Social Media Marketing Institute

As various and assorted people scramble, scrounge and hustle to stay on top of digital platforms and tools with the hopes of selling you on themselves as cutting edge rainmakers, digital Mr. Miyagis or the smartest kids on the block whose opinion is the one worth hearing, chances are you’ll be made to feel behind the times, unable to build your community fast enough or get the sales/prospects you thought would be pouring in. Meanwhile, the dirty truth sits off in the corner, whispering to you: You don’t need any of it. None of this is essential and no one tool will solve your problems.

The simple fact is this: if you don’t think about what you’re doing and have some sort of high-level game plan, nothing’s going to help your business. I’m intentionally choosing to push past “social’s for social, not business” rhetoric and firmly plant us somewhere that may actually have value for you. Before you test out every shiny new digital toy or plant your flag in each brave new digital world, take a second to think about what it is you’re trying to achieve.

You’re about to gain access to a large community of people to listen to, engage with and eventually earn the loyalty of. In the end, what’s their takeaway? Is it a deeper understanding of what you do well and an excitement about your product/service? Is it the humanization of your brand, creating the opportunity for you to create a deeper connection with your consumer community? Is it outstanding support? Increased traffic leading to action? I can’t answer those questions for you, because I don’t work for you or with you. If YOU can’t answer them, then your problems definitely can’t be fixed by Hootsuite, Radian6 or whatever new tool makes Twitter and Facebook scalable for your company. Problems connecting with consumers in the social space are created and can be solved at the simplest macro level – start with a concrete understanding of where you are and then determine where you want to be, and how you’re going to get there.Once you figure THAT out, you’re free to worry about your tools.

Recently I saw my 4 year old nephew watching TV, sitting there in a complete trance, as if he didn’t even notice that his regularly scheduled programming was taking a commercial break. Then, as the latest toy-based-on-a-movie-that-was-based-on-a-toy commercial appeared, I heard it. Like a zombie calling for his favorite meal, my adorable little nephew uttered the money phrase: “I want dat…”

Image credt: artlung's Flickr Stream

That’s what every advertisement is meant to do, no matter what your age: You’re supposed to look at it and say (either to yourself or out loud) “I want dat…” Make no mistake, my friends. You WILL want “dat”. They’ll throw every bell and whistle they have at you, use bright colors, and big promises until all you can even THINK of is “dat”.

Of course, as we grow up, we get better at controlling what I’ll call the “Dat instinct”. All those bells and whistle start to get annoying, and we only really go into a trance when that product comes along that we REALLY want because we’ve been reading about it or it fills a specific need. Those are the times when the shock and awe work – the product happens to be in front of us when we want it to be.

The big mistake that marketers and advertisers make in the social space is failing to realize that you can be there for customers and have a relationship with them so that they come to you when they want “dat”. In general, I’d love to stop being treated like a child. Take the time to learn a medium before you set foot in it. What worked in print needed to be adjusted for radio, then adjusted again for TV, and while I don’t care for any of those advertisements, every once in a while one of them works on me, so somebody’s got to be paying attention. Businesses spend so much time trying to get us to pay attention to them that they don’t pay attention to us.

Companies paying attention to us and marketing smarter, not bigger. I want DAT.

Last month CNN published an article online in which they compared and contrasted the level of customer service they experienced from 8 different companies on Twitter, on the Phone and via email. Their conclusion was that Twitter didn’t provide the excellent customer service that people rave about.

Duh. Of course not, and for two reasons:

Image Credit: www.corporate-eye.com

1. Social Media Customer Service is incredibly difficult to scale, and creates a problem solving issues in “real time” when the number of people coming to Twitter for help becomes more than the person/people handling that account can deal with “instantly”; and

2. No company I know of uses Twitter alone for their customer support. Speaking from experience, trying to handle all of your customer service complaints through Twitter would eventually drive you crazy, and I’m talking Daffy Duck crazy. Most companies will use social channels to either start the CS process or usher the customer to one of their dedicated CS channels.

