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Entries in social media (4)

Wednesday
Jun022010

I've Got 1,000,000,000 Followers I'm Successful. Right?

DateWednesday, June 2, 2010 at 12:15AM

When discussing social media with businesses already actively engaging channels like Twitter and Facebook I often hear them tell me how many followers or fans they have as though this number is directly representative of their success or influence. It isn’t, not automatically. Each “follower” or “fan” represents a potential new customer, a new business opportunity or an existing customer/colleague interested in seeing what you have to say (or offer). However, simply acquiring more and more opportunities does not a successful business make. While it is nice to see the numbers grow it is even nicer to see the business grow as well, then you can consider your social media efforts successful.

Your “followers” all expect something of you, whether it is as simple as a few regular entertaining posts or full conversational interaction, they’ve all chosen to follow you for some reason. To effectively turn the numbers into business opportunities you need to give them what they are looking for. At first this can be easy, just ask. Then, listen; really listen because what they those initial followers tell you will help you build a scalable social media strategy. If they want to get a glimpse of your prowess or insight then give them informative posts. If they want updates on new products then use status messages to keep them up to date. Build your social media strategy – like your customer service strategy – according to what your customer expects.

As the numbers grow it will be a lot harder to give each follower individual attention. Most likely, though, the expectations of your “fans” will begin to fall into categories that, if you’ve really listened, will be addressed by your social media strategy. A scaleable social media strategy, however, is only possible when you stop simply counting your followers and start engaging them. 

AuthorPeter | CommentPost a Comment | | |
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Tuesday
May182010

"Good Customer Service Is Good Social Media Marketing"

DateTuesday, May 18, 2010 at 10:03PM

I came across this phrase in one of Tamar Weinberg’s posts about using Facebook for business & marketing and it really stuck with me. This statement captures a unique point where traditional and progressive business mindsets find harmony. I am a huge proponent of providing high quality customer service, subscribing to the old business philosophy “it’s easier to keep an existing customer than find a new one” as a founding principle for my work. However, a lot of business owners I have spoken to are so caught up in marketing to new customers –increasingly using social media- they have overlooked providing their existing customers with impeccable service to maintain their business. Weinberg’s philosophy though, brings attention to the potential relationship between marketing and customer service in a social media world. In the age of “Yelping,” “checking in” and “liking” marketing and customer service are becoming more and more mutually inclusive.

Establishing a traditional customer service approach – follow up calls, service support, frequent user incentives – can now result in the customer expressing appreciation on social media sites like Yelp, Facebook or Twitter. A positive review or endorsement on any of these sites can help build new customer awareness of your products and services. Or, you can incorporate customer service initiatives in your social media marketing strategy – promote incentives for people who “check in” to your store, maintain a Twitter presence to monitor Twitter feeds to address anyone’s complaints, create a Facebook page that encourages customers to provide feedback (good and bad) – all of which can strengthen your relationship with existing customers; ideally, a satisfied customer will then spread their praise to friends continuing the mutually beneficial relationship.

Good customer service is good social media marketing; keep this in mind as you continue to pursue new customers and provide stellar service to your existing customers.

              

AuthorPeter | CommentPost a Comment | | |
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Sunday
Dec202009

Who Is Your Audience?

DateSunday, December 20, 2009 at 09:48PM

When considering whether to take the social media leap as part of your customer communication strategy there are a number of factors to consider; who will maintain those avenues, how will brand strength be reflected and leveraged, which particular service is most appropriate, etc. Each of these are an essential part of the evaluation process and each can go to a much greater depth of analysis depending on the level of research required by your company. However, before you bother putting on the headlamp and mining the depths of these statistics I ask you to keep it simple.

First, remember these methods are intended to help create new customer relationships or strengthen existing ones. Now, clarify who is your ideal audience. Who are you hoping to reach, please, and support using social media? Then take a look at what kind of user demographics are available for the channels you're considering and see how they match up.

To save you some time I've gathered some surface stats from Quancast for your consideration.

Facebook

45%Men • 55% Women

Age: 13-17 years old 20% • 18-34 years old 45% • 35-49 years old 20%

Income: $0-30K 16% • 30-60K 25% • 60-100K 29% • 100K+ 29%

More than 350 million active users

More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook

avail 15 languages

 

YouTube

50% Men • 50% Women

Age: 12-17 years old 19% • 18-34 years old 35% • 35-49 years old 23%

13 languages

 

Twitter

47% Men • 53% Women

Age: 13-17 years old 10% • 18-34 years old 44% • 35-49 years old 28%

Income: $0-30K 20% • 30-60K 28% • 60-100K 27%

23.3 M Total Users

Widely accessible from text messaging/phones

 

I encourage you to go gather even more focused information to correspond with your specific desired audience variables. Make a list, cross check them and then see which services are the best match. Then, and only then, begin to explore the other considerations regarding your social media strategy. Starting your process with a customer focus will help guide you to the most effective customer communication tool.

