Exploring the Impact of Social Media
From the category archives:
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Whether you plan to use social media for better PR outreach, marketing, or just listening to what customers have to say, the social media tools you use can play an important role in your business. What’s equally important is who uses those tools in your company’s name. Should you handle social media profiles yourself, or should you turn to a professional who can help you develop a solid social media strategy? [click to continue…]
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As companies big and small continue to move into social media to support other marketing and PR efforts, they’re hiring social media managers to help lead the way. These social media managers and other folks they bring on can do a lot to help companies interact more directly with customers and other groups they want to reach. But there’s also another side to the story.
Over the last few months I’ve interacted with quite a few companies via social media outlets (mostly Twitter) as a customer. More often then not I notice that their social media reps do a good job of monitoring conversations and getting in touch. They also do a good job at soothing upset customers and promising to have issues fixed. That may give the company a temporary reprieve from the negative feedback online resulting from other customer service issues, but I noticed companies are missing an important element of effective use of social media — empowerment. [click to continue…]
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If there’s one word I get tired of hearing in social media, it’s “community.” Sometimes when I’m reading a blog or I’m on Twitter and someone spews that buzzword, I can’t help but cringe. I know this won’t likely be a popular opinion, but I’m going to say it anyway. “Community” is overrated.
Whoa now… put the pitchforks down and just hear me out.
What is “Community?”
For the purpose of this discussion, what exactly is community? Well, it’s just that. It’s discussion. It involves more than one-sided messages — you know, those annoying little things like listening and acknowledging the existence of others.
Is “community” a bad thing? No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I run communities of my own. I’ve helped to manage a very large community of Web professionals in the past. And overall, I love the community aspect of social media. It brings people together, and I’ve met some truly amazing folks since getting into the social media game about six years ago.
Let’s focus on the business side of things though, and the dreaded “community managers” I’m so tired of hearing about. If I see one more person claim to be an expert in “community management” because they ran their own blog or built up Twitter followers through follow spam, screaming just won’t cut it. [click to continue…]
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How NOT to Respond to Negative Feedback Online
By Jennifer Mattern on May 12, 2011
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There is plenty of advice out there about how to respond to negative feedback on blogs and other social media outlets when people speak out against you, your company or your products. And you’ll find plenty of tips on what not to do too. Despite that, I see one mistake go almost unchecked with very little said about it — cookie cutter responses. Let’s change that today.
But first…
The Latest “Don’t” – Brought to You by the Creative Community
I don’t want to delve too deeply into the recent issue with self-published author Jacqeline Howett, but due to the timing I think it’s worth mentioning. Short story: someone reviewed her book; the review wasn’t “bad” but pointed out technical issues with her writing; she blew a friggin’ gasket, and publicly at that. [click to continue…]
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