Posts Tagged ‘listening’

Brands In Public: A New Reputation Management Tool

09.09.23

If your company matters to people, they are talking about you.

There’s nothing particularly new about this; this has been the pattern for hundreds of years. However, one difference with the advent of social media tools is that people are now able to talk to dozens, hundreds or thousands of other people instead of the few they used to.

There are plenty of tools to help companies listen to what people are saying. While I often talk about Radian6, there are plenty of other tools out there, both free and professional.

Today Seth Godin’s Squidoo launched a new service named Brands In Public.

As Seth says:

“You can’t control what people are saying about you. What you can do is organize that speech. You can organize it by highlighting the good stuff and rationally responding to the not-so-good stuff. You can organize it by embracing the people who love your brand and challenging them to speak up and share the good word. And you can respond to it in a thoughtful way, leaving a trail that stands up over time.”

Brands In Public provides an online dashboard that pulls together the latest news and conversation about a brand from sources such as Google Blogsearch, Google News, Yahoo! News, Twitter, BackType, Google Search Trends and Quantcast.

Where Brands In Public gets more interesting is that if a company decides it wants to sponsor its company page (for $400 a month) it gets control of about 2/3 of the screen real-estate on the page. It can highlight blog posts, run contests, post videos or whatever it likes. In case of an issue, the company can quickly respond without needing any technical skills, the ongoing maintenance requirements of a blog, or IT’s go-ahead to create a new page on your website.

All the time, the regular searches continue in the right-hand column, uncensored and unfiltered.

So, while the Molson page features a Twitter search, the Molson blog and a quick poll on how people feel about the brand, the Allstate page includes YouTube videos from various channels along with content from multiple blogs (disclosure: Molson Coors Canada is a recent client; Allstate Canada is a current client).

There’s nothing complicated about Brands In Public; in fact Seth takes pain in his post announcing the service to note that it’s deliberately simple. “It’s simply a place for your brand to see and be seen, to organize and to respond.”

A few thoughts from me:

  • The interface is clean, friendly and easy to use.
  • Right now there’s no search function – the pages seem to be limited to a scrolling list. Presumably this will change as the service is built out and the volume of pages increases.
  • The FAQs indicate that the service will remove a company’s page if they request it. However, as they note, “Your fans might be disappointed though.” What’s more, the lack of a comprehensive list of companies may inhibit the growth of the service.
  • If brands haven’t yet invested in a social media presence, they’re unlikely to make this their first step due to the lack of control of the searches. To those who have already invested, they don’t need this presence as they’re already out there.
  • Brands In Public provides an easy way for companies to be part of the conversation – an entry level solution – but at a premium price. As TechCrunch noted, $400 per month is a pretty hefty price point for a series of automated searches and a few dashboard modules.

What do you think? Is this a useful tool for brands?

Posted in: monitoring, social media, tools

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Feeding The Social Media Beast

09.09.11

Ever felt a “need” to be active on Twitter? Do you feel guilty for not publishing to your blog for a few days?

Hungry dogSometimes there can almost be a compulsion to keep feeding your social media accounts. Go away for a week and watch your blog plummet down the AdAge Power 150, your visitors fall and your RSS subscriptions drop off. Stop tweeting and watch the online discussion around your brand diminish.

So as a business, how do you deal with that time when you just don’t have any content to post?

Personally, I agree with others who have argued that the volume of content isn’t as important as the quality of content and its relevance to the audience.

So, here are a few thoughts on what you can do when your content well appears dry:

  • Re-assess your content
  • Listen to consumers
  • Converse with people
  • Ask what people want
  • Experiment with new ideas
  • Mine your internal resources
  • Wait for useful content

Re-assess

Take advantage of the extra time you have right now to take a cold, hard look at what you’re doing online. Is it working? How do you know?

Take a look at the kind of content you’re posting. Is one kind working better than another? Is one medium reaching more of your audience than another? Could you experiment with something new? Perhaps there’s a potential source of content that you haven’t yet tapped.

