Category Archives: Social media

Why Social Media Makes Customer Service Better

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Very nice post over the weekend on Mashable: Why Social Media Makes Customer Service Better. Unless you start asking yourself, isn’t it obvious? Do we need to read this?  Well, yes and no. The Mashable post starts with this: 

KLMBy the end of the year, 80% of companies plan to use social media for customer service. On the consumer side, 62% of customers have already used social media for customer service issues. Gartner predicts one billion users will be on social networks by the end of 2012

But doesn’t take long to get to this:

But problems still exist. A study by A.T. Kearney found that, of the top 50 brands, 56% did not respond to a single customer comment on their Facebook Page in 2011. Brands ignored 71% of customer’s complaints on Twitter. And, 55% of consumers expect a response the same day to an online complaint, while only 29% receive one. Your customer service strategy must include social media and be part of your long-term business plan to maintain competitive advantage.

The post ends up quoting public relations managers from UPS and KLM Airlines with three specific tips:

  1. Integrate social media into your existing customer service function. Gone are the days when social media sat on their own at the table, you now have allow social to influence all business functions to become a more responsive customer-centric business.
  2. Create humanized response models to engender loyalty and build relationships. Many companies are guilty of creating robust and well-planned strategy for social customer service delivery -– but fall at the final and most important hurdle — creating a voice your audience can relate to.
  3. Monitor social interaction to spot issues and solve problems before they become crises. Social customer service delivery involves dealing with criticism and complaints in public, often in front of an audience of millions. If you’re going to prevent a small problem growing into something worse, you need to have a detailed understanding of what you need to respond to, a path to response, and escalation policies for resolution.

Nothing new? Boring same-old stuff? Maybe, but a good reminder too. 

Social Media is the Brush, Not the Painting

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On one hand, twitter (or Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc) offers a positive change in business landscape, a brave new world of business possibilities, and you’re crazy to ignore it. On the other, it’s just a distraction, a shiny new thing, that gets in the way of the real business.

Can both hands be right? Yes.

The one hand: I spend hours every day now watching, playing, posting, and reading twitter.  That’s gotten me mentions in Business Week and The New York Times. I find myself speaking up for social media on public forums, spouting phrases like “changing business landscape” and “you’re crazy to ignore it” and “great new low-cost road to market” or “marketing tool.” Twitter is essential to my blogging. Its a window to what’s going on and who’s doing and saying what.  It’s great for my business.

The other hand: You can use it to send useless text clutter to nobody. You can use it to pretend you’re working when you’re just watching the world go by in cute sayings, headlines, and interesting pictures. It can be a total waste of business time.

The synthesis: Twitter is the brush, not the painting. It’s a tool for a new kind of self publishing with a different kind of reach. Talk of business benefits of Twitter are like talk of business benefits of the telephone, or of conversation, or of advertising. It’s all in how you use it. Who or what are you trying to be in Twitter, and what does that have to do with your identity, your message, your business, your self.

Tools enhance power. What matters is not the tool, but what you do with it.

(Image: enhanced from a photo by Victures/Shutterstock)

18-Point Twitter Etiquette Primer

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(Note: originally published on Planning Startups Stories)

I’m getting to know Twitter more these days, using it more, and enjoying it. I’m Timberry on Twitter. I’m frequently grateful to Twitter friends for pointing out good ideas, blogs, thoughts, pictures. Twitter enlivens my day, and brightens my writing.

I’m beginning to develop a sense of what to do and what not to do with Twitter. Not that I’m an expert, but I’ve been watching and thinking about it. And I’ve come up with a list of dos and don’ts.

Please don’t …

  1. … thank me for following you.
  2. … think less of me for not thanking you for following me.
  3. … send me sales messages as direct messages, as part of your thanking me or otherwise.
  4. … tweet mundane details of everyday life. Going home, watching television, having dinner … feels like Twitter clutter. I’m just sayin’.
  5. … tweet straight-out sales pitches. Don’t promise me health or wealth or business success. I get enough spam in email, thanks. That stuff could spoil Twitter. I will unfollow you immediately.
  6. … tweet embarrassing should-be-private sweet nothings for your significant relationships. I like that you love him or her or them, but tell them, not the tweeple.
  7. … argue with people in Twitter. And that’s not to protect me, that’s for your own good. Words tweeted in anger live on forever. Twitter help implies that there’s a way to delete bad tweets, but I don’t think it works. Angry words aren’t biodegradable.

