August 2010

Twitter: Sometimes “Boring” and “Dry” is Fine

in B2B, Twitter

Ask any social media expert and they’ll tell you that Twitter needs to be conversational. To make the most out of Twitter, you shouldn’t be just broadcasting your messages – you should also be interacting with others, responding to their tweets, answering their questions, being helpful.

The best Twitter accounts are those that have a mix of broadcasting and interacting, and especially those that add the occasional personal tweet to the mix, making even a corporate account appear more human and more approachable.

However, it has been my experience that many clients, especially in the B2B space, do not want me to do anything other than broadcasting on their Twitter account. I can explain to these clients how valuable a more conversational approach is until I’m blue in the face – doesn’t matter. The client wants formal and corporate.

I used to worry about these “dry” and “boring” Twitter accounts, until I realized something important: these clients are not necessarily off-base. Sure, even in the B2B space there’s place for conversations, but many of these companies view Twitter not as a lead gen tool but simply as another part of their brand. Just like they have a website, email marketing and printed material, they have a Twitter account, and all they want is for that Twitter account to broadcast company and industry-related news and info.

They don’t want conversations, they don’t want “lively” or “engaging” – they want dry and corporate.

While my strong personal preference is for Twitter accounts that are more conversational in nature, I have come to accept that the client is not always wrong :) and that for some companies, in some areas, a formal Twitter account is absolutely fine.

Social Media for Customer Service

in Social Media

One of the arguments in favor of using social media even when you don’t see clear ROI in terms of dollars and cents is that social media has value beyond dollars and cents, and one important aspect of this value is risk control.

This means that when you have a social media presence, and a person that manages social media for you, you don’t lose control over your messaging – on the contrary, you gain more control because you are able to immediately take care of problems before they escalate.

In other words, social media can be used to provide customers with immediate customer service, the type of service they are unlikely to get through your website or even via the phone.

The following screen shot from the Facebook page of a yogurt brand beautifully demonstrates how a brand’s social media page can be used by a frustrated customer to complain. While this may seem damaging to the brand, I believe that the prompt response by the brand is, in this case, beneficial to the brand and reinforces its image as a brand that cares about its customers:

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facebook complaint

Now, ideally I would have preferred to see the social media manager refrain from asking a question that had already been answered by the customer (yes, she did use the website to talk with customer service) and I would also think they should have solved this publicly – they could have offered to send her free product coupons if she emailed them her address. Showing everyone how exactly they deal with this type of issue would have been better than “I’ll send you a direct message.” Still, the very fact that the brand has reacted immediately and has shown willingness to make things right for the customer is priceless.

Social Media Marketing: Benefits Beyond Dollars and Cents

More and more thought leaders and analysts are saying what many social media consultants have been saying all along: social media marketing offers benefits beyond those that can be immediately quantified in dollars.

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How NOT To Tweet

I haven’t done one of my “Twitter Police” posts for a while. Here goes: another example of a completely useless Twitter account. Automated, broadcasting, annoying, no connecting or interacting. A waste of time!

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Seven Reasons Your Social Media Campaign Isn’t Working

When hiring a social media consultant and starting a social media campaign, it’s very important to define what would be considered success, and it’s always good to tie social media success to business parameters. But for most businesses, deciding that “success” means being able to show that a social media budget of $10,000 per year resulted in, say, annual sales of $40,000 would be impossible. Even my most successful clients, the ones who see direct correlation between their social media presence and increased sales, can’t usually quantify it that accurately.

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They Didn’t Follow You Back? Chances Are, It’s Not Personal

The more I tweet, the more I realize that in the vast majority of cases, people no longer check each and every link in each email notification they receive about a new follower, to decide if they should follow back. I know I don’t! I used to do this in the past – I would go to each Twitter account who had followed me to see if we share the same interests. I even used to go visit people’s websites to make sure we were a good fit. Based on this research, I used to make my decision whether to follow them back or not.

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