Listening

Social media doesn’t have to be all about broadcasting your content (frankly, it shouldn’t). While you’re in this lull, consider placing additional focus on listening. What are people saying about you? Are they discussing your product or company? Are they complaining? Complimenting you? Inquiring? Who is saying these things?

Take the time to reassess where you are against the baseline you set at the outset (you did do that, right?)

Converse

This sits nicely alongside your listening. When people talk about you, do you respond? Perhaps now is a time to get the buy-in you need to start. Maybe it is; maybe it isn’t. Think about it.

Ask

When was the last time you asked the people who care about your company what they want from you? Have you ever done that? You may be making assumptions. Remember – building strong relationships with customers (and I don’t just mean in an online forum) means making it about them, not just you. Ask for input, and ye shall receive.

Experiment

One of the great aspects to social media (to online communication in general) is that you can experiment at little cost. Maybe it’s a new promotion; a new contest; a new feature on one of your social networking properties. That means you can test out ideas, stick with what works and discard what doesn’t. Instead of searching for that big idea to kick-start things, consider trying out a whole bunch of small ideas to see what works.

Plan

Do you have a content plan? How are you using each of the channels on which you have a presence? If you don’t have a plan for them, consider creating one now.

Mine

Just because you work in communications (or marketing, or whatever function you’re in), it doesn’t mean you can’t look elsewhere for help. Whether you’re communicating online or offline, you probably have a wealth of resources right under your nose. Ask around within your organization. Does your customer service, IT or product function have information that you can mine? You don’t know? Ask. Some of your biggest resources may be sitting there just waiting for you to find them.

Wait

You want to be heard. You want to build your community; to get results. Remember, though, that people may not want to hear you as much as you want to be heard. Don’t get me wrong – results are absolutely critical, but spamming people when you have nothing to say won’t help you to get those results.

As I mentioned earlier, look to speak when you have something to say rather than for the sake of it. If that time isn’t now, then wait.

What have you done when your company or your client struggles to find useful content? What would you add to the list?

(Image: Shutterstock)

Posted in: social media

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Set Yourself Apart In The Tough Times

09.07.22

Winningo on the uphillSeth Godin wrote an interesting post yesterday about “winning on the uphills” that really resonated with me.

The crux of the post:

“On the uphills, I have a reasonable shot at a gain over last time. The downhills are already maxed out by the laws of physics and safety.

The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset.”

It’s great to pat yourself on the back when things are going well, it’s when things get tough that you can set yourself apart and when you can either lose customers forever or cement their loyalty. I’ve seen it happen many times – it’s something we do on a daily basis on our clients’ behalf.

Of course, you never want your customers to be upset. However, when it happens you have an opportunity to deliver service that they will remember.

You can turn a customer from the position of ranting about your company’s problems to raving about their great service by being:

  1. Available
  2. Human
  3. Helpful

You don’t have to change something every time someone complains. You don’t have to reveal confidential information. You won’t always have an answer that makes them happy.

However, you can listen to people (Marcel Lebrun calls it “answering the social phone“). You can explain things more clearly so people understand the issues. You can fix mistakes. And you can show people who reach out to you that you care about their business.

What about your organization? Do you just bask in the moments when it comes together, or do you also make the most of the moments when it doesn’t?

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Posted in: communications, social media

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You Aren’t Always Right

09.06.18

As our team does more and more online outreach on behalf of our clients, I’m increasingly coming to realize that you can’t expect to “win” every debate.

Interestingly enough, “you” in this case can refer to either side of the discussion.

Companies – you don’t have to win

As a communications pro, with inside knowledge of the company/companies you represent, it’s easy to get caught-up in your own story. I mean that in a positive way – the best job is one you’re passionate about, whether that passion is focused on your employer or a client. Still, it’s easy to get swept away by the great things you’re doing, by the benefits your organization can offer, and by the great story you’re telling.

Trouble is, other people have a different story.

Maybe they have a history with that company. Maybe they perceive the situation in a completely different way to that in which you perceive it. Maybe they’re looking to solve different problems to you.

