Invisible communities that help drive our local economies

The virtual world of social media is already influencing real markets. Yet too few Thames Valley companies are currently embedding social media interaction such as Twitter and Instagram into their everyday retail operations, says Pete Doyle, founder of the SocialRetail Group.

“Retailers are not optimizing their local footfall opportunity if they are not using these mixed demographic social layers to talk to their potential customer-base.”

 Invisible but vibrant Thames Valley communities exist on social media hashtags, revealed Doyle. “#RdgUK is the most active in the country with over 60,000 participants – equivalent to roughly a third of Reading’s population.

“Some individual tweeters have thousands of followers; have more influence than their local radio or newspaper. Within days a tweet could be read by millions.”

Each town has various digital communities and users that talk to each other, Doyle explained. In 2013 he studied four towns and cities – Manchester, Reading, Bristol and Newcastle –logging then analysing 72,000 geo-tagged tweets from roughly 5% of their populations. The following year tweeting had increased by 30% and, with new smart devices arriving in subsequent years, activity is now rising exponentially.

“Ten years ago we had e-commerce, but we didn’t have social media and localised hashtags. Social media has now become embedded in our lives with different functionality, demographics and uses, but importantly with local news and ‘keeping-up-to-date’ as a constant demand.”

By empowering regional retail staff to become digital ambassadors and use social media as a local customer service tool, Doyle’s SocialRetail Group delivers virtual two-way ‘corner-shop conversations’ that create social relationships and lead to increased customer awareness of key brand attributes and values.

Ironically, having started as a Waitrose shelf-filler in 1986, Doyle indirectly still helps to fill retail shelves today through his SocialRetail Group advisory team based at the University of Reading’s Enterprise Centre. One client increased local sales 10% year-on-year by adopting SocialRetail Group advice.

 

After gaining extensive experience in all aspects of retail and technological change processes, from shopfloor to board level ­– including launching Waitrose.com in 1999 and establishing e-commerce operations for Toys R Us and Hamleys from 2000-2003 – Doyle branched out in his early thirties to run his own online retailing consultancy.

Among other projects, Doyle, a registered guitar teacher, set up #ReadingRockAcademy, now a successful charity-based virtual community supporting young musicianship, and #rdgbands promoting Thames Valley music. “We’ve publicised thousands of gigs; had people from all over the world tuning into our tweets.”

“I quickly learned how to tweet effectively, about attitude and etiquette, and creating a social layer behaviour beyond simply selling a product or service.”

Doyle also recognised the subtle power and rapidly growing popularity of social media. And, that retail corporates were missing the big opportunity of local hashtags. “I pivoted professionally from e-commerce towards social media.”

Today, Doyle’s SocialRetail Group works with large-scale retail, leisure and hospitality organisations with UK-wide outlets, discovering and beneficially using the digital-age social communication layers of physical areas or towns.  Current clients include Maplin Electronics, Specsavers, and Hobbycraft.

SocialRetail Group takes major retailers into the virtual world of local hashtags through bespoke social media consultancy, analytics and training platforms.

“Too many corporates today rely on agencies pumping out scattergun content to gain online ‘hits’, rather than empowering their local managers to talk locally.”

It’s not about the quantity of tweets viewed but the quality of conversation achieved, he stresses.

“Using social media is not about the direct selling of products – that’s e-commerce. It’s more about creating informed connections to interested communities. It’s Local Social Responsibility – LSR rather than CSR, if you like.”

“We’re merely writing another chapter to those outdated corporate brand-manuals – a localised social media chapter on creating successful customer relationships.”

Faced with the ease of online purchasing, ‘high street’ retailers will have to adapt and provide a better local shopping experience and enhanced customer service, says Doyle, because social media networking will increasingly influence consumer expectations. “We will see the rise of the social retailer.”

@SocialRetail