by Todd Hyten

The only 3 social media strategies that matter

I had a journalism professor who had an interesting philosophy about writing news stories: “Explain it to the reader as if you’re explaining it to a friend at a bar.” That’s more clever than it sounds. What my old prof meant was: keep it simple, brief, and highlight the interesting stuff (you don’t want to bore your friends do you?).

This weekend I was explaining social media success stories to a friend in the media. In that short conversation, I summed up the three big strategies of social media marketing. I walked away thinking “I should put that down in writing” … so here it goes.

1. Promotional: I know I know, every social media expert and “guru” out there tells you the opposite. They’re fond of telling all you (dear reader) that you must first appear “human” for anyone to listen to you, and that overselling yourself and talking about yourself is, well, crass. Yeah, well, not quite. The entire point of using social media for business is to spread the word about you, your services, your products. It’s OK to “promote” like hell — so long as you are honest and you focus on what makes your business/service unique. If you can’t do those two things, maybe you’re better off wearing a sandwich board.

2. Listen & Respond: A lot of small businesses think of social media as a one-way medium. A one-way string of messages posted into the interwebs that will bring you riches. Well, get this: if you aren’t listening and responding to other people, you’re wasting your time. If you don’t take the time to “listen” to the social conversation in your area, in your market, among your customers, you will never succeed. The “respond” part is easy if you’re engaged and listening. How you respond is up to you. When social media gurus say “be human” what they really mean is don’t sound like a robot or a carny hawking a fixed game of knock-the-heavily-weighted-milk-bottle-from-the-curved-stool-top. Do you like someone who talks business all the time at a cocktail party? Right. If you start by listening to the social conversation in your market (via social media), you’ll know how to avoid that.

3. Customer Service: This is not the same as “Listen & Respond” – I mean customer service, literally. Someone isn’t happy with a product or service that you or your company provides — you get off your butt and do something about it. Many companies are using their Facebook and Twitter accounts to reach out to customers. Let’s say I have a choice of renting a car from company A or company B. On company B’s web page is the usual service blather “We care” “Our customer is king” blah blah blah. Let’s say company A says the same thing — but has links to Twitter and Facebook. And on Twitter I see a tweet like this: “@john380, sorry about your check-in problem. Call me and let’s see what we can do.”

Guess who’s gonna get my business?

Sound scary? Well, OK. You can always hide. I understand customers love it when a company’s motto is “we don’t do jack for you.”

08.26.10

by Todd Hyten

Social media as customer service: Learn from Zipcar

For many small businesses or individual business users, the idea of using the tools of social media is appealing because they see it as an easy “broadcasting” tool. It gets them on the web even when they don’t have a deep or robust web presence.

Yes, this is true, but the real value of social media, be it Twitter, Facebook, blogging platform, etc., is the ability to interact with customers/clients. In a post last week I showed how you can use Twitter to prospect for clients. But an even simpler way to use social media is to just listen and respond.

A great example of social media as customer service tool is to look at how Zipcar uses their Twitter and Facebook account. Cambridge, MA-based Zipcar is operator of a car -sharing service, mainly in densely populated urban areas. Its emphasis is on self-service (complete with iPhone app) and the ability for members to easily get a car from service lots or easily accessed locations.

I won’t extoll all the virtues of their social media efforts but small businesses can learn the lessons of social-media-as-customer-service from Zipcar: On Twitter (4,600+ followers) it’s obvious that Zipcar is monitoring all mentions of the word “Zipcar” and responding/tweeting to customers who may be less than happy. Or to ones who are. I don’t know what tool they use, but if you can set up a free Hootsuite account or Tweetdeck account, your business can do the same thing by using the search functions. Or you can always use Google Alerts.

Here’s a textbook case of someone who tweeted about not being able to get a Zipcar for a holiday — and a Zipcar manager got in touch with them: Zipcar Does Social Media Right.

Here’s the value of listening: Think how much one good positive customer story like that is worth. Would it be that hard to ask that happy customer to post a review on Yelp? Or to write an email and ask permission to use that “testimonial” on your , blog or in a newsletter?

It’s also obvious that the Twitter team at Zipcar is doing some client prospecting: like my prior post mentioned, they are monitoring tweets for mentions of people with car/transportation issues, and reaching out to them on Twitter to suggest using Zipcar.

Of course they are also, amid the replies to users (happy or not), reminding people of services and promotions. Such as $150 in free driving when a member gets their boss to sign up the company for a business account. And that’s not all they have for promotion either: they just launched a Scvngr promotion that lets members earn points to rewards.

On Facebook, Zipcar is simply doing a stellar job of company promotion, but it is more one-way than their Twitter account. Still … it’s a great Facebook page, complete with videos and deep info on their “info” tab.

The point is: interacting with customers isn’t that hard, but you have to get in the game.

08.23.10

by Todd Hyten

Hotels and social media: Boston hotels that get it right

One of the industries that is over all doing a good job with adopting social media is the hotel industry. Social media is a good fit with hotels: people interact with hotel s a lot and social media lets hotels inform their potential customers about what makes them unique — beyond the hotel room photos and amenities page.

What’s also amazing is how many hotels … don’t do social media. I guess some hotels just don’t want to stand apart from the competition.

A pet peeve mention: I’m guessing that because so many hotel s are corporate designed (they all follow the same template) and social media is new that so many of the social icons are at the bottom of the page. This is a huge mistake. Bug someone at the head office about this – please.

Here are just a few Boston properties that are doing a better-than-average job with social media – and how.

The Charles Hotel: The Charles is on top of its game. Their Facebook page promotes their Farmer’s Market, artists at their Regattabar, Henrietta’s Table (in-hotel restaurant), and even room discounts and a special Yelp promotion. They’re also posting about positive mentions (like on a travel blog). Their Twitter account has more than 4,000 followers (wow) and is chatty – a good mix of replies and posts.

Four Seasons Boston: Another busy Facebook page that does a great job with promotion. Right now on their page they have a link at the top to a video on their wedding planning services. The other posts act like concierge recommendations — and who doesn’t want a recommendation from a Four Seasons concierge? Their Twitter account has more than 1,600 followers. Here too is a mix of promotion and customer service.

The Colonnade: Hooray – social media links at the top of the page! Good use of video on their Facebook page (like video from a recent rooftop party) and pictures too, like images of “Collette” the Colonnade’s rubber duck mascot (good branding strategy). The Colonnade on Twitter is using a strategy I call “local flavor” – they really emphasize local news/events, including local celebrity sightings. About 1,200 followers.

I’ve already mentioned before the good job the Boston Seaport Hotel does, so I won’t rehash that (you can read my post about them here).

There are others that are doing a good job with Twitter but fall down on Facebook — or do well on Facebook but fall down on Twitter. These days, with customers’ eyeballs everywhere, it doesn’t look good to fail in execution on one or the other when so many others do both well.

Now, about not blogging … but that’s another story.