You Suck, and I'm Telling Everyone; Dealing with negative comments on social media

Unhappy & Upset Customers on Social Media

  It happens. No matter how good customer service or processes are, sometimes bad things happen to good customers. If they take to Social Media and complain, how do you deal with this?

Knowledge of the problem

First of all, if you don't know about the problem, you can't respond. Set up Google news alerts and searches for your brand and any relevant words.  Set up searches on Twitter and keep a close eye on your Facebook Page for any customer complaints. If your industry has review sites or message boards, sign up to those and keep an eye for any relevant mentions. There are also software packages that will help you monitor for online sentiment around your brand - expensive, but you may consider these if your audience is a big one and your market is widespread.

Speed of response

Deal with any issues quickly.  If the customer needs a more in depth response, let them know that you are looking into the issue and will get back to them as quickly as you can, and supply them with relevant and frequent updates. Do this via email - you need to get the conversation offline as soon as you can so that you have greater flexibility and can talk to them properly - 140 characters is not always enough!

Personalise your response

Use your customer's name and tell them your name.  That way your customer knows who they are dealing with and will automatically feel better - a real person is really listening!

Use a friendly tone

Empathising with your customer, and talking back to them in the same tone that they have used with you, keeps the exchanges friendly.  Normal business tone may not translate well to Social Media so you can use a more informal tone.

Apologise

Some apologies can come across as more of a "it's your fault". "I'm sorry that this has happened and it was unacceptable" means more than "I'm sorry that you feel this way".

Fix It

Tell your customer how you are going to fix it, and when. Onlookers will see all the exchanges on Social Media, and will see how you deal with customer service issues. It's a great opportunity to turn a negative around. Do you know when your customers are talking about you online? Have you had a customer service issue play out on the Social Media platforms recently? How did you deal with this?

Are you LinkedIN or LockedOUT?? Statistics on UK LinkedIn - Essential Business Social Media Tools

LinkedIn and Social Media Strategy

Do you use LinkedIn to sell your business to professional contacts? Out of the two-thirds of UK business professionals who use LinkedIn, only a third of those use LinkedIn as a tool to grow their business.  82% of UK LinkedIn users expect that LinkedIn will be used as a professional tool, so it's  a suitable and engaged audience if you are looking at growing your business through LinkedIn. LinkedIn is now no longer solely a place for a job hunting exercise - although 30% of LinkedIn users still use it for that reason, it's a place where people go to network and keep in touch with business, business news and sector trends. With 8 million UK users, it cannot be ignored as a Social Media site for business.

Getting the most out of LinkedIn

• Say cheese. Make sure that your LinkedIn profile picture is up to date and most importantly that you have a picture of yourself rather than a company logo.
• Connect. If you have a business card then make that connection. Fill in some details in the connection box to personalise the connection request.
• Recommend. Write recommendations on LinkedIn for contacts and don't be shy about asking for recommendations either. Don't leave your recommendations languishing either - show them off front and centre by adding excerpts to your LinkedIn summary section where casual visitors to your profile can't fail to see it
• Company page. Add a Company page to your LinkedIn profile and keep it up to date with blog entries, pictures, videos and news. It will go straight to your subscribers' news feeds so is a good way to keep contacts abreast of what is happening in your company.
• Comment in Groups As with all Social Media, it doesn't do to be only transmitting - no matter how great and interesting your content is!  Join some groups and have a look around.  Like and share others' posts and content.

What benefits could your business gain from LinkedIn? Do you need help using LinkedIn - is this something you would welcome?

Social Media ROI - are you getting value for money? How do you know it's working?

