The Learning Curve

Diadora USA Goes To School On Social Media

Many businesses, both large and small, are still trying to find their bearings in the world of social media. This “on-the-job education” has been a literal one over the past few months for Diadora USA and a group of undergraduate college students who have been working on a social media campaign for the brand. Over the past semester, professor Tim Newman’s sports marketing students at York College of Pennsylvania have been tasked with establishing a social media presence for Diadora USA.

In coordination with Diadora’s director of marketing Debra Wachter, the college students developed an outline for a social media campaign and then went on to implement it by creating a Twitter account (twitter.com/diadorausa) and an official Facebook page (facebook.com/pages/diadora-usa/10150116952190377) for the brand. The students are using these mediums to interact with consumers and to market the Diadora brand and its products. The students maintain both the Twitter and Facebook accounts and at the end of the semester, one or more of the students will be staying on as an employee of Diadora to continue working on the ongoing social media presence for the brand.

Professor Newman, who is guiding the students, is also in the process of co-authoring a text book that will serve to teach college students how to use social media in the business world. “With the way social media is developing so rapidly, businesses now often want entry level people to be able to run social media campaigns for them,” says Newman. “And it is really different than just going on Facebook and posting pictures.

Students need to be taught what to do on social media and when to do it. And they need to learn this from a marketing standpoint.”

Newman says that the goal for all social media campaigns may differ, but that “ultimately it needs to provide value to your followers. Why should someone follow a brand on Twitter or be a friend on Facebook? There has to be some value to give back to them. It comes back to marketing.

Many brands are also going to use social media to reach a different demographic of consumer which, will turn into a new revenue stream.”

The students have run various contests for Diadora that helped to create engagement with consumers. The strongest response from fans, however, has come not from news updates or contests but from having sponsored athletes come online and post some comments or engage in conversations with the fans via Facebook.

“How do we measure success? It is not necessarily how many followers or fans you have,” says Newman. “It is more about the quality of interaction you are having with them. Are the consumers responding and giving you feedback? Are they asking questions? Without interaction, even if you have followers you are not providing value because you don’t know if they are listening. The ultimate goal is to provide value.”

A key takeaway for the students in this project: it can be hard work to get followers and fans online. “The students learned that they couldn’t just show up and automatically get followers,” says Newman. “That was a big surprise to the students, that the number of followers and fans didn’t just happen for them. You don’t just start Tweeting and posting on Facebook and suddenly have thousands of fans. They realized it doesn’t happen overnight, you have to build it like a brand, it has to have some substance to it before it becomes who you are.”

Other tips that Newman has for brands still finding their way around social media: “I would encourage brands to do it in-house, because when you outsource it you don’t have the tie-in with the company and the personal feel. The personal touch and the feeling that your social media presence is delivering a genuine message is very important.” Newman points to Southwest Airlines and Marriot as two corporations doing a god job engaging and interacting with consumers in social media. “The key is that it has to provide value.

Whatever the goal is that you are trying to achieve, it has to have value to the fans, followers, consumers, or however you want to label them.”

The project made sense for Diadora, according to Wachter, because, as a smaller brand Diadora has had trouble getting its arms around social media.

“It is not nearly as challenging if you are a bigger brand, but for us in the U.S. we are still whittling our way in,” says Wachter. “This is a long term project. The students have come up with some interesting ideas and they are understanding it from a marketing perspective. You can’t just have contests and give away prizes without understanding that the prizes need to come out of a certain budget. So they are learning about this from different angles, it’s not just about putting a pretty picture on Facebook.”

Says Newman, “This is a unique and amazing experience for the students and they have gotten some invaluable interaction with professionals.”

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