If you’ve read my posts about handling negative buzz, or even attended one of my presentations in San Francisco, Boston, Las Vegas or Washington, DC., then you’ve probably heard me reference the Air Force’s social media response assessment chart. Recently I had my own social media team at American Public University System make some updates to the chart. I’ve embedded it below. Feel free to download and use.
I’ve often preached that one of the strongest (and most overlooked) benefits of digital marketing is that it enables you to be incredibly agile. You can test something quickly and alter it as you go. Pilots can be minutes or days, you can split test to your heart’s content, and so on.
Most importantly, you can correct mistakes! Say you screw up in social media, you can immediately be accountable and post a correction or apologize. If your ad has a typo, you can pull it down and correct it. This doesn’t mean you should be sloppy, lazy with your quality control, or cavalier in your instructions to your marketing teams. It just means you should use agility to your benefit.
Be quick to try something that might not be quite perfect so that you get the first mover advantage. Don’t spend weeks perfecting it – that just means lost market opportunity. Get it online and then worry about reiterations in the future.
And, if you screw up, here’s some fantastic advice to help you sleep at night from Amber Naslund at BrassTackThinking.com.
Erik Saas just wrote a piece regarding a couple of surveys showing that consumers are highly likely to share a bad experience with their networks. This has long been reported as the case but perhaps somewhat ignored by many companies?
A study by Kaset International found:
While this survey is over five years old, the data is still profound. In fact, the 13% figure is probably much higher today, than when this report was released, primarily due to social media.
What can you do? For starters, you need to be listening, which involves monitoring your brand not just in social communities, but on the entire ‘net.
Once you start listening you’ll be able to address issues more proactively and target areas of your business that need improvement. It really is THAT EASY. The improvement may actually be the hard part!
Here’s that article:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=146772&nid=124747#
Great article containing tips on how to configure Twitter (using third-party tools) to reduce the number of tweets you are consuming:
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2011/01/14/5-ways-to-make-twitter-less-noisy/
However, before leveraging another tool, definitely take a look at unfollowing content providers that are offering little value. And, most importantly, use lists to group your content into multiple streams. This is a great way to manage multiple topics.
Finally, bring in the horsepower of another product as a last result. A tool like Radian6 can let you monitor literally thousands of tweets and users at once and alert you to “only the good stuff”. But be warned, tools like Radian6 and the many others out there require a fair amount of time to manage so that you can configure them accurately enough to deliver what you are looking for and to avoid the stuff you’d normally pass up. If a monitoring tool or service is consuming too much time, then you’re not getting the right value out of it.
If you are monitoring social media to listen in about your brand, take heed to this message… don’t interrupt the conversation!
If you see someone posting a crazy rant, do you really think you’ll be able to change their mind? The last think you want to do is come across as defensive in the social space.
Instead, use this opportunity to learn and listen!
If you feel that you can engage the user, then do so. Maybe they have a genuine issue that you can assist and resolve. In that case, by all means, help!
Be transparent and genuine, not defensive and antagonistic. Otherwise, you might start a verbal fight and that will make this negative experience worse.
Usually rants go away quickly, and if you were able to solve their problem, the rant might even be deleted or rescinded.
Also, if someone compliments you, you can certainly say thanks, but that may look a little like “big brother is watching”, so be mindful of where the praise was given.
What I have found is that if you have a good product/service, with a good following, if someone posts a negative, your customers come to your own defense, which is far stronger than you being defensive. And when they cheer lead your brand, other customers chime in.
Here’s a great article about listening versus participating:
http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/2011/01/social-media-monitoring-reacting-responding-online/
Dan Soschin