What do companies want from their Social Media Marketing spend? Basically they want to see 2 things. 1. That it's working - and for most that means making a valid contribution to the sales & marketing effort of the business 2. That they're getting value for the money they are spending Social Media Managers & Consultants  need to be able to discuss the value of potential Social Media Activity with their clients - and then they need to be able to show it! Social Media Return On Investment cannot just be measured in monetary terms - it's not that simple anymore. Customers don't buy as a result of one point of contact. It's more than likely that any buying decision has been pre-empted by research by your customer, both online and offline and so it makes sense to boost your profile in both arenas. They can't buy from you if they can't find you, right? Multiple touches coming in from everywhere that the customer hangs out (both physically & virtually) will have the biggest effect on your bottom line. And before you get all bogged down by ROI and social media, consider this... "What's the ROI of a handshake?" That's a quote from Charlotte Li and it's a cracker. We don't weigh up every single thing we do with our clients in terms of ROI - we instinctively know it's a good move to shake hands and that the relationship will be strengthened by it. Not sure the time you spend doing it will show specific measurable returns though! Good news is that it IS easier to measure the effect of your social media marketing... When you review your social media marketing activity, you need a whole picture of what's happening and why. What sort of measures can you use to assess the success of your campaigns? 1. Completed Transactions:- Sales or orders that can been directly attributed to leads generated by Social Media Activity - social media marketing in its purest form and easy enough to track using short URLs, trackable numbers, download vouchers & reports from social platforms etc. 2. Contact Generated:- This is not just about the sales leads - leads for other relationships that can help your business i.e. sponsorship requests, joint venture offers, strategic alliances etc that will result in growth of your business. 3. Customer Service Monitoring and Reporting:- How many customer service issues have you dealt with online? How many people have asked questions on your social profiles that you have either directed to the correct page of the website or solved over the social platform itself? This has saved you real time and money in handling the problem on the phone or within your business at a cost. We handle many client enquiries & questions for many of our clients within Twitter & Facebook for instance - they never have to go to the client, saving the client time & resource. Similarly, those that do need to be referred on are dealt with more quickly and efficiently as there is no backlog of minor issues. Better customer experience! 4. Raised Awareness of the Company:- Just by having a well organised, professional & constant presence on your Social Media platforms means that the awareness of your company will be raised. That's a bit Flaky though isn't it? Exactly how has the awareness been raised? What increase in awareness has occurred since last month for instance? You can use metrics such as post views, blog comments, unique page views, post feedback, tweet click throughs, tweet RTs, demographics, regional engagement and plenty of other gauges to measure awareness. It's about understanding the path to purchase that your client takes - and ensuring you appear when you need to in the right places as they progress down that path. 5. Reputation Management:- What people are saying about your business when you're not in the room! 6.  SEO Improvements & Benefits:- The best organic SEO is social media activity and we have tons of case studies to show that - check your keywords regularly & monitor your progress on a monthly basis. Google the keyword and see where your Social platforms appear in the search results. For all the websites we work on we ensure that social media profiles are integrated so that fresh content is regularly appearing on all online assets - it's a key part of your digital marketing strategy. 7. Job Applications:- Great people are the life blood of every business - the more active you are and the more successful you are at raising your company profile, the more applications and CVs you will receive through the Social Media channels. What areas would you like help with in terms of understanding how your social media marketing is working for you?  

Make sure you post a profile picture on your Social Media Page!

What do people look at on your Facebook Page?

  You may spend ages crafting that tweet, putting together that Facebook Wall Post or thinking up a pithy LinkedIn update, but according to a recent study by EyeTrackShop and Mashable, profile photos matter.

• Profile pictures matter. The site feature that attracted most attention on Klout, Facebook and StumbleUpon was the profile photo.
• Job title garnered more attention than profile photo on LinkedIn. In fact, it got more attention than anything else on the page.
• Who you know gets noticed. Even if for no better reason than their placement on the page, people do look at those little thumbnails of friends that appear on many social profiles. You can see this in the data from the Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Klout profiles.
• Content on top wins. The further something is down a page, the fewer number of people look at it. This was true on both content-focused profiles such as Pinterest and Digg as well as socially focused profiles such as Facebook. On the Twitter and YouTube profiles, the effect was less extreme.

Have a look at the photo slideshow on the original article to see where people look. It may help you decide how to glitz up your Social Media pages.

Social Media Statistics 2011 - social media infographic with statistics to make you think!

2011 - the year social media moved into mainstream consciousness in the UK. Thanks to this infographic from Dream Systems Media we can see the fascinating picture of what goes on online. In 2011

• There were 100 million active Twitter accounts
• 200 million accounts were added to Facebook
• 4.8 billion people have a mobile phone while only 4.2 billion people have a toothbrush
• 65% of adult internet users have a Social Media Account

It's a huge virtual world, with a lot going on in it!