As a communicator who listens and engages with your target market online, you need to remember that you don’t have to convince everyone every time. Sometimes it’s enough that you show you’re listening. Sometimes it’s enough to put forward an alternative angle. Sometimes it’s best not to engage at all.

Consumers – you’re not always right

Social media, and the increased voice that it gives to the average person, seems to have led to many people believing that one person’s issue means a company has to change course.

Reality check, people: no company is ever going to be able to make everyone happy. What’s more, most changes in business have a counter-effect:

  • Lower the price on one thing and the revenue has to come from somewhere else (or increased volumes)
  • Basic management theory explains that of the three basic elements of a project outcome – cost, speed and quality – you can optimize two but have to compromise on the other.

My point here is that you may not like something, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else feels the same way. The opposite is potentially true, too – just because you’re happy with something doesn’t mean everyone else is.

Don’t expect every single company to leap to attention because you, personally, don’t agree with fundamental aspects of their business model.

So, next time a company responds to your concerns but puts forward an alternative perspective or just doesn’t drop everything to make big changes to their business based on your feedback, consider:

Is it them not listening to their customers, or an individual not necessarily representing the masses?

Closing-out

Social media engagement isn’t an all-or-nothing game. Not from the customer’s perspective, and certainly not from the company’s.

Social media allows companies to reach out to customers, and vice versa. It lets companies listen to concerns; to answer questions; to help people; to develop relationships. It lets customers voice opinions; receive support; put forward ideas.

Just remember – whether you’re the company or the customer, you aren’t always right.

Posted in: social media

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25 Questions To Make Your Social Media Workflow Work For You

09.06.15

You’ve pulled together a social media team, you’ve set your objectives, you’ve developed an integrated communications strategy that combines online and offline communications, and you’ve won the buy-in you need to start to engage online.

The first part of your system should ideally be listening, after which you can begin engaging in online conversations and launching your own properties. Sounds simple, but there are plenty of questions that can trip you up along the way. You should answer as many of these as you can before you start your social media outreach.

Here are a few, to get you started.

Team Coordination

  1. Do you need a schedule to coordinate who is responding to online conversations?
  2. How will you ensure that different team members don’t send duplicate responses?
  3. Will you disclose who is engaging on behalf of your brand? Where?
  4. How will you ensure consistency within your team in recording the various facets of conversations that you are tracking?
  5. Will your team be active on weekends?
  6. Will your weekend workflow differ from your weekday process?
  7. Will you assign specific people to engage with specific individuals?

Tracking and Reporting

  1. How will you record conversations for future reference?
  2. How will you keep a record of conversations so you can see how you’ve corresponded with people in the past?
  3. How will you report on the conversations about your brand/industry?
  4. How will you report on your engagement, against your objectives?

Responding to Conversations

  1. How will you triage conversations for different types of response?
  2. Where are the limits – which conversations will you, and will you not, respond to?
  3. Do you need a set of standard Q&As to frame your responses to common issues?
  4. Is there a common "voice" that you want associated with your brand?
  5. Will you set guidelines for your response time to conversations?
  6. What process will your team follow when they encounter an issue for which they don’t currently have an answer?

Publishing Content

  1. If you are working with other agencies, have you worked their content into your content timelines?
  2. How often will you aim to publish content?
  3. Do you have an editorial calendar for your blog?
  4. How will you divide-up content creation?

General Outreach

  1. Will your team use individual accounts on social media sites that require registration, or will they work from one corporate account?
  2. Will you permit/encourage your team to use their own personal accounts in the outreach?
  3. Do you have a policy on who you will subscribe to on the various social media platforms?
  4. How will you approach the influencers in your market?

What other questions would you add to the list?

Posted in: social media, strategy

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107Comments

Five Levels Of Social Media Responses

09.06.08

How well are you listening?You’ve leapt onto the social media bandwagon. You’ve dived headfirst into the murky waters of Twitter. You’ve used a few other cliched sayings along the way, too. Suffice it to say, you’re monitoring what people are saying about you and you’re starting to respond to them.