Please do tweet …

  1. … interesting pictures, blog posts, websites, and news items. And I’m fine with you tweeting your own blog posts, especially. Give me a title and a URL and I’m fine with that, I’ll click and read it if it catches my interest. If I weren’t interested in what you’re writing, I wouldn’t have followed you. Don’t be shy.
  2. … good quotes, pithy sayings, words that make me think.
  3. … about ideas, things that surprise you, new discoveries.
  4. … quick jokes, or humorous items, things that made you laugh.
  5. … thoughts, poems, especially haiku.
  6. … well written words, phrases, sentences, from real life, movies, songs, even overheard.
  7. … interesting, funny, or thought provoking pictures in twitpix.
  8. … words that teach, lessons.
  9. … quick reviews of books, movies, television, and music. If I follow you, I do care what you think, and what you like. Save me from bad stuff, and tip me off to good stuff. I’m glad you share.

And, by the way …

  1. Twitter is publishing. Let’s all respect that. Let’s not ruin it with too much advertising. Big promises mean small credibility. Share yourself, but be content, not spam.
  2. Do onto others as you would have them tweet to thousands.

And, finally, thanks for reading this list. I needed that.

Our Recommendation About Your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

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Earlier this year I was in a classroom full of entrepreneurial MBA students, as a guest speaker, answering their questions about me and Palo Alto Software and bplans.com, my blogging, and so forth.

When they asked me how I managed my online self in social media, my response went something like this:

I don’t do social media clutter. I think of social media as publishing and I try to offer nothing that isn’t useful to a reader. When I’m on Twitter I tweet only what interests me and might interest somebody else. I highlight blog posts I wrote and posts I read that seem worthwhile. I ask questions. I sometimes share something useful about business planning, or small business. I use TweetDeck to manage my Twitter self, and I set TweetDeck up to share that with my Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

Several of the students seemed troubled. One of them asked: “So you never post anything personal? What about who you really are?”

And I realized, with that question, that maybe I was lucky. I got into social media late in life. The topics I care about are business related, and my friends are business related. I was already a published author and business owner. I wasn’t ever tempted to post the kind of personal stuff that gets younger generations in trouble. I was always aware of it as publishing, not just gossip. Most of the students, on the other hand, started on Facebook as high-school or university students. Facebook was fun first, business, if at all, only as an afterthought, later.

So here’s my advice: your social media presence is public. It’s publishing. Never clutter it up with personal trivia, much less drinking parties, embarrassing pictures, inappropriate comments, or anything your adult self might not be proud of. Use phone, sms, and instant messages for playing around with friends. Build a social media presence you’ll be proud of when your next prospective employer, boss, or client looks into it.

Oh, and by the way: you don’t have to call it personal branding. You can just call it taking care of your reputation.

The Really Simple Math of Social Media

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Here’s a walk down memory lane. Those basic math properties we had to memorize in the seventh grade. chalkboard

Transitive Property of Social Media

This one is taken from the transitive property of equality, which, in case you don’t remember your seventh-grade math, is that if a = b and b=c then a = c. For social media that’s

If social media increases transparency, then it’s as good or as bad for your business as is having the customers see you better.

I kind of like this. In the old days, we saw the business as what its advertising agency and marketing budgets were able to construct for as its facade, also called brand. Nowadays, to the extent the business is operating in Facebook or Twitter, we get a better view. Is it still all corporate and snazzy and artificial?

People are discovering that they like the story and the people in the business, aside from its paid advertising. I’d like to think this helps real people, and small business, compete against manufactured images and big marketing budgets and large business. Fingers crossed.

Applied Elasticity in Social Media

According to Wikipedia, elasticity is the ratio of the percent change in one variable to the percent change in another variable.

According to me, elasticity in social media means that the percent change in the number of active social media participants will be matched by the percent change in the number of social media experts and social media coaches. So the active social media population will always be 50 percent social media experts and 30 percent social media coaches.

Oh-oh. Does that sound cynical?

(Image credit: Marc Dietrich/Shutterstock)

Beware of Bot or Bought Fake Social Media

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Some times the right road isn’t the easiest way to go. 

Let’s talk about what it takes to build social media connections. The vocabulary varies from Facebook to Twitter to Google+ to LinkedIn, but the idea is the same. In that great online conversation, the amplified word of mouth, as a business you engage because you want people caring about what you add to the topic. Opinions sometimes, humor sometimes, breaking news, but mostly what we call content. You don’t clutter. 

And what it doesn’t take: the bot-or-bought fake social media. “Bots” are programmed scripts that pretend to be human, winding around social media like nastily little trolls hiding under bridges, faking connections. And “boughts” are fake friends or likes. I’ve seen talk of buying 1,000 likes, or 1,000 twitter followers, for as little as $14.

Bot-boughts are tempting, but shortcuts don’t work. Anybody who cares to scratch the surface can tell, and then you’re looking like that little ethical spot of sleaze is the tip of the iceberg. Those iceberg are slippery slopes, by definition.

