Social Technologies: Your Customers Are Revolting

The Small Business Take-Aways on Social Technology

Embrace your customers.

Turn negative customer experiences around.

If you have negative comments out there, find a good will advocate or find people to answer on your behalf that align with your company.

If people are complaining about your product and service, ask them directly how they could do to improve it.

Take the influencers of your market inside your company and give them a sense of belonging.

If your market is ignoring your messages. Give up control and let the market make its own meaning. GoDaddy did this by just giving talking points then free reign on the creative aspect and their company stood behind the finished work. They are now getting better results than their lagging ads.

Thanks to Simon Stapleton for the find!

Social media is getting a lot of attention and traction as a way for businesses to better reach marketing and revenue goals in a whole new way. For business owners and executives who could use a primer on what’s so great about social media here’s a presentation that is a refreshingly honest look at what social media is, minus the hype. Title of the deck is ‘What the F$!k is Social Media?’ See what I mean about being blunt? It’s a nice change and makes me feel good about recommending it to my clients and readers. Enjoy!

After you’ve checked out the research on the shift to using social media as a way of better connecting and engaging your clients, leave a comment on what has meaning to your business.

Consumers expect a social media presence

The highlights of the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study came out recently. The results of the study point to a growing trend in how consumers want to be reached by businesses. The study found that 60% of American consumers use social media and of those more than half interact with businesses on social media websites.  93% of American consumers who use social media expect companies to have a social media presence and 85% of them believe those companies should be interacting with consumers through social media.

Cone Researchers say that the results mean that “Americans are eager to deepen their brand relationships through social media,” explains Mike Hollywood, director of new media for Cone, “it isn’t an intrusion into their lives, but rather a welcome channel for discussion.”

Use Social Media to Engage “Hard to Reach” Consumers

The 60% of the research who do use social media are the same markets many companies have a hard time marketing to with traditional advertising means. The consumers who use social media include men, the 18-34 year old market and affluent households (HHI of 75k and up).

“All of this is great news for marketers,” Hollywood explains. “Men and younger consumers are traditionally the most challenging to reach, while the highest income households are typically very desirable; here they are saying ‘Come market to us and interact with us online.’ This is really a license to put more energy and resources into this medium and do it effectively.”