Should sustainable brands tweet?

Gabriel Scheer

Social networking. Web 2.0. Social media. Call it what you will, they all mean the same thing: The tools of marketing are rapidly changing. For companies focused on sustainability, this can be an opportunity to cultivate a new base of vocal and active brand evangelists, but it can also carry an extra risk if not managed correctly.

People continue to spend more time on social networking and blog sites than ever before, according to the Nielsen Co. The average time per person spent on soclail networking sites increased 67 percent from May 2008 to May 2009. More importantly, Nielsen found that social media now accounts for almost 10 percent of Internet time. This is significant if online real estate and online advertising slots are increasingly measured by time spent, rather than pages viewed, which Nielson and others expect them to be.

For companies not involved in some kind of online social network, “it is a blind spot that will increasingly be apparent to customers,” according to Gabriel Scheer, founder of Seattle-based Re-Vision Labs, a company that provides community-building products and strategies for sustainable businesses and organizations.

The term social networking has morphed into social marketing at many companies. A recent report, “Social Media Playtime is Over,” by Forrester Research found that while many marketing budgets are being tightened in the current recession, more than 50 percent of marketers polled in their survey said they will increase their spending on social marketing. Companies as large as Ford (NYSE: F) (which “tweets” at twitter.com/Ford or as @Ford in Twitter parlance) and as small as Seattle-based Molly’s Salads (@Mollyssalads) are using Twitter to gain a captive audience for their promotions. But triple-bottom-line companies are an especially good fit for marketing via online social networks, according to Scheer.

To be successful, such companies are already committed to transparency and holding true to their core values. The same holds true on social networking sites where users will abandon a feed and its brand, or worse, tell their friends if it is deemed inauthentic, Scheer says. More frighteningly, if bad news comes out about a product or company—sweatshop labor used in a factory to manufacture organic-cotton clothing, for example—the news can spread like wildfire. So it’s better to be there to put out the flames.

“If you are not engaging in these member communities, you’ve already lost control of the conversation,” says David Raycroft, vice president of product strategy at San Francisco-based startup Milyoni. The company is readying an e-commerce solution that will allow customers of companies, including Equator Coffees, to purchase products without leaving a company’s Facebook page. It may be the first time a marketing strategy aimed at online networks creates a verifiable revenue stream, he says. (Both Facebook and Twitter don’t make money.)

Just like in the “real world” though, all the transparency and belief in sustainability or useful “tweets” won’t get a company anywhere online if its leaders don’t remember the most basic fact of doing business, Scheer says. “You can develop an audience through transparent communities, but you still have to have a good product.”