There's an App for that... How mobile is your website?

Is your website optimised for Mobile Web and Apps?

Holy Moly, owned by Endemol and one of the largest entertainment news and gossip websites in the UK, recently tweeted that they had a record month of 14million page impressions in 30 days – with 40% of those on mobile devices. That's an amazing statistic and shows that more and more people are using smartphones and tablets to access websites. This is a large section of potential readers and customers and your website should be optimised for mobile browsing. Mobile Apps are also becoming more popular and are an excellent tool for business - the easier you make it for your customer the more likely they are to deal with you, and an app bringing you right to your customers' smartphone or tablet bearing your name and logo is a powerful tool! Saucy Horse Social Media are able to help you mobilise your business with a Mobile Website and Mobile Apps. Could mobilisation help your marketing and increase your reach? The figures say it can - are you missing out?

What are your Social Media Guidelines? Creating a Social Media Policy

Setting Social Media Guidelines for Business

  It looks like Ford Motor Company have something on common with the BBC on Social Media Guidelines - brevity.  The core principles of the Ford Social Media Guidelines can be boiled down to five words

• Honesty
• Clarity
• Respect
• Judgement
• Awareness

Creating a Social Media Policy

Different words to the BBC's "Don't do anything stupid" policy, but with the same effect.  Have you drafted your Social Media Policy for your business?

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Schedule : Advice on how to manage social media marketing

John D Leavy of InPlainSite marketing has written a great article over on Entrepreneur.com Here's a summary (and fleshing out in some cases) of the points I find particularly relevant to business owners looking at Social Media Marketing. Firstly, why are you using (or considering using) social media in your business marketing? Is it purely to smooth your ego? Are you keen to collect followers and "friends" just so you can brag about the numbers? Does it follow then that you are just a little dismissive of the need to engage? Does the actual process of listening to what's going on and then finding a way to make a valid and valuable contribution seem just a little bit too touchy feely for you, and, if you're honest, does it seem unnecessary? These are danger signs -  connecting to, following or friending just anyone who will have you, not only dilutes your influence (and there are influence police watching your every move - both real people and monitoring software, if you care about those things) - it dilutes your standing among those in your audience who might really be interested in what you say. Or are you one of those who is joining in because you feel you must. You've spent  a few days setting up your profiles - had a play - but other things are calling you. Your social media profiles are soon abandoned! John D Leavy of InPlainsite Marketing makes a solid point: "The real motivation for any business social networker is connection: You should want to connect with like-minded people who can help your business and whose businesses you can assist. You want to add to the conversation, and not come across as desperate, spammy or a waste of time. If you develop a bad reputation in these communities, it will be hard to shake off." Never a truer word... and, as he elaborates, making such strong, real connections takes time, effort and thoughtfulness. And this is the art of good, meaningful social media activity. If you never return to your profiles, you and your business will be forgotten (best case) or seen as unconnected, clueless or lazy (worst case). If you post too much, people might consider you a pest and stop following you. So how do you get this right?

Some social media managers are the worst of both worlds: They don’t post to their blog or for weeks at a time. They don’t reply to direct messages sent to them on Twitter or respond to posts made on the Facebook Business Page . Then, without any warning, they’re back in the room! Was the organisation’s social networking person out of the country? More likely that they were just distracted, disorganised, sidetracked or overworked. With this sort of approach to social media marketing, the business is not committed. No strategy. Its influence will never be felt. Its competitors will jump in and fill the void for all the customers and potential customers of that service or product.