Maybe you’re using free tools like Google Alerts, Twitter Search and BackType. Maybe you’re using a paid tool like Radian6, Ripple6 or Techrigy. 

Either way, you’re starting to put together what Marcel Lebrun would call a listening program.

But are you listening? I mean really listening?

I’ve come up with five levels of approach to online listening and responding (not including the option of not engaging at all). In order of growing effectiveness:

Level One: Ostriching

(Yes, I’m using “ostrich” as a verb. My high-school teachers must hate me.)

This approach, a slight evolution from that which completely ignores online conversations in general, involves monitoring for key words and responding only when people say nice things about you. While this keeps your Twitter stream clear of debate and arguments, it does nothing to engage the people who are hurting or whose needs are not met by your company.

Tip: If you ignore critics, the only place that they go away is in your head. Everywhere else, they get louder.

Level Two: Laughing Gas

“Hey, thanks for your feedback!”

If you’ve just said something nice about a company, or offered something constructive, it might be nice to read a reply like that.

I’ve you’ve just complained publicly about a problem, that’s not the response you want.

Companies taking the laughing gas approach respond as though every mention is a compliment.

They’re not. It just shows that you’re not really listening, and implies that this is just superficial sugar coating.

Don’t do it. No-one will be fooled.

Level Three: “We’re Always Right”

Companies adopting the “we’re always right” approach appear to listen, but when someone disagrees with them that person is always wrong.

This kind of approach is distinctive due to the large number of arguments the company representatives have with other people – arguments that rarely end in agreement, as the representative never accepts that the other point of view may be valid.

Level Four: Superficial Debate

This approach is the best approach that many companies, where communications may not have a significant voice at the management table, can hope to take.

Companies taking this approach engage with people talking about them online, both postitively and critically. They may even engage in debates with those who disagree with them. Many disagreements end in an appeasing message from the representative – something like “thanks – we’ll have a think about how we can improve that” or similar.

If your company is at this stage, you’re in fairly good shape. You’re engaging with your fans and you’re debating with your critics without getting drawn into descructive exchanges.

From what I know, relatively few companies do more than this right now.

Level Five: Fully Engaged

Companies adopting a fully-engaged approach follow most of the same practices as those at level four, but with one important distinction: their social media listening and engagement team feeds back into the rest of the organization.

So, when you voice your concerns about a problem, that company is more likely than others to fix it.

Does this mean that every time a customer complains you have to bend over? No. Obviously companies can’t address every single concern that people raise or they’d (a) spend all of their time on tactical changes rather than strategic direction and (b) would go out of business due to ridiculously high costs. However, they can address issues where it is cost effective to do so.

Very few companies adopt this approach. It takes time, a suitable culture and a genuine integration of social media into core functions like R&D and customer service.

Companies that do this include Dell (see IdeaStorm), Seesmic and any of the social media monitoring companies worth their salt.

In Summary…

True listening – active listening – involves more than just nodding your head at the right time. It means absorbing what people are saying, acting where appropriate, and letting people know when you’ve acted.

If your company falls into levels 1-4, then you have room to grow. That’s ok, I would estimate that 99 per cent of companies are in the same situation. In fact, if you hit level one then you’re still ahead of most companies.

Where do you fall?

Posted in: monitoring, social media

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Does Your Organization Have Multiple Personalities?

09.05.21

Whether you like it or not, your customer service is now part of your company’s public relations. In reality it has always been that way but now, with the variety of online tools that let individuals have a louder voice, many more people can hear about your customer service successes and failures.

Customer service is one of the many ways you can put social media tools to use – identifying customer issues early and resolving them to create happy, satisfied customers. Whether it’s through focused tools like Get Satisfaction or through a coordinated listening and engagement program, there are plenty of ways to go about it. On a daily basis we’re blown away by the power of tools like Radian6 for coordinating this kind of effort.

Respond to customers online and they can be blown away that you’re listening. Frankly, most people don’t yet expect it. We’ve seen from our own clients that the response you can get from effective online service is powerful.

What happens, though, when your offline customer service function doesn’t live up to the expectation for service standards you’ve set online? 