 

*Similar statistics and analytics are available for any and all social media services (LinkedIn, Wordpress, Tumblr, Flikr, etc.) from http://www.quantcast.com

AuthorPeter | CommentPost a Comment | | |
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Wednesday
Nov112009

Suvivors Guide To Social Media

DateWednesday, November 11, 2009 at 02:45PM

Before a recent social media workshop for owners and executives in the printing industry I sent out three pre-workshop questions each participant had to ponder and try to answer before the session started:

  1. How does social media fit into your current marketing plan (if there is one)? If there isn’t a plan, what would you like to get out of social media?
  2. What is going to be said, by whom, using which channels and why?
  3. Could social media management be a service you could use to help your customers? If not, why not? If so, how?

The answers I got back were expected and it helped me develop the content for the workshop. Here is an example of one of the responses:

“I don’t know that I am able to answer these questions. I want to know:

  1. What social networking is
  2. How a business [printer] can use it to his benefit
  3. The step by step process to establish our social network.

At that juncture I expect I would be more prepared to answer the questions. I can tell you that we have a marketing plan; however, social media marketing is not part of it. What I want from social media marketing, like my overall marketing effort, is to develop more business.”

What follows is an abbreviated Social Media Survivors Guide you can use to help begin your journey in navigating the challenges and opportunities around social media.

What Is It? Social networking addresses the human need to interact. Social media are methods and channels to interact with other humans as part of a person’s network. Social networking isn’t new. The ways in which it can get done: blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more are very new to most. According to Wikipedia, social networking transforms broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.

Why Should We Do Anything? There is a video on the web worth watching as part of your survival training. The Did You Know? video is currently in its fourth version and describes global changes in the world, new technologies, convergence and the way people behave. The video asks us if we’re ready for the changes and I believe that sets up one of the most important success behaviors in social networking and business—having a plan. Developing a strategic approach to the opportunity is better than haphazard tactical attempts. An even more relevant reason to work on your strategy about how to deal with the changes is because most of your customers are trying to figure this out too, why not work on it together?

Where Does Social Media Fit In? I’m not trying to overwhelm you with videos, but they are an effective medium along with print and there’s one you don’t want to miss. Eric Qualman wrote Socialnomics, a brand new book on social media. Eric developed a video that takes many of the social media statistics and puts them in an engaging presentation on how we are totally changing the way we communicate. The beginning of the video asks “Is Social Media a Fad?” By the end you will see that some form of social networking with new media tools will continue to grow in use and application.

What Can a Business (Printer) Do About This? No one likes the first part but it’s a good first step. Think strategically about what you could do. Where are you, where do you want to be? Where is your current customer and where are they going? And what about the customers you don’t have…where are they going and can you meet them ahead of time or help them get where they are going? It’s how you can win new business from existing customers and new customers by identifying what they want and having a process in place to deliver on it. That’s marketing.

The second part to the question is a tactical one. It’s got a 4 part answer according to Qualman and it works because I do something similar and help others do the same: 

  1. Listening: Choose a social media channel and set up an account. Find out who is saying what to whom and perhaps why. Following your customers, customer’s customers, vendors, partners and competition can increase your knowledge—and suck up a lot of time if you don’t watch it.
  2. Interacting: Participating in conversations, sharing ideas, asking questions, answering questions, exploring what can be done and said are all part of this step. 
  3. Reacting: Make changes to your social media approach, your business, your services, your customer service…your whole mission can happen here. FedEx listens actively on Twitter and follows up in minutes if someone Tweets about a bad FedEx experience.
  4. Selling: The first three steps will help you identify what a business wants. Keiger Printing in Winston-Salem, NC uses Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, Delicious, Digg and more to show their customers they are listening and creating dialogs about how they’ve helped their customers beyond cost savings alone. They use case study content on their social media channels to show what can be done. They can even ask for business from some of those who follow them. 

When you leverage social media so people find you, listen to you, and ask you if you can do business with them—that’s a great indirect sales approach. There’s less selling and more helping. You have the opportunity to get paid for that help.


Four popular social media technologies for you to investigate should include a blog (for writing complete thoughts about trends, happenings, thoughts, challenges and more), LinkedIn (for posting information about yourself and your business and network with others who may be looking to find people like you or about topics you may know about), Facebook (to interact with people personally and/or professionally and create communities that are interested in common goals or ideas) and Twitter (to share a quick thought or idea about who you are, what you think, what you want others to know, what you can do to help and follow how others are doing the same in their own way). How you use these tools can help you find out things, get found and identify new opportunities to grow your business in a new way. Once you’ve started the journey you have experiences you can share. You could even set up services to help others do the same in their business.

Share what you learn along the way in some new media…that’s what being social is all about.

Keep the learning going, pass it on. ~Peter

 

AuthorPeter | CommentPost a Comment | | |
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