Again, as John D Leavy says, "Whether your company is a one-person business or a large organisation, your commitment to social networking should be consistent, compelling and informative. The social networking community is a fragile, collaborative ecosystem. Make the commitment. People will follow a trail of dependable, exciting, instructive news. But once the trail goes cold, they’re gone and likely never to return." On the other hand, there's no value in being the social media nutter who cannot bear to be offline for longer than 10 seconds. You know who we’re talking about! These people can answer emails on their laptops, watch their Twitter stream on their ipads, whilst posting on Facebook from their iPhones, and uploading photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube ;-) They are incapable of having a conversation that is not online - eyes averted every 5 seconds from your face to some screen or other... good technology gone bad! I am still amazed at the amount of time people have for the social media platforms at the weekends - for me, that's family time. The key is to strike a balance somewhere in the middle. You don't have to be invisible - and you don't have to be irritating! Develop a social networking schedule that does not run your life but does keep you accountable. The goal should be consistency. Choose a schedule and stay the course for at least six months. As you find success, you can adapt & develop - initially this may well be better done by freelance social media manager working towards a handover to your internal staff when the time is right. The sample social networking agenda below can be used as a springboard for designing one that suits your schedule and the social networks you've identified as relevant to your market. Twice Daily in the Morning and Afternoon

• Check Twitter. Respond when necessary. Follow the @replies that make sense. Do this more often if you can but research the times when your audience are most likely to be there.
• Check LinkedIn. Reply to emails and comments when appropriate. Answer Invitations to connect.
• Scan Twitter followers for relevant conversations to join. Do this more often if you can but research the times when your audience are most likely to be there.
• Check your Facebook Page for questions and respond when necessary.
• Scan Google Alerts for brand and company mentions. Respond as appropriate.
• Check competitor activity and monitor other alerts you've set up.
• Check alerts for blog opportunities and write a blog if the opportunity to connect current events to your business arrises.

Weekly or on Weekends

• Build Twitter Lists to better organize ongoing discussions and special interest groups. Set up saved searches to find out if people are talking about you or your company, or subjects of interest to your business.
• Scan LinkedIn questions from network connections and respond when appropriate.
• Catch up on LinkedIn discussions. Add to discussion when appropriate.
• Send LinkedIn invitations to connect with clients when beginning a new assignment.
• Ask for LinkedIn recommendation after successfully completing a project or engagement.
• Add new content to Facebook like videos or photos.
• Add new video to YouTube
• Think of ways to repurpose this content and energy to reach a larger audience.
• Keep an eye open for new social networking venues, tools, and functionality that will make the social networking experience more enjoyable and easier for your customers to find and connect with you.
• Identify new social networking influencers and build relationships where appropriate.

Through the Week

• Mondays: Schedule tweets through HootSuite to go at regular intervals - you will have to be on Twitter around those times to check for responses and engagement.
• Join one hot trend conversation on Twitter, if appropriate.
• Daily: Respond to blog comments.
• Fridays: Check traffic at your blog or website. Tracl the links you've used - what works and what doesn't? Adapt next week's content on that basis!

Obviously, your daily social networking to-do list needs to fit in to your available time and commitments. Just be sure to make the schedule workable. If it’s not working for you, change it. Keep making modifications until it works for you.  And if you can't find the time to do the suggested activities, consider using a social media manager who will make this happen for you - either by recruiting or using an agency. Our clients are paying a fraction of the cost of a full time employee by making the most of outsourced social media management. It's an option open to you, if you want to use professional marketing people who understand how to make the most of the social media platforms.

Are you attending a business event? Liveblog it!

Liveblog your way through an event

  Most Social Media users, when attending an event and with something to say, will tweet.  Whether it's a conference,  product launch, trade show or even a TV programme "live tweeting" is becoming more popular.  Tweeting  through the event using a hashtag may encourage retweets and is great for getting your message out, but may cause unfollowing by people who have no interest in the event. This is where "live-blogging" comes to the fore. Live blogging is a series of short updates, constantly updated throughout the event.

• Choose your platform. Cover It Live, Scribble Live and WordPress PlugIns all offer different features which can be of use.
• Who will liveblog Some software offers multiple users a chance to post, to create a "panel" feel
• Choose a hashtag Some liveblogs allow access to tweets containing a certain hashtag. Choose a short hashtag to run alongside the main event one and these will appear in your liveblog updates
• Curate When the event is running, your most recent updates will appear first; however when the event finishes the software will flip and people reading will see all updates in correct chronological order. A liveblog is a good way to keep a record of what happened at an event, trade show or launch.

