The Opportunity of Listening and Responding

A brand is no longer in charge of its own destiny. Channels controlled solely by the brand, like TV, radio and print, are the minority. New social platforms controlled by consumers are coming out day after day, and consumers are using these channels to share their positive and negative views of the brands they interact with.

This is not a new concept, but many brands are missing the opportunity and potential threat of this new relationship.

Consumers Want a Response

A study from American Express found that 50% of consumers use social media for customer service to get an actual response from a company about an issue. Nearly half do so to praise a company and share information about an experience with an audience. Users also use social media to vent frustration about a poor experience and even ask others how to get better experiences.

Consumers are seeking our help.

These quests for help shape brands’ online perceptions. They live on social networks. They pop up in organic search results, and more importantly, negative consumer experiences left unanswered mean more than just one lost customer. They could mean many, many more.

Many brands still don’t get it.

What Are We Missing?

Creating a branded social presence also creates an unspoken contract with customers that says, “We’re here to speak with you and to listen.” Too many brands focus on the ‘speaking to’ part of that contract.

The reasons for this are many. They may be spread too thin across multiple platforms and can’t deliver a deep experience on a single one. Or they haven’t made responding to consumers a priority.

A study from Satmetrix found that nearly half of companies do not respond to consumers. They don’t have a plan to respond to consumers, and many don’t have a plan to track conversations. These conversations are opportunities to not only retain customers who might be lost but also show their social connections the brand’s commitment to its customers.

Get On the Same Page

Consumers and brands are on different pages. Consumers expect help, and many brands aren’t prepared to provide it. This means the brands that do deliver will stand out, and the ones that don’t will be left behind. 

Listening to Act on Symptoms

Social media monitoring is an invaluable first step for brands entering the social media space as well as a critical aspect for brands’ ongoing social media marketing efforts even if they’ve been leveraging social media for some time.

The reason is because simply listening tells marketers so much. It tells us who is talking about a the brand, its competitors and the category. We can also infer the motivations behind the conversation. Are they happy or mad? Are they looking for information or providing it?

Just listening makes us smarter marketers, and there are always insights, even if there isn’t a lot of conversation out there--it tells you that you need to do something to start conversations. The more a marketer knows about the ecosystem a brand finds itself in, the more effective execution.

At the end of the day, it’s all about execution.

Online Conversation Is a Symptom of Offline Interaction

Nine in 10 word of mouth conversations occur offline, so marketers should be aware that what they see online is only a symptom of a larger conversation occurring offline. Customer dissatisfaction with product quality being discussed online is probably only a piece of a much larger conversation that a brand cannot see and needs to address. Online complaints about the friendliness of store associates indicates a need to address issues at the store-level.

A business cannot respond to the needs of its customers unless it first understands what those needs are, and social media listening is a start. However, that shouldn’t be where it stops.

Listening Is Only the Beginning

Listening is fantastic and should be a cornerstone of any marketing plan, but listening without a plan to act (maybe not right away, but soon) can quickly turn into a waste of time. Listening allows marketers to stay ahead of the curve, identify threats and address customer needs quickly and efficiently.

Have a plan in place to turn online findings into organizational action. Some insights will be easier to mobilize than others. Execute the short-term wins and develop a plan to leverage the long-term opportunities. When you do, don’t forget to let your online customers know that you’ve been listening and have taken action on their behalf. They’ll thank you for it.

Monitoring to Inform Content Strategy

Social media monitoring is becoming less of a question and more of a necessity for businesses. Whether it’s using a combination of free DIY solutions like Google Alerts and Twitter Search or more enterprise-level solutions like Sysomos or Radian6, brands accept that they need the right tools to listen effectively. But the most common reasons for investing include threat tracking and opportunity spotting, but the benefits go deeper than that.

The ability to tap consumer conversations at any given moment gives brands an opportunity to inform what they’re doing and make it better. This plays out most of all through the use of content.

Social media monitoring allows brands to do a couple things: 

1. Identify conversation whitespace and opportunities to provide information consumers are seeking
2. Evaluate the “virality” of brand-generated content for optimization purposes

Identify Conversation Whitespace

Marketers can use a combination of tools to track where relevant conversations are taking place related to their brands, competitors or categories. Consumers turn to social media for information.

What questions are people asking? Is this existing information accurate? Can we do better? Content allows brands to deliver ongoing value to social customers. Fulfilling a need that has been identified makes a brand presence that much stronger.

Looking at what isn’t being said is just as important as evaluating what is. It can inform a brand’s approach to content generation and direct what needs to be created next.

Evaluate “Virality”

Marketers should absolutely be identifying how original content spreads (virality) and who is spreading it, but these findings can also inform how the brand moves forward.

Let’s be clear “virality” doesn’t mean the same thing as a “viral” video. Virality has to do with how content spreads.

Virality findings can include: 

• The channels people are distributing the information to (Does it go/stay on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, etc.?)
• What form of content spreads best (e.g., text, video, photos)
• What type of customer consumes certain types of content (Is there an opportunity to invest more in talking to a different group?)

Monitoring delivers far too many insights to be limited to listening. It can make what a brand is already doing better by helping to develop the right content in the right form for the right audience. 

Focus on Micro for Macro Results

Social media marketing is about creating relationships with a brand's customers (I know, that's nothing new), but why is this so important? Well, too often we're going after the mass numbers, the macro, instead of going after what can actually raise the needle. Going