version here and pass it along. Got a great case study to share about how your organization is listening and engaging with your customers? Share it with us so we can share it with others.

For businesses outside the tech space, social media can sometimes be a tough sell. It’s one part evangelism, two parts patience, and a good dose of determination and creativity.

This week’s Engaged Brand Podcast features George Smith, social media specialist for Crocs - those crazy and fun shoes that have legions of raving fans (and almost as many people that think they’re silly looking). George is an army of one, working tirelessly to demonstrate the valuable and game-changing nature of social media to tap communities and brand evangelists.

We talk with George about how he’s making the case for social media inside his company, what he thinks the future holds, and how he’s created a social media presence for Crocs that’s changing the way they connect with their customers.

So if you can spare about 45 minutes, take a listen, and learn a thing or two from someone in the trenches.

Have an idea for someone you’d like to hear from on The Engaged Brand? Is it you? Let us know.