April 17, 2012 - Posted by Amy Rose Brown
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“But why would I want to annoy my customers?” you ask. You wouldn’t. Unfortunately, even the most successful brands have been known to send fans running when they decide to adopt one of the following tactics:
Imagine the following scenario: you’ve been a business’s loyal customer for a number of years, but you recently had some pretty lousy service. You send them an email or call them up to lodge a complaint and let them know about the incident, but nobody answers the phone during business hours or your email doesn’t receive a response. Odds are, your loyalty would wane at least a little bit.
This is what happens when customers post on your Facebook wall or tweet at you, only for their words to fall on deaf ears. As of October 2011, a study found that 70 percent of companies on Twitter weren’t responding to customer complaints. Imagine if 70 percent of companies just didn’t answer the phone — ever. With more and more communication happening via social media, that’s basically what you’re doing by ignoring tweets and comments.
Remember our cautionary tale about Yelp, featuring a restauranteur from Scottsdale with…well…let’s call it a short fuse? If not, here’s our example of what not to do (just to refresh your memory):
If you’re looking for a way to alienate your customers, calling them insane is a good place to start. But most of you probably don’t want to alienate your customers, which means you don’t want to get defensive when you run into a critical viewpoint of your product or business practices. Think of it as market research – how can you adapt to consumer wants and needs?
You may think it’ll seem like a nice gesture when a customer opens their new direct message on Twitter to find an automated “Thanks for following!” message. That’s not how it seems. How does it seem? It seems…well, like an automated message that goes out to every single one of your new followers. Your customers appreciate genuine gestures to reach out and connect with them. Mass, automated messaging defeats the purpose of social media.
“Automated direct messaging is a very, very bad idea,” says our CEO Shama Kabani. “Please stop.” There are plenty of ways to make your followers feel important. Auto DMs, however, may have them reaching for the “unfollow” button.
It’s fine to convey similar messages with your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Honestly, the messaging should be fairly consistent for the sake of your branding. However, the solution isn’t checking the box that auto posts your tweets to Facebook (also not the solution: auto-posting your Facebook activity to Twitter).
First of all, you should be making use of Twitter hashtags whenever possible. Hashtags do not translate to Facebook. You may potentially end up looking confused. Second, the two networks have different user demographics. While Twitter users are used to seeing multiple tweets per day from the same accounts, Facebook users may find that amount of information spam-like. Finally, there are those users who have both Facebook and Twitter. You want to give them a reason to pay attention to your activity on both networks – and you’re not giving them a good reason if your activity on both networks is identical.
What do you think is the biggest social media brand don’t? Leave us a comment to let us know!
March 16, 2012 - Posted by Amy Rose Brown
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Have you ever wished that there was some sort of combination of Twitter lists and Google Circles for Facebook? Even if that thought’s never actually crossed your mind, Facebook stayed one step ahead of you and created a new feature to fill that void anyway! They’re called Facebook Interest Lists, and they allow you to create and subscribe to lists of users who talk about things you’re interested in. Facebook describes the new Interest Lists as a “personal newspaper,” and says they’ll be coming to your bookmarks in the next few weeks. To prepare you for their arrival, let’s go through the basics.
Many Facebook users have already created Interest Lists on a wide variety of topics. You can browse through these and choose the ones you think you’d want to read. Based on your profile information and likes, you might also have some suggested lists:
If we click through to Animal Causes, we can see a list of who and what we’d be receiving updates from.
So we decide to subscribe to this list. Where does it show up in our default newsfeed view?
Your interests will be underneath your individual friend lists (you may have to click the “more” button to get to them).
Since these lists are relatively new, some of your major interests might not have a list yet. This means that you can either wait around for someone to compile this list, or you can just make it yourself. Making an Interest List isn’t hard! Let’s walk through it.
Let’s say I want to subscribe to news about my alma mater, Ohio University.
By selecting pages related to the university, the surrounding area, and the specific school within the university that I attended (plus one Ohio University-related joke page), I can compile my very own Interest List. On the next screen, I am given the ability to name my list, as well as indicate whether it should be public, friends only, or private. And then…
Voila! A customized interest list. But wait – there’s one more important thing to show you. Say you come across a page that you’d like to add to an Interest List. How does that work?
In the dropdown menu at the top right of the new Timeline pages, there’s a new top option: Add to Interest Lists. Obviously, we’ll click that…
I can then add this page to the list I already created, or create an entirely new list. The page I happen to be on is a restaurant in the university area, so I’ve added it to my existing list.
In addition to adding pages to Interest Lists, you can add people – regardless of whether or not you’re friends with them. If more Facebook users begin to subscribe to your Interest List (assuming you haven’t made it private), they will be able to see the public updates of everyone you’ve added to the list. Additionally, you are not notified if someone adds you to an Interest List.
What does this mean for you? If you’re posting a lot of things publicly, your updates are now available to a much wider audience. This can be great for exposure, unless you publicly say something embarrassing. As always, think before you Facebook.
March 13, 2012 - Posted by Amy Rose Brown
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Social media changes with the blink of an eye. Sites are redesigned overnight. Larger companies buy smaller companies. Surprise, your Facebook profile is a Timeline now! How’s anyone supposed to write a book about a constantly evolving topic?
That’s easy – you just have to update it!
Our CEO Shama Kabani wrote the first edition of her bestselling book The Zen of Social Media Marketing in 2010. The book’s companion website was continually updated, but it’s 2012 now. Facebook doesn’t look like this anymore:
That (along with many other changes) is why The Zen of Social Media Marketing needed an update! So get ready, get set…
(Drumroll please)
…for the 2012 edition of The Zen of Social Media Marketing! Available in both print and Kindle editions, the updated 2012 edition has brand new content on Google+, Facebook ads, and SEO, as well as updates on developments with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And that’s not even everything!
If you’re struggling to understand the components of a successful social media marketing strategy, we suggest picking up a copy of our resident zen master’s book. After reading it, let us know if you still have any questions about Circles and Timelines and SEO – our experts are here for a reason!
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