Top 5 Things to Say about Toshiba's Social Media Q&A Site

I came across an interesting Toshiba-sponsored social media site this week:

http://laptopexperts.federatedmedia.net/





Toshiba offers an "Ask the Experts" Q&A-type website, enabling visitors to pose questions about laptops and get answers from a team of accomplished bloggers throughout the industry. This offering is not limited to questions about Toshiba models only, but includes questions about competitors like HP and Compaq to provide the best service to the site's customers.

Each week, a third-party "expert blogger" answers questions to ensure responses (this is run by a small network of professional bloggers working behind-the-scenes that are NOT Toshiba employees). Other site visitors can also post their own responses directly.

While Toshiba hasn't said anything about how successful this venture is, there's several points worth noting:

1.) Toshiba has limited their content management requirements. It's similar to a message board in that site visitors can ask questions and get responses. It's unique because Toshiba doesn't have to directly answer any of these questions. Instead, they’ve contracted with a team of bloggers across the industry to post responses. Toshiba can (and hopefully will) respond to key questions to better establish themselves as experts in this space, but this is obviously their way to get started while minimizing required resources.

2.) Third-party blogger responses give customers straight answers and builds trust. This is open to all laptops (not just Toshiba), so the answers posted are clearly around solving customer problems throughout the laptop world, not a veiled sales pitch on why customers should buy Toshiba products. Again, this is clearly a branding initiative for Toshiba, not an additional sales channel.

3.) Customer can ask questions from different destinations. Besides asking questions on the website directly, Toshiba has extended their reach by creating banner ads for their ad distribution network, pointing users with questions on other websites back to Toshiba’s site.

4.) Participating in social media can begin by bringing together the right experts and your customers to solve real-world problems. Provided they're giving honest and timely answers, Toshiba adds value by bringing together two different groups to solve tactical problems, and therefore improving their brand's perception in the marketplace. Toshiba’s perception can be further bolstered as Toshiba begins contributing responses directly (in addition to posts from their blogging community), but they've shown that when starting this initiative, there are ways to easily test the waters before jumping into the deep end.

5.) Most importantly, this follows the #1 social media best practice for beginners: Listen, then contribute. Toshiba presumably saw this as a low-risk opportunity to get into this space and gauge the nature of customer questions BEFORE investing significant internal resources. As a bonus, this also positions Toshiba to respond when there are issues about Toshiba products, ensuring they can respond on their own terms and on their own turf, rather than letting these conversations happen without their ability to respond and turning a support call headache into a great marketing moment.

Enjoy!

Seth