This past spring I attended a Social Media Masterclass at the Event Marketing Summit, delivered by Erik Qualman, the author of Socialnomics. Erik is also the creator of this video called Social Media Revolution that you’ve probably seen on YouTube (it has also been featured on this blog). Here’s what I learned:
Go back to the basics.
1. Listen
2. Interact
3. Join the conversation
4. React to the conversation
The difference between simply joining the conversation and reacting to the conversation often comes in the area of customer service. If someone has a problem with your product or service, don’t just acknowledge it – do something about it. Qualman shared the example of disgruntled United Airlines passenger, who also happened to be a musician and recorded a music video for YouTube about his not-so-pleasant experience with United Airlines. The last time I checked, it received over 9,000,000 hits. You don’t want this to happen to your company. (You should watch the video though, it’s pretty entertaining.)
Good companies embrace negative feedback.
Good companies love negative feedback because it’s a great way to improve their products or services. Qualman stated that a customer is five times more likely to repeat business if he/she posts a negative comment and receives a response addressing the situation. Also, you may find that a champion customer will defend your company by responding to the negative feedback, which will build your credibility even more.
Social media is the world’s largest focus group on steroids.
“It’s what we’ve wanted all along!” Qualman went on to say that social media is even better than a focus group because in a focus group you have to know what questions to ask. Via social media, customers will just tell you what you didn’t think to ask. For example, Skittles discovered through social media that adults use their candy to flavor vodka. Jack pot! There’s a HUGE demographic they were completely ignoring beforehand.
(You’ll also notice on the Skittles Web site that there is actually no content on their site – they send everyone to their Facebook page and Twitter account. They fish where the fish are, which I talk about it in another blog post.)
Organic is better.
I’m not talking about your produce. According to Qualman, 70% of clicks happen in the organic section of search engines. Engaging in social media will improve your SEO. Qualman also advises to grow fans organically, not through incentives. Remember when we all grew our mailing lists by offering giveaways or coupons for signing up? Then we had a huge database full of contacts that we weren’t really sure were actually quality leads? So, we had to go back and ask everyone to double opt-in to confirm they were actually interested in hearing from us. Let’s not do that with social media.
What’s the ROI of social media, you ask? Well, what’s the ROI of your phone?
While I don’t know a single manager who will accept this response from me, Qualman does make a good point. We don’t waste time tracking conversions from every phone call a customer service or sales rep makes. Why do we have to prove the ROI of social media before we allow our employees to engage customers through this channel? When it comes to measuring social media, Qualman’s advice is to look at the big picture. He cites evidence that companies who actively engage in social media have a 16% increase in revenue over companies who do not.
