Social Media Free. So, Why Not Use It?

Social media, sometimes referred to as online social networking, is the fastest growing form of advertising today, it is free, and accessible to just about everyone. Yet most people are not leveraging it to promote their businesses or personal brands, which is a missed opportunity.

2010 Stats

Take a look at the stats for some well-known social media sites*:

• Facebook: 500 million members
• Twitter: A billion monthly tweets
• LinkedIn: 60 million members
• Myspace: 191 million members

Where else can you connect your business or you, the professional or expert, to potentially millions of people--for free?

Leverage Social Media Today

Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Set up a page or profile for both you (the professional) and your business, which should be separate from any personal pages. All social networking sites have help or training guides to assist you with understanding the features, applications, and rules.
• Post your pages or profiles on at least three social networking sites. I recommend Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Blogger, Delicious, and Digg. There are also a bunch of niche sites that you may want to consider depending on your business.
• Control your profile or page. If you don't want pictures shared or comments from people, make sure you change your settings to reflect your preferences.
• Promote your presence on these social networking sites. Include links on your emails, newsletters, ads, and website.

*Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Compete - April and August 2010

Customer Service Matters

I live in a relatively new community that has a property management group to collect dues, send notices, coordinate services and so on.  Over the last quarter, I have had the worse time getting them to reverse two fees that were applied in error. 

I attempted to resolve the matter by working with the representative who is assigned to my community.  After months of hearing the canned robotic response of "those are the fees", I decided to escalate to her VPs (all of them).  Finally, I got a response that made sense-- after about five emails to her VPs (all of them).  And, the fees were reversed.

Because of that experience--how long it took for resolution and escalations--I have lost some confidence in my property management group and would like to explore others that are more responsive.

Customer service always matters.  As a career marketing professional, one of the things that I encourage businesses to do is to look at their back-end processes and company culture to ensure that they are delivering based on the brand promise and the purchase guarantee.

Every customer has expectations when they engage a business.  Those expectations are based on their previous experiences, preferences, your brand, and the purchase.  Failure to delivery leads to bad word of mouth (the most important form of advertising) and churn.

Providing good customer service that meets customer expectations is the easiest thing to do, but many companies, small and large, struggle.  Here are a few tips:

• Practice empathy and stop spitting out scripts and policies. People don't respond well when they feel like you can't help them, have a canned response, or won't remedy their concern.
• Make your customers feel special.  Nordstrom is legendary for having a service culture, and it has served the company well.
• Get to really know your customers and their expectations like Green Hill Farms, so you can meet or exceed them. 
• Make sure your customer service reps are as great as your marketing people, and make sure they are rewarded well because they are equally important.   Customer service is the key to your retention marketing, so don't skimp on them.  The Ritz Carlton is an excellent example of how to promote outstanding organizational service.
• Quickly change policies, procedures and fees that cause problems.  If your customers are constantly complaining about the same thing, FIX IT.

Practicing these tips are sure to help your customer service and retention marketing efforts.

Newbie at Blogging - My First One

SAs I reviewed all the content for my latest Th!nk Marketing workshop, I started to do a mental checklist of all the things I advise participants to do to enhance their marketing efforts and online presence.   As a DIY marketing consultant and growth strategist, I take pride in trying new things just to see if they will work for my clients, friends, and workshop participants. 

So, since I teach all this good stuff, I should be able to breeze through my marketing checklist.  And, I did quite well until I got to blogging.  Blogging...something that I have known about since 2003.  Blogging...something that the U.S. census, The White House, Archaeology Magazine, and a 97year old woman is/was doing.  Blogging...112 million blogs in 2007 and 126 million blogs in 2009.  Blogging...well better late than never.  Today, I officially became a blogger (in addition to being a twit (I couldn't help it), friend, and connection).

BTW, if you haven't seen this Socialnomics video or gotten this book book, you should! You'll learn a lot about the social media revolution.