And that’s the larger issue here – none of these companies are using any of their outlets in isolation – they’re simply positioning themselves to be available wherever their customers need them. Frank Elliason had the power of Comcast’s CS tools at his disposal, so he could get things done for customers as quickly as possible. It took a person like Frank being in the right place at the right time to do that. He saw people complaining about his company online and had the presence of mind to say “we ought to do something about that”. Did he solve all of Comcast’s problems? No. Did he make phone support better? Not necessarily. Did he pave the way for a more integrated approach to customer service? Absolutely, and that is the key.

If you’re communicating with your customers, they’ll know where to go and what to expect when they have an issue. The strength of that promise in comparison to the consumer’s expectations and the extent to which those promises are delivered on makes up the company’s CS reputation as a whole, no matter how it decides to handle support. Social media has created more and more outlets for customer feedback, which in turn demands that the companies occupy these channels as well. If you’re a hotel or restaurant, you want to have a presence on Yelp! and TripAdvisor.com so you can mitigate issues and address criticism publicly so that future customers can feel secure in your ability to solve problems. For a company like Comcast, Frank was simply seeing where the complaints were and addressing them in the same place.

Whether or not that happens is really a function of how skilled and how dedicated the people behind those CS channels are. What all of the companies from the article (and all companies, really) are trying to do is exceed those expectations and promise the consumer the quickest possible support. At least they should be, because I’ve experienced exceptional customer service and terrible customer service, and both experiences made me want to tell people about them. The real question is, what kind of experience is YOUR company providing?

This is the time of year when we’ve all taken stock of our 2010 and plotted a course for 2011, careful putting together a schedule and a list of solemnly made promises to improve some things, increase some things, and make other things decrease. Ah, the New Year’s Resolution – a ready made invitation to failure that we write off because hey, we were on a high from the holidays – how can we be expected to keep our resolutions?

We can’t, of course, because they’re resolutions, and resolutions are empty when they lack action. Now action, on the other hand, is the real agent of change. That’s why I strongly advise you take actions instead of resolving to take action. Throw out your resolution to blog every day if you’ve never blogged before; instead, write a post every week. One post. Find your voice and before you know it you’ll be writing more than once a week because you have ideas to share and stories to respond to.

The actions you take, while smaller in scale than the grandiose and sweeping resolutions you made on Saturday, are going to help you get the job done and reach the overall goals you have for your business and yourself.

Don’t forget that there’s only one way to finish a marathon, and that’s by putting one foot in front of the other over and over again until you look back and realize you’ve run 26.2 miles.

There’s a reason why so many businesses use Facebook as a primary tool to engage their clients/consumers – because it’s a large, vibrant community that continues to grow and expand, which is a comfort to businesses trying to expand their influence and reach. There are some businesses that like to use Facebook for all of their social stuff – after all, why go to trouble of building a blog or social outlet on your site when you can go where all the people are and have it there?

I’ll tell you why. Because you don’t own Facebook. Facebook owns Facebook, and anyone with a Business Page got a nice little reminder of that last week, when they switched everybody’s page to the new format (significant change from how it had been) without warning, then changed it back before crashing for a little while. When you’re just building your community, it can be a frustrating setback; when your Facebook community is over 300k strong, it can be a much larger problem. No matter which situation you’re in, the reminder is clear; when you operate a fan page on Facebook you’re subject to their whims – if they decide to make changes, those changes are going to be made whether they help you or hurt you – the decision is out of your hands.

Does that mean you should stop using Facebook? No – the advantages of having a  Facebook presence are still there – however, you should think twice before making it the hub of your online activities. I feel very strongly that you should always own your hub – it’s the only place where you have complete control over the experience, look and feel of things – hell, you can even make your own house rules!

Don’t get so wrapped up in the opportunity to expand your reach that you lose sight of common sense. Own your hub and it doesn’t matter which spokes you use; as you introduce new ones and stop using others, you’ve still got the security of a consistent place to engage, capture and convert.