The Quisenblog

This week’s social media blog posts:
Monday: Using Social Media to address your pain points.
Tuesday: Use Social Media to give your customers a seat at the table.
Wednesday: Picking a face for the organization.
Thursday: Picking a face, part 2.
Friday: Give away your expertise.

(This is the sixteenth in our series of Social Media posts for the month of October. We look forward to your feedback on this series.)

Embracing Social Media is more about the culture than the technology. It implies that you as an organization have moved away from the “top down” model of communicating with customers, and is foregoing the natural tendency of wanting to control every communication. You are now committed to involving customers in a conversation. Your organization is demonstrating its trust in its customers.

Social Media provides the opportunity to tap the strengths of your “passionistas” (those within your organization who best embody the values of the company, and are honestly interested in helping customers). Blogs are another great way to get the individual voices of an organization speaking for the brand.

Blogs can provide fresh content for your followers and can help you build a reputation as a “thought leader” in your industry. And it doesn’t have to be the CEO doing the blogging—in fact in my opinion, in most cases it is better if it isn’t. You’ll want to pick somebody who is comfortable with the practice of blogging, and who is in a position to relate to customers and what they are looking for. As with all Social Media, you’ll want to be transparent. No ghost writing. And as comments to posts come in, moderation of those responses should be very light if at all.

“Selling” disguised as “blogging” doesn’t work, either. A blog’s point of view really has to start with the reader. What is an issue the customer is having that we have the expertise to help them with?

Online services like WordPress and Blogger have made starting and maintaining a blog simple. If there’s one word I would recommend to keep in mind when blogging, it is “consistent.” Have a consistent point of view. Consistently add fresh content. And consistently be a voice your followers want to hear.

Blogs can add a personal face to a very corporate organization. Wells Fargo Bank recently started a series of employee blogs directed at building engagement with groups that are traditionally underserved by the financial industry—students, minorities and single-parent households. These blogs are written from the point of view of the writer, not the bank. Bloggers often refer to the bank’s products or policies, but do it in the context of trying to be of help to these groups.

If you are interesting in blogging, our advice would be to follow other blogs before you jump in. A great place to start would be alltop.com, a web portal that bills itself as an “online magazine rack,” and can connect you with hundreds of relevant blogs in different industries and categories. Or, check Google Blog Search to find out what people are reading.

Another benefit of blogs is that they can help build your organization’s profile on search engines. As others forward or link to your content, you are developing a more in-depth online “story” about your organization.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about a content strategy that can help you get started.

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey Social Media audience engagement, communication, company profile, company represenation, consistent blogging, control, transparent

This week’s social media blog posts:
Monday: Using Social Media to address your pain points.
Tuesday: Use Social Media to give your customers a seat at the table.
Wednesday: Picking a face for the organization.
Thursday: Picking a face, part 2.
Friday: Give away your expertise.

(This is the fifteenth in our series of Social Media posts for the month of October. We look forward to your feedback on this series.)

Who wants to do business with a soul-less organization? Marketing communications are more effective when they are presented as one-to-one conversations. This is even more true in Social Media. It’s not “the organization” that does the talking, but an individual (or at least the voice of an individual). The more personal you can make the communications, the narrower the gap you have to fill in, the more naturally conversation starts to flow.

Effective Social Media communication isn’t done in cold, calculated “corporate speak,” it’s done in the voice of an individual. No “inside baseball” industry references. Forget about the acronyms. Be transparent. Talk like a human being.

For example, if you come across a customer who is having a problem, it will mean more to them to have an individual contact them (Amy, the Regional Customer Service Supervisor) than to have a faceless “Customer Service” reply.

So who is that individual you entrust your Social Media reputation to? Who is it that will be representing you to followers? Is it an insider? A corporate officer? An outside Social Media “expert”? Any of these could work—as long as there is transparency involved. Don’t create a fictitious personality.

One thing that we would recommend would be to identify your own “passionistas”—people within your organization who enthusiastically embody the values of the company, and are honestly interested in helping customers (don’t restrict this role to customer service). These are the individuals you want representing your company in cyberspace. Let them loose.

Actually, who you pick is not nearly as important as how they do it. It is important to give your “voices” the resources they need to effectively advocate on behalf of visitors. You may wish to include several voices—one for news and events, another for service issues, etc.

It is important to be polite, informed, sensitive and helpful without being apologetic or “selly.” Above all, it is important to be responsive.

Respond to suggestions or comments as soon as they have been added. Effective Social Marketers usually get back to posters within a couple of hours. If you’re unable to give a pertinent response, at least let the party know you’re looking into it, and be accountable for it. The web is real-time. If the user-producer feels that her suggestions or comments have not been taken seriously, or too late, or that no one is listening, then she will be discouraged and will likely never come back. (Plus you’ll start a bad story.)

While many brands never identify who it is that is “talking” on behalf of the brand, we have seen several examples of how personalizing that individual builds a loyal following. One example is Mountain Dew. Their Facebook page wall isn’t just a place for fans to leave random comments; it’s a place where fans can go to get real, human answers from “Dew Insider Angie.” Just by following some of the conversation chains, you get a feeling for who Angie is. And, as a result, who Mountain Dew is.

Granted, Mountain Dew is speaking to an audience that is quite young. But what if you knew someone at every company you did business with? Wouldn’t that make your connection with them stronger and more meaningful? In Social Media, you have that opportunity.

Tomorrow, we’ll focus on anther way your organization’s voices can build engagement.

BTW, if you’d like to follow the Quisenblog on Twitter, you can sign up to follow me here. You’ll not only get links to the posts, you’ll also receive a fair amount of unpublished content you will hopeful find useful.

Posted by Mickey

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Mickey Social Media brand engagement, communication, company representation, loyal following, Mountain Dew, real-time interaction, responsive, transparent