Here is how the Liverpool Echo used liveblogging to cover the Everton signing of a new deal for Maroune Fellaini. This liveblog is a mini-history of the event.  It contains reporting, comments from readers, links, video and pictures.  A great example of just what liveblogging can do.

Have you ever liveblogged? Is it something that you think you could do to provide fresh content to your readers?

Do you want to know what your customers are thinking - Poll them and ask!

Blogs To Conduct Market Research

We all love to be asked our opinions.  As a business, we like to know (or we should do...) what our customers and users of our products and services think. Have you thought of using a simple poll on your blog or website to gather information or opinions? An online poll can be added in seconds from sites such as PollDaddy or Survey Monkey for example. Most online poll sites offer polls which are easy to customise in design and layout. You can show the results as people vote - or hold off for a big reveal. If you set up a poll you could then promote it across all your Social Network Platforms and then you are generating new, fresh content there. You can use polls for marketing - find out what your customers think of a new product or what they thought of the products or services that they have had from you. You can use them as a way to build up a community feel for your site - what do your readers think of an issue of the day? You can use them to create a buzz around your site with an end of year awards poll. Use your imagination - you could really have fun with them! How would you use and promote a poll on your blog or website and how could you make the feedback valuable to your business?

Getting Noticed on Social Media - Share it about & improve your SEO!

Enjoyed something online? Click that social media share button!

  One of the greatest things about Social Media is how easy it is to share great content from other sources - and therefore how easy it is for you to get your content shared if you appeal to your viewers and readers on a level that makes them want to spread the love! On all the major social media platforms there is a lovely little share/reblog/retweet button just crying out to be used, so don't be shy - click away! On most blogs, like this one, there will be a set of share buttons as well so it is easy to spread the word. There are two main benefits to this

• You are still providing great content to your readers and followers.
• You widen your circle of influence by becoming known to the original content provider.

If you are sharing your own content across different Social Media platforms, - for example, letting people on Twitter know that you have updated your blog via the share buttons on your blog.  It will improve your reach, your visibility and  improve your SEO

Marketing - the problem is not getting the leads, it's forming the relationships...

“As marketers, we usually don’t approach our customers like we would approach a potential spouse, do we? No, we’re more like a drunken frat boy at his first freshman mixer. Most marketers approach customers and prospects more intent on the one-night stand than the long-term relationship. We know it’s wrong… but we do it anyway.”  Absolutely superb article by Kyle Lacy at KyleLacy.com - pithy, concise and very much the world as I see it, when it comes to marketing... “At the end of the day, people associate themselves with other people that they like. Your constituents want to like you and have a relationship with you.”  What are you doing to ensure that's the case for your business? How carefully are you thinking about social media in the mix when it comes to finding your prospects and potential customers - and then actually ensuring they find out enough about you to decide whether they like you? Like you enough to do business with you? It's how it is now... there is no way round this. Our weekly social media tips will help you begin to formulate a plan...

Why your business should have a blog

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Do you want to gain visibility for your business? Do you want to be found on the internet when people search for the product or service you offer?

If the answer is no - then I realise you are shutting up shop and going off to sail round the world...

If the answer is yes, then of course you understand that if your business is not coming up high in online search results in Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other search engines, then you need to do something to make that happen!

Writing and maintaining a business blog is the easiest, most organic way to keep your business in front of your potential customers. By updating your blog (and therefore your website) with new and fresh content, the search engines will be very pleased with you. Why? Because you are improving their customers' user experience) - so you get the brownie points and and they will reward your business with more visibility and higher rankings.

Interestingly, the best way at the moment to get your business up in the rankings is to pursue an active social media communication and customer relationship policy. Every day now, results show that the search engines consider the Social Media Platforms and regularly updated blogs to be the best place to get fresh and up-to-date information on whatever it is your are looking for and that's why they return real-time results from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube for instance, over and above a static website.

Like Brian Halligan, whose article I summarise below, I constantly encounter what he calls the "blog-reluctance" of many small & medium sized businesses. I hear things like “I don’t have time to blog”, “blogging doesn’t make sense in my industry”, and sometimes (even now!) “what the heck is a blog?”

Well, the good news is that here at Saucy Horse we LOVE blogs, and not only do we love writing our own, we love helping our clients write theirs & then get them out there to their audiences too.

