Saturday, 8 September 2012

Social Media Marketing: Lessons for Success Part 1

1. Be Transparent. Social media is not starting but following a trend.  Social media is known for its transparency and speed, but that also means that your mistakes can be very visible. Being up front is a good way to start recovering, says Harvard Business Review.
 
One of the key benefits of social media is that your messages can reach more people faster. But this also means that your mistakes can too.
Taco Bell recently combated a traditional attack (a class action lawsuit charging that the restaurant's meat isn't really beef) with new media techniques.  On Twitter, Taco Bell linked to comedian Steven Colbert's musings on the controversy; on Facebook, they offered free tacos, encouraging customers to make up their own minds about the beef in question.   And while overall sales have taken a hit, its seven million plus loyal Facebook "friends" are as enthusiastic as ever — and the lawsuit was dropped.
So what have we learned?   Success is no longer about fancy packaging and carefully controlled messages.  When everyone can see what you're doing, the most essential values are transparency, honesty and credibility.  You win by matching your image with reality, acting with integrity, and sincerely apologizing when you're wrong. 
2. Customer Service Response Time: Act quickly to fix disgruntled customers.  In 2009, Domino's was blindsided by a YouTube video showing two disgruntled employees contaminating the food they were about to deliver. It was a PR nightmare for the company, until they fired back through social media — uploading their own YouTube video explaining what they were doing to fix the situation and creating a special Twitter account to specifically handle customers concerns about this issue.   Their quick and appropriate responses directly to the people most concerned allowed Domino's  to diffuse what could have been a catastrophic event.

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