What is social media?? 
After visiting search engine strategies London this past week there was a clear and increased interest in Social Media at the conference. So we thought it would be good to discuss how you should integrate social media into your business. Before we can do this though we need to help you understand what social media is.
Well this isn’t as clear-cut as you might think as social media has been confused as being certain social platforms used to generate social media. For instance when you mention social media most people immediately think Twitter or Facebook. While both of these are social media platforms social media is not just about the platforms users use to generate social media.
Social media is seen as media that is social in nature. Thus generated by people and not only by corporations, as was the case in early stages of the Web’s existence. This description form Wikipedia sums up Social Media quite well for me – “Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.”.
This means that any platform that allows users to publish information online is social. Even Wikipedia’s 3,202,005 articles, which have mostly been generated by the public, is a form of social media.
So now that you have an idea of what social media entails would you consider the following example as a form of social media? A UK based online bank has taken customer ratings made online and started posting it in it’s offline advertising on underground trains. Is this still social media or has it become traditional media?
Customer ratings are a form of social media that most companies don’t even recognize as being social. For a lot of companies this might be a customer service agent on it’s own as it encourages people to buy products by using comments gauge if a product will suite them. In the same manner this may discourage customers from buying a product that doesn’t meet there needs. Because customers don’t buy product that will fulfill their needs it indirectly lowers after sales customers support.
So now that you have an idea of what social media is we will show why you should be implementing it in your business and who it will benefit your business. Our next post will be on why you should be implementing social media in you company.
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People are becoming wimps – This is why your company needs Twitter?
So this is quite a statement. This might not be completely true but I know some companies that feel this way when they stumble upon a complaint about their products or services.
People have moved away from simply phoning up a company to complain about their products or services. Gone are the days of waiting in a phone queue for hours at end. Consumers are now going on-line to air their opinions about services and products.
There has been plenty of websites released that offer people a space to complain for the world to see. The problem with this is that these never disappear and your company has very little control over the opinions that are voiced.
So how can you manage your reputation on-line and stay one step ahead? As staying one step ahead in 2010 is our theme for this week we would like to let you in on a little secret. The tools are already available.
With web 2.0 changing the model of content generation from the corporation to the consumer, reputation management has become an increasingly more complicated subject. I would like to tell you the most effective way to manage your reputation, is by being proactive and opening up the communication channel.
People are just looking for somewhere to vent their frustrations. Consumers have been turning to the web as an outlet when they don’t find any answer by using traditional forms of communication i.e. phone and email. Now they are writing blog posts, tweeting and even building complete websites focused on bad service they receive from companies.
Lets approach this from a different perspective. You offer your clients a public website that allows them to air their complaints be it a twitter account, a company blog or a website that administrate your customer services on-line.
Consumers will rather turn to these to report their problems, as they know that these concerns are available in the public scene and as such addressed effectively because of this. This in turn then immediately provides your company with control over the situation again.
Micro blogging service Twitter has become one of these outlets and is easily and freely available to consumers. As consumers voice their thoughts, be it bad or good, you could be there to address it, proactively stomping out situations before they become problems.
Popular CRM software such as Salesforce.com even now help you to setup twitter customer services through their Service Cloud product. This allows you to track service request on several communication channels just like you would with your client relationship management software.
Reputation management has become fundamental to companies and as such you need to open up all forms of communication so that consumers can move from being “wimps”, from our company’s perspective, to active participants in our companies growth.
If you are interested in us helping you with a solution that will suite your company feel free to contact us.
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