Smart enterprises view social media as an integral part of their overall customer experience management programs. At the very least, most companies regognize that it's a good idea to protect their brands by staking claim early to their @mycompany on Twitter and have a page posted on Facebook. Few big, recognizable brands left their online reputations to fate on the major social outlets, although some poor soul will go directly to marketing hell if they didn't point their organization in the right direction. Certainly every company plans tp develop their presence via Facebook, Twitter, and even local outposts like Yelp! (especially if your business has multi-market brick and mortar presence.) Right?
Yes, there's a lot to worry about. But fear not - even the best social marketing pundits and practioners aren't omniscient, omnipresent gods, and no one expects you to read "Social Media For Dummies" and become an expert overnight.
Most esteemed social media experts and marketers who have any opinion on the topic advise you to become "content curators" and become part of the conversation with your consituents. Control as much of your brand message as possible, and listen, as if it's a call to your contact center, to the streams of messages your customers share with you - and with one another.
What happens when and irate customer calls your contact center? Are your Customer Service Reps trained and empowered, like at Zappos.com? Do your sales people take action when they get a warm lead from a trade show, or does that pile of business cards sit on an event marketer's desk collecting dust? If a company didn't have escalation paths for complaints or tracking mechanisms for sales leads before social media became top of mind, what do you expect to change when you do make use of these tools?
Sentiment analysis, semantic analytics, and other tools, aren't much good if you don't have the right people, processes, programs, and plans offline to deal with the data you're going to receive. Nor will hiring an individual to become a key stakeholder in your company who is a full time blogger, content curator, tweep, customer care phenom, brand marketing ambassador, and B2B and B2C marketer with over 10 years of experience working as an SME in an enterprise just like yours, oh and who is a futurist with experience in leading teams across matrices. (Have fun with that.)
Have a plan. Hire good people who "get it" but don't set them up to fail. Learn from experts who understand the technology and the tools available, and form trusted advisor relationships in and out of your vertical market. And begin at the beginning. New social marketing provides organizaitons, large and small, the opportunity to do some customer-centric re-tooling with your eyes and ears open and the world ready to tell you what they think.
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