You end up with an organization with multiple personalities.

Online, your company is friendly, responsive, and goes beyond the minimum to set a gold-level standard. Offline, your call centre staff are assessed on turnaround time on calls, and are focused on getting you off the line as quickly as possible.

The person who gets prompt, friendly, personal service online one day and then the next day gets put on hold to a call centre in India for 90 minutes will have an even more negative perception of that phone experience due to that contrast. What’s more, they’re likely to continue to rely on your online service in future, by-passing the other options.

Is that the kind of consistency you aim for with your brand? I hope not.

What about the customers who experience this disconnect? As Todd Defren notes, the response is likely to be something along the lines of:

“Treat me like a STAR one day, and give me a nightmarish experience the next day, just because I’ve reached out via a different channel?  F* you!  I’m gonna tweet about this — you are a fraud!!”

If you’re starting to tune-in and listen to conversations about your company online, pay close attention to what people are saying. Are they consistently complaining about your offline customer service? If they are, while you stand to benefit from outreach through social media tools, you need to take a long, hard look at the rest of your customer service operation.

Posted in: monitoring, pr, public relations

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Cluetrain Plus 10: People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice

09.04.28

As part of a project to mark the tenth anniversary of the seminal social media book The Cluetrain Manifesto, Keith McArthur organized a project to have different people blog about each of the 95 theses within the manifesto.

I’m writing about thesis number five. For context, here are the four preceding these:

  1. Markets are conversations. (Christopher Locke)
  2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors. (Simon Kendrick)
  3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice. (Keith McArthur)
  4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived. (Shel Holtz, A Shel of my Former Self)

My topic:

5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice

Listen. Engage. Develop.

These three steps provide a simple way for organizations to dip their toes into social media. Of those, the first – listen – is the easiest, the most risk-free and potentially the most rewarding.

It is listening that provides the learning; that shows organizations the lay of the land; that pushes companies to adapt and that enables them to head in the right direction.

It is listening that enables companies to participate in online conversations, not as faceless, message-driven entities but as people within an organization. By listening to what people are saying and adapting communication accordingly, you become an active listener rather than a passive one. 

Why care?

Because people generally don’t want relationships with companies or organizations. They don’t want to talk to Skittles, or to Ford, or to Garmin. They want to talk to people within those companies. They want to talk to people with a face and with a personality.

Openness is a core part of a company’s social media presence. In fact, you should do a “culture check” on your organization before moving deeper into social media. If you’re planning to do anything misleading, don’t really want to hear disagreement or don’t really want to engage with your customers, then step away before you drag your organization down with an ill-advised initiative.

Company employees, when acting online, can and should remember that they represent their organization at all times. However, there’s a balance to be struck between rigid on-message formality (no-one wants to be messaged) and off-target communication that, at its worst, can damage companies’ reputations.

Most people don’t:

  • Constantly try to sell you thing
  • Talk in bureaucratese
  • Treat other people as a statistic

If you approach these tools through active listening and engaging in a way that puts a personality and perhaps a face on the organization, expect an evolution in the way people respond to you as people identify with those on your side of the fence.

People recognize other people by the sound of their voices. If you sound like a robot, expect to be treated like one.

Posted in: best practices, monitoring

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The Communicator’s Challenge: “We” Are Not “They”

09.04.16

Last week I briefly touched on a big issue that, on reflection, is the bane of communicators across various disciplines:

Communicators plan activities to reach our key audiences. However, we often don’t represent those audiences.

We may not be the same demographic as the target audience. We may not have the same interests, or hobbies, or lifestyles, or problems.

That problem is exacerbated when it comes to social media. As new research shows, social media practitioners have a different perception of social tools than do “average” users.

  • They don’t build networks like ours
  • They don’t consume information like us
  • They aren’t influenced by online events like us
  • They don’t care as much about corporate involvement in social media as we do

“We” are not “they.”

There’s no doubt that these tools are powerful. The Dominos Pizza uproar of the last few days is a prime example of the potential of social media to derail a company, while you only need to look at companies like Dell, Zappos and others for the postitive potential of these tools.