So how do you get followers. Are you old enough to remember those commercials where the old guy with the honest-looking face talks says “we make money the old-fashioned way. We earn it.” You grow your social media presence the old fashioned way too. You earn it. And here’s how.

Build connections organically

Use the search features to find people offering content you respect. Follow them. Think of yourself as wanting to be a bird of a feather, so flock together. Search for topics that interest you and connect with people offering content you like. There are bots that will do that but that doesn’t work; it takes a human and it takes time. 

Interact with people you connect with

Social media, although it may be typing on a keyboard, is about listening (or reading). It’s about catching what others are saying and offering something back as a response. It’s about scratching the other person’s back. Yeah, they call that interacting. Think about what you’d tell a kindergarten kid about how to have friends. Follow that advice. 

Share valuable content

Would you go to a cocktail party saying nothing but “buy my product?” Social media is publishing, even if it doesn’t feel like it, creating content bit by bit. And shouting sales slogans all the time turns everybody off. You have to actually offer something other people want to read. Look for good content and pass it on.

Also, if you’re going to engage in social media for your business, avoid clutter. Don’t use any of these platforms to tell your friends what you had for dinner or that the plane is delayed. People won’t follow you for long unless you offer something interesting. 

And you don’t have to be original. Curation means choosing what content you pass along, stuff you’ve seen that you think others would like. Curation is the new content. If you’re curious about that, take a look at our curated social media stream here. That’s curation.  

(Photo credit: by John Bauer, via Wikipedia)

Does Your Social Media Fit Into the Marketing to Sales Funnel?

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All business owners should understand the marketing to sales funnel. Wikipedia calls it the purchase funnel. Many people call it the marketing funnel. You can click the image here for the Wikipedia definition and history that goes back more than 100 years. 

The top of the funnel is large, meaning that it is supposed to include a lot of people. That’s about making people aware that your business exists. In a traditional marketing mix it was advertising, public relations for media mentions, possibly promotional activities like contests or seminars or speaking engagements, and so forth.

The funnel narrows, meaning that the numbers grow smaller, as it moves downwards from all those people aware of the business to just the people who might consider buying. So, for example, in classic marketing this is narrowing down from everybody who sees an ad to those who respond to an ad. They are interested. They are considering it. 

The funnel narrows again when people make contact. They become leads. They click a link on the web to find out more; they call the phone; they visit your store. 

At this point the funnel has narrowed from marketing to sales. It’s about converting prospects to customers. It’s about actual choices and factors that determine choices, like price, selection, delivery, and perception.

Perception is one of my favorite parts of the funnel because it defies classification. It’s down there at the bottom influencing the actual decision to buy, which is sales. But it’s also up at the top of the funnel, influencing eventual conversion to sales with large-scale factors like brand image and reputation. Think of it like this: how much does the reputation built in marketing influence the ultimate purchase decision? Do you choose the car, the computer, or the restaurant based on price, delivery, and selection? Or does reputation make a difference? 

Does you social media activity, for your business, fit into this marketing-to-sales funnel? 

Social Networks are the New Media

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Robert Young, in GigaOm, suggests Social Networks are the New Media with some fascinating context. I don’t usually quote this extensively, but this is a special case. 

Much like corporations leveraged Internet 1.0 by creating digital storefronts and giving rise to ecommerce, people around the world are now learning how to leverage the incredible power inherent in the URL to create what is essentially a parallel universe of digital identities. And just like all things Internet, digital identities are not subject to the boundaries of geography, or the laws of physics, or any of the other limitations of being a carbon-based life-form. As such, the extensibility and scale of the ‘digital you’ is far-reaching, as are the strategic implications to the media industry. In many ways, the art-form of self-expression has become the ‘new media’, and social networks are their distribution channels.

It’s crucial to understand that social networks are architected to help scale self-expression to new heights, both in terms of the extent of self-expression as well as the reach of distribution (e.g. number of ‘friends’ and the effects of the whole six degrees of separation thing). A simple example… a person on MySpace can have thousands upon thousands of friends. This was not possible before the Internet, and even prior online communications & community innovations like email, chat/forums, and IM didn’t truly enable this kind of scale. Moreover, a person can now express him/herself with multidimensional, multimedia depth via text, photos, audio and video… again, to a degree that was not really possible before.

To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the ‘products’ are the people… or as Marshall McLuhan might say, ‘the people are the message’ when it comes to social networks. So for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of ‘cultural products’.”

I buy into that. It applies to the platforms (like RebelMouse) more than what we’re doing here at Eugene Social; but it’s nice to think about what’s going on at a deeper level.ÂÂ