There are number of new social tools
(Facebook, FreindFeed, Twitter, You tube) available for businesses to use as part
of their strategy.
Even though many are using these tools, and
not very many succeed. This is primarily because they use it as one way traffic . They use these tools as yet another medium to pass on their messages and
products instead of using it in a way that this tools are meant to be. They are meant to engage with your followers and fans. There are great ways to use social media
tools. Here are some great real life examples of successful use of social media
technology:
Article Source: CBCnews
Canada http://bit.ly/2wYAYN
Some strategies
take more time, or are more industry-specific, than others. Taken together,
though, this collection of techniques and real-world examples constitutes a
powerful online arsenal for companies large and small. Herewith, some
highlights:
Coupon Campaigns
Congratulations
for getting to the end of this sentence. "As an online culture, people are not
reading; they're scanning," says Dell Computer's Stefanie Nelson, voice of
@DellOutlet. "The shorter and more direct your message is, the more successful
you're going to be." Dell tweets links to coupons at Dell Outlet's Facebook
page, which shoppers use during checkout at Dell.com.
This strategy
works for small companies, too: The abbreviated offers are easy to produce — you
don't need an ad agency to write 140 characters. California Tortilla, a chain of
39 causal Mexican restaurants based in Rockville, Md., spread coupon "passwords"
— through its Twitter feed @caltort — that must be spoken at checkout to be
redeemed.
Viral Marketing
In July, in
honor of its 10th birthday, London-based do-it-yourself Web site builder
Moonfruit gave away 11 Macbook Pro computers and 10 iPod Touches. Contestants
had to tweet using the hashtag #moonfruit. (Hashtags collate Twitter responses.)
Nearly a month after the contest ended, traffic to Moonfruit's Web site is up
300 per cent. Sales are up 20 per cent this month, more than paying off the
$15,000 US investment. And the Moonfruit Web site has climbed onto the first
Google page for "free website builder" (it used to be on the fourth).
Word to the
wise, says Moonfruit founder Wendy White: Such campaigns must be courteous and
fit with a company's brand, lest you draw the ire of the Twitter-sphere:
"There's a fine line between annoying people and getting the thumbs
up."
Artful Customer Service
Frank Eliason,
director of digital care at Comcast, uses Twitter to help 200 to 300 subscribers
a day with issues ranging from sporadic Internet service to errant e-mails.
Frank and his team receive direct questions at the @comcastcares account and
search for complaints. Twitter has a built-in search, but it's more efficient to
set up a permanent search on one of the free, third-party Twitter applications,
such as TweetDeck.
Eliason's key
to success: maintaining friendly relationships, not foisting unwanted advice.
"If they want assistance, they'll let me know," he says. Eliason has a 10-person
help desk at his disposal, but small businesses can use Twitter to provide
better customer service, too. Even a little help goes a long way. Focus
Groups
Back in the old
days (last year), companies actually paid customers to solicit their opinions.
There were 3.37 million mentions of Starbucks on Twitter through early May 2009,
and all of that information is available for less than the cost of a frappucino.
"There is a major element of Twitter that's about listening and learning," says
Brad Nelson, the man behind @Starbucks. "Twitter is a leading indicator."
Collecting the information is as simple as searching for references to your
company.
'Twitter is not just a kid
story.'—Chris Brogran, New Marketing
Labs
Morgan
Johnston, manager of Corporate Communications at Jet Blue, abolished a $50 fee
for carry-on bikes after hearing complaints via Twitter. "Think of Twitter as
the canary in the coal mine," says Johnston. "We watch for customers'
discussions about amenities we have, and what they'd like to see made better."
For a more formal approach, lob a simple post asking for feedback and provide a
hashtag to collect the responses.
Poaching Customers
"Twitter is not
just a kid story," says Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs. Brogan
should know: He is one of several Twitter experts advising companies on how to
spy on their competition and to swoop in with a better service or
discount.
Freesource's
Egan describes how to do it: Using TweetDeck, set up a permanent search for all
permutations of your competitor's name, as well as words that convey
dissatisfaction ("sucks" or "hate"). Public replies to those new prospects are
dangerous, as your competition may see them, so the best bet is to follow them
and get followed back, allowing you to send direct messages. Customer
Expectation Management
Bad things
happen — it's how you condition customers to deal with it that counts. Jet Blue
tweets flight delays. In April, when a Stanley Cup broadcast was interrupted,
cable provider Comcast used Twitter to immediately inform its subscribers that
the culprit was a lightning storm, and that transmission would soon be
restored.
Small companies
— like United Linen, a linens and uniform company in Bartlesville, Okla. — can
manage expectations this way, too. When a major snowstorm hit the area,
Marketing Director Scott Townsend used Twitter to let customers know deliveries
would be delayed. "It was a great way to send information to everyone," he says.
"They understood we wouldn't be there, but they wanted to know what our status
was and updates as the situation changed."
Corralling Eyeballs
During last
year's NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the
Orlando Magic, Turner Broadcasting managed to weave social-media feeds into its
home page. Fans accessed the conversation by logging onto Twitter through
TNT.com, and the tweets were also posted on Twitter with links back to TNT.com.
Those forums mean more Web traffic — and thus more advertising revenue. "It's
exciting to sell this to an advertiser," said Liza Hausman, vice president of
marketing for Gigya Socialize, the brains behind the integration
technology.
Vendor Selection
Twitter can
snag customers, but how about suppliers? Crowdspring, an online marketplace that
marries businesses with graphic designers (see "The Creativity Of Crowds "),
used Twitter to build up its stable of contributors — now 12,000 strong
globally.
Business
travelers can apply this same logic: Tweeting that you're about to visit a city
can scare up discount offers from hotels, bus companies and other
travel-services providers.
Conflict Resolution
Wiggly
Wigglers, a Herfordshire, U.K.-based marketer of gardening and farming supplies,
was recently overcharged $10,500 by British Telecom. Five months passed without
restitution.
Finally, Wiggly
owner Heather Gorringe hit the Twitter-sphere, asking if anyone else had had
problems with BT. @BTCare sent Gorringe a message within 30 minutes promising
help; two days later, the bill was amended. "When I phone them up, I'm an
isolated call to deal with, so I'm less important," says Gorringe. "But if I
tweet, and 1,193 people re-tweet, 100,000 people see it within 30
seconds."
Employee Recruitment
Sodexo, a food
services and facilities management company, trains its recruiters on Twitter and
other social media. An automated program sends prospects a direct message
whenever a position opens up, and the messages are opened 30 per cent of the
time.
The trick, says
Arie Ball, vice president of talent acquisition at Sodexo, is to be as personal
and engaging as possible: "People get an insider's view, a sense if this is a
company they want to work for." The company says that using Twitter as a
recruitment tool has helped cut its investment in online job boards by hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
Raising Capital
As in the
physical world, no one likes to be solicited for contributions online. A better
Twitter tack: Don't ask, just inform.
Last
Thanksgiving, Epic Change, a nonprofit that encourages people to tell their
stories to transform communities, launched the Tweetsgiving Web site, with the
help of theKbuzz, a word-of-mouth marketing firm. Tweetsgiving asked people to
tweet what they were grateful for, and compiled the responses at #tweetsgiving,
with a link back to the Tweetsgiving site, where users had the option of
contributing money to build classrooms in Tanzania.
Over the
48-hour campaign, 15,000 people came to the Tweetsgiving site; 360 donated, for
a total of $11,000. "We never asked people to give," says Stacey Monk, founder
of Epic Change. "We got people invested in their own, personalized
way."
Photo credit: Flickr: Uploaded on March 6, 2009 by RadarDDBuk
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