However, as I’ve evolved from purist to pragmatist, it’s become more and more clear that we are way further along the curve than they are.

That means we need to be careful. Just because we think something is cool, catchy or relevant, doesn’t mean they will.

In an ideal world we would take concepts out and do market research around them. However, as communications budgets shrink in a recession this becomes less and less feasible.

On our own web properties we can run A/B tests to see which concepts and messages work better. However, in the world of social media that’s more difficult. Throwing out different messages on Twitter to test them, for example, might be awkward and ineffective., and quite frankly anti-social. 

That’s why the first step of social media engagement – listening – is so important. Not just listening to the things you want to hear, either; listening to everything about your brand and how people feel about you and learning from it. There are plenty of tools to help you do that, too.

By listening and learning, you can help to close the gap (a little) between them and us.

What do you think?

Posted in: communications, monitoring, public relations, social media

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5Comments

Social Media Monitoring – Disturbing Or Useful?

09.04.08

Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a thought-provoking post today over at Read Write Web, looking at social media listening platforms like Radian6 and their role in companies’ online outreach.

I found Marshall’s take surprising. Talking about his experience with Comcast representative ComcastBill responding to one of his tweets, he says:

“An extensive machinery of tracking, delegation and analysis stood between Bill and my little Tweet. Maybe it has to be that way, maybe it’s a good thing – but there’s something deeply disturbing about it too.”

Marshall also uses several phrases throughout his post that raise the question of whether services like Radian6 are somewhat creepy:

  • “There’s something that feels condescending about these kinds of services. Why can’t the marketers using them learn how to use the web, like the rest of us have?”
  • “It looks like it’s just you and them, but behind them there’s a curtain covering a whole mess of cogs and pulleys, analyzing you in different ways.”
  • “It’s kind of a modern day horror story, isn’t it? Web 2.0′s potential benefit for humanity tragically sold short by social media because it fell under a fog of marketing software.”

While Marshall does acknowledge the other side of the argument, I got the distinct feeling that he isn’t comfortable with the idea of CRM features being used in a social media setting.

Here’s the other side from my perspective.

Many people want companies to use social media tools to connect

Research released yesterday shows that 40 per cent of social media users are using these tools to connect with companies. What’s more, a quarter of users feel better about organizations engaged in social media.

Simple search tools don’t scale

As Marshall points out:

“The fact is, subscribing to a search feed for relevant terms in various search engines just isn’t going to scale for larger businesses.”

As volume increases, so does the complexity of responding to people online.

  • It’s no longer just one person – it’s a team
  • Higher volume means people on that team aren’t going to remember everyone immediately
  • An excel spreadsheet to report online conversations just doesn’t cut it

With scale, comes coordination

Once you reach a scale that requires a team-based approach to online engagement, you need to make sure that:

  1. Things don’t fall through the cracks
  2. You don’t double-up on people

That means you need a workflow management system, whether it’s integrated with your search tool or not. Of course, from my perspective it’s much more efficient to combine the two. You need a tool that:

  • Lets you assign tasks to people
  • Record the approach you’ve taken to engaging with people
  • Lets you store, rather than lose, the institutional knowledge of past interactions

Efficient reporting matters

While many practitioners aren’t paying much attention to measurement, I think it’s critical. If social media is to avoid being the first part of budgets to be cut, we need to demonstrate results. That means reporting on that measurement. Once you scale up, you need to find an efficient way to report on what’s happening in order to demonstrate results.

That reporting needs to go beyond traffic numbers. If that’s all you measure, you’re missing out. Tools like Radian6 let you look at things like:

  • Sentiment breakdowns
  • The type of content being written about your company
  • Share of voice
  • Themes in topic content

Efficiency, not profiling

Is this profiling? Only in an aggregated sense. Yes, there are notes associated with online mentions, but not in a sinister way – in a way that makes it possible for companies to engage in the way that people increasingly want them to.

What do you think?

Posted in: monitoring, social media

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