The reality is if your company provides products or services in any sector, you should be blogging.

Of course, the overall return on investment on a blog will vary from business to business. But there are 6 fundamental benefits to corporate & business blogging that Brian mentions:

1) Gain Visibility as a Thought Leader
Every post on your blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership, personality, integrity, humour (perhaps - and only if you're comfortable with that), and professional insights. You don’t have to refute one of Einstein’s theories to get respect. For example, a summary of recent trends in your industry, or a reaction to a recent news article can be extremely effective blog posts. At Saucy Horse, our mission is to position you as an expert in your field. Blogs, video and creative social media strategies are how we do that.

2) Engage Customers in a Dialogue
Your blog must give your readers the option to comment on each article. The readers who comment on your blog may be sales leads, or they may just challenge or support your views. Either way, comments beget comments, and you will soon be at the center of an industry-relevant dialogue with customers and partners.

3) Every Blog Article is an SEOOpportunity
The much-discussed “long tail” of search refers to highly specialized, low-traffic search terms that represent a significant amount of total searches. Translation: lots and lots of people are searching online for lots and lots of random things. You can’t realistically optimize your site for every long tail search term, but you can certainly write blog posts targeting niche keyword phrases that are likely to draw highly qualified prospects. If that all sounds like jargon - it breaks down further as blogs are a brilliant way to do some really great SEO stuff that will really help your website.

4) Blogs Are Link Bait
Very few websites or bloggers will link to the “products and services” page on a corporate website. People don’t link to corporate advertisements. On the other hand, a good blog article - perhaps an industry-specific insight or a thoughtful critique - will be attractive content for others to link to and send traffic your way. Blog articles garner links because they are interesting, informative, and not overly corporate or sales-focused. The benefit to you is that more links means better search engine rankings and more site traffic, which translates into more sales leads. See? Easy!

5) Humanize Your Brand
Blogs offer an opportunity for a company to present its insightful, helpful, thoughtful side. Through a blog, prospects will get a sense of your company’s people, culture, and vision. Blogs are an opportunity to provide a less antiseptic view of your company that is more personal and less “corporate”. Blogs can humanize your brand.

6) In Google, Fresher Content = Better Website
Google will periodically crawl websites looking for new and updated content. Blogs are exactly that (as long as you are keeping them updated!)

You can read the full article here

For me, in the social media maelstrom that we find ourselves in, the blog is where it starts - from here you can start to do some wonderful things for your business, for, as we know, content is king! My advice to those of you who feel a little overwhelmed about where you should go with your social media strategy is to start with the business blog. If you need any help or advice please just come and ask.

Are you blogging yet? What tips do you have for business blogging? Share one with us below & fill in the comments box :-)

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Business needs People & Appointments - Entrepreneur Brad Burton talks business blind dates

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Brad Burton, the entrepreneur behind 4Networking, talks about his business on BBC2's Working Lunch.

What networking groups do you belong to and what groups do you recommend? Where do you get most success - what do you actually define as networking success?
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Don't be a Powerpoint Time Vampire - make your presentations Video snappy!

Tweet“I hate being presented to. Long, windy overhead presentations bore me to tears and I switch off when they’re on. I don’t need to hear all the underlying research that lead to the conclusion presented on the final slide. What I need to hear is your recommendation and why you think it is the best course of action for us. That’s it. If I need to ask questions about the data or the supporting evidence then I’ll ask them. But if I don’t then leave it out. I need the process to be efficient and meaningful. I don’t want to waste time – yours or mine. So get to the point and make it snappy”.

What's not to love about any of that?? One little tip I'll add - use video! We already know how much more interesting your website is when you use video clips or sequences on it. The video SEO benefits are well documented if you care to Google! In the same way, a simple slide show can be revolutionised by using the images in a video sequence format at the outset. You can grab everyone's attention with a tailor made presentation showing your subject or perhaps a brief overview of who you or your business are by kicking off your session with an audio visual wake up and pay attention call! Read the full article by the Bull on making powerpoint business presentations effective here

Are you using video on your website yet? If not, why not? What needs to happen for you to get a video commissioned for your business?

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