pic courtesy of CC Chapman
This an interview I conducted with Keith Burtis, from Best Buy Remix on how Keith and the Remix team are using social media, enjoy!
What are some of the things that Best Buy Remix is doing with social media
now and what are some of the things Best Buy Remix is planning on rolling out
within the next year?
Best Buy remix is an open API program that gives developers, affiliate marketers, webmasters, and others the ability to access the BestBuy.com product catalog. By opening up the catalog to the community we are providing people with the tools necessary to build their own applications around the massive Best Buy data sets. The reason for doing this is to create a web wide network of access points to the Best Buy network. This gives people the ability to discover our offerings through the channels and in the situations where they currently live online.
Remix is currently building a community network of developers and neat things are already taking shape. For instance, one of our Developers Omar Abdelwahed has created an uber cool product look-up tool that can be used on twitter. By following @BBYRemix on twitter you have the ability to query the account for anything that you might be looking for in the Best Buy Product catalog. The ‘Twitter Bot’ as Omar calls it will send you back an answer about availability and nearest location for the item you are looking for. No more calls to the store, no more wasting gas. Find out where to go before you leave the house.
In terms of what Remix is looking to roll out in the next year, it’s really much of the same. We are looking to grow our base of users and continue to add cool user functionality to the Best Buy Product mix.
What goals has Best Buy Remix set out in terms of Social Media?
Best Buy remix is hoping to create a trusted community of users that can easily access people like myself that work directly for the company. Any time you are affiliated with a massive company like Best Buy there are always going to be pre-conceived notions about you. Some are good, some are bad, so in my role as the Best Buy Remix community manager I hope to be able to humanize what was once a very dry, boring and inhuman segment of the web. In saying that, Best Buy Remix hopes to be able to better serve the community online by being in more places, more convenient and more accessible.
Why did Best Buy Remix decide to participate in Social Media, who made the Decision?
Best Buy Remix decided to utilize social media channels because that where the early adopters and Internet users are. Studies are showing massive increases in use across social media channels. Sites like twitter, facebook, and linked in are starting to become mainstream in their adoption rates. Frankly, if we decided to build a community on line without the use of social channels we would be dead in the water. Consumers and users these days have different expectations than they did 5 years ago. Websites used to be just glorified sales brochures. These days with the interactive web anyone who wants to have a voice can do that. Anyone that wants to create community can create a blog or a Ning site. Best Buy Remix wants to be active in these communities. We want to engage with our users proving that no one is to small, no idea is irrelevant, and that we are here listening and accepting feedback.
The person who was responsible for bringing me aboard the Remix team was Kevin Matheny. Kevin is the thought leader behind Remix and the idea was initially his. Although, I was not present at any discussions to bring me on board as the social media manager, Kevin and the senior management team with Remix made that final choice.
Where there any obstacles or hard sells to management to get the go ahead to jump into social media? What are some of the obstacles or arguments that you have had to face and how did you respond to them?
While I can’t speak to internal policy I can tell you that Best Buy as a company has been involved in the social media space for some time, and like everyone else they are learning.
As far as challenges from a community manager perspective the main challenge is to know what is right and what is wrong. Social Media and the results and metrics around it are so new that best practices are relatively unknown. Should I be treating my engagement the same way I treat it in my personal accounts? Also, when you have a name like Best Buy attached to your social media profile there tends to be much more of a microscope placed on you. Words can be misconstrued and you always have to be aware that you are representing a company in the public eye. A good video that shows Best Buy perspectives around social media is here.
How do you measure success or ROI from your social media campaigns? Specifically what metrics are you tracking and how often are you tracking them?
Best Buy Remix is still in Public beta and really just getting it’s engine warmed up. As the social media person I am tracking thing like, blog mentions, twitter mentions, internal forum issues, and chatter on the web. Also, I am getting out there to try and help grow the user base and set up grass roots Word of Mouth by doing things like this interview. As the user base grows our metrics and tracking will grow along with it and I will customize specifically to tailor the metrics around Best Buy Remix.
What are some of the tools you use and websites you read, to stay on top of the social media space?
I am a bit of a social media tool junkie. I subscribe to over 200 blogs that I feed into my Google reader which is a very important tool for anyone that is in a public facing, internal consultant and research role. To stay on top of the latest trends is very important for agility. The RSS reader also allows me to capture mentions on our name and related keywords in things like twitter search. My favorite tool for note keeping is Evernote. I hold a twitter account @BestBuyRemix where I will engage with the community and help anyone with questions or comments they might have. I also use Delicious for bookmarking, Mahalo for human search, and the entire Google suite.
What are some of the strategies that Best Buy Remix is using in the social media space?
Our strategy right now is simple. Create a portal that is really user friendly. Plant seeds and spread the word about the Remix network, and service the heck out of our user base. We want our users to have fun with the Remix API by making in easy and accessible.
Thank you for this great interview and we hope to speak to you in the future as Best Buy Remix grows and develops over the next couple of years.
Best Buy Remix Community manager — Keith Burtis
Thanks a lot Keith, hope you guys enjoyed the interview and make sure to follow Keith on twitter @bbyremix to get access to whole best buy catalog from twitter. Here is an explanation of how to use the twitter bot to look up products, as well as a list of commands.
thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the interview!
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