WEEK 4: A Conversation with Guest Speaker Beth Mansfield by Angela Duret
By UCLA X469.21 Student Angela Duret
Angela Duret
Our Week 4 guest speaker was Beth Mansfield, an independent public relations consultant who formerly served as PR manager for CKE Restaurants, which is home to the Carl’s Jr. brand. The first thing she told our class is that every successful social media promotion starts with a clear vision.
With the vision in place, you next need to define and ensure you fully understand your goals.
Next up are strategies, and then tactics focused on increasing engagement on the various social media platforms employed in the campaign. From increasing likes to generating retweets, the key is to make it fun and easy. One way to do that is through contests and promotions – a technique that Carl’s Jr. has mastered.
Beth Mansfield
If you want to work with bloggers, it’s also important to get on their radar and start building relationships by commenting on their stories. They really love thoughtful comments (but make sure to keep your comments focused on the blog post topic, not the brand you’re promoting). It’s really important to create relationships and demonstrate that you value their work by liking, retweeting and, in general, driving traffic to their blog posts. It’s a two way relationship.
Beth really started from square-one with the Carl’s Jr. social media effort. But she learned quickly that social media is really about interacting with people and having an open conversation based on transparency; that’s what makes the brand accessible to the customer.
Things have changed a lot since Beth first helped Carl’s Jr. go “viral.” Twitter has grown into a customer service tool where customers can share how they feel about a brand. They use it to reach out to customer support, as well as to share feelings with other consumers.
Brands that engage customers on Twitter also communicate more broadly with other members of their audience, especially during crisis situations. Twitter is a great platform for disseminating information, maintaining a good image and answering questions.
