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. 

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Online buzz about social media for business owners seems to be moving from “Should I” to “How do I?” I’ve been working on this a lot lately as part of my work on planning, and I’ve developed this process for a specific social media plan for small business:

Start with strategy

Define how your social media serves your business. Usually that’s in the marketing area of the business related to branding and awareness at the top of the marketing funnel, but it can also be focused on other business functions. For example, airlines are using Twitter for customer service, food trucks are using it for delivery by tweeting locations, and consultants use follower and like counts to validate their expertise.

Strategy is focus, so you need to sort through the different social media options. Community management expert Megan Berry of LiftFive in New York says, “Facebook tends to be more personal, so if a product is fun and consumer oriented, then Facebook is really good. Twitter has the advantages of public searches, and business searches, so you can see how much a given topic matters. Google+ is mostly techies, photography, and people who work at Google.” I think of LinkedIn as more about careers than specific businesses, and Pinterest as great for photo collections. You can’t do it all and the fastest road to failure is trying to please everybody, or do anything.

For purposes of illustration, my examples in the rest of this post focus on Twitter and use the terminology of Twitter. That’s just to make the narrative easier to follow.

Add specific tactics

The strategy means nothing without specific tactics. In social media that means making some practical decisions. For sake of illustration, imagine a manufacturer of environmentally better construction materials selling to a local market looking at Twitter. Here are some tactics to work through:

• What accounts to follow: In our example, of course we’d follow people tweeting about homes, green construction, construction materials, architecture, and the building industry. Maybe also small business, small business management, and local business. Gardening, landscape architecture? We should also follow people representing the old-fashioned methods our green construction replaces, and yes, all of our competitors. And we’d definitely want to follow industry leaders, the best blogs, and media people for our industry.

• What content to tweet and retweet: In our example we’d tweet about green building, construction, architecture, and homes for sure, to build a content stream that would attract like-minded people. We’d probably also tweet about local events, local businesses, and local people to attract local connections. But we would never offer content promoting the old-fashioned ways or our competition. We would set up programmed searches for hashtags like #green and #greenbuilding, #homes, and #greenhomes.  (Hashtags are a Twitter feature people use to aid searching for topics. People offering content include them in their tweets, so people searching can find them).

• What to watch out for: We should set up searches to catch any mention of us especially, of course. Also, mentions of our competitors, substitutes or competing products, and (as much as possible) local building issues.

• When to reach out: We’d want to watch for media people and issues that could create media opportunities for us, like interviews with the founder, or reviews in blogs or trade magazines. Reaching out in Twitter means either tweets mentioning specific handles or direct messages to specific people.

• How to reach out: We’d want to reach out correctly and respectfully, only for specific cases and specific people. Direct messages should ever look or feel or act like spam.

Add Specific Metrics, Milestones, and Tracking

Your strategy and tactics are of no use without concrete specific steps, measurements, and tracking.

In our Twitter-oriented green construction materials example, we’d want set objective and trackable numeric targets for how many:

• accounts to follow
• new follows to add each month
• tweets per day, week, and month
• retweets to send
• retweets we want to receive
• followers we expect to add per month
• leads we should get
• web visits tracking from our tweets, retweets, and Twitter profile

And for our review meetings, we’d want to start with actual numbers for each of these measurements. Then we’d review these results and discuss changes to the metrics, tactics, and strategy.

And that, all together, is a plan.

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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)

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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 …

8. … 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.
9. … good quotes, pithy sayings, words that make me think.
10. … about ideas, things that surprise you, new discoveries.
11. … quick jokes, or humorous items, things that made you laugh.
12. … thoughts, poems, especially haiku.
13. … well written words, phrases, sentences, from real life, movies, songs, even overheard.
14. … interesting, funny, or thought provoking pictures in twitpix.
15. … words that teach, lessons.
16. … 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 …

17. 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.
18. Do onto others as you would have them tweet to thousands.

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

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The first, a chart by Seth Godin:

From Seth Godin

This is one of those things that must have been hard to come up with, but makes sense when you look at it. A map of communication. On the horizontal axis of the chart, from book on one end to a conversation at the other. With a book, the writer writes it at one point in time and the reader reads it at an entirely different time. With the telephone and coaching, both parties of the communication, sender and receiver, are involved at the same time. On the chart’s vertical axis, how much bandwidth is involved, from mail and graffiti at the low extreme, to movies and coaching at the high extreme.

The Second, from Pingdom:

From pingdom.com

This one is one of several on that post — Report: Social Media Demographics 2012 — that are fascinating to me. As always with this kind of research, accuracy depends on how they sampled, but even if it could be off by a bit, it still gives a big picture of the main social networking sites (which is what I assume the acronym SNS stands for) usage by age. I have no conclusions to draw, but maybe you do. Apparently the more well-known platforms have older users, except Twitter spreads out over more ages. That same post has some interesting data on usage by gender, as well. Good stuff.

The post 2 Pictures, 200 Words, Lots of Ideas. appeared first on Eugene Social.

With our thanks to MDG Advertising, the original publisher.

The post Infographic: the ROI of Social Media appeared first on Eugene Social.

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 post Our Recommendation About Your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn appeared first on Eugene Social.

As an aside, I like this writing:

They used their logo and then coordinated their Twitter page colors.  Bing, bang, boom, DONE!

And I also like the author’s bio at the end. She says:

Jo-Lynne Shane has written 3062 posts.

Impressive. And that was three years ago. Like she says in a different context, bing, bang, boom, done. 

They used their logo and then coordinated their Twitter page colors.  Bing, bang, boom, DONE!

The post 7 Easy Steps To Make A Simple Twitter Profile Page appeared first on Eugene Social.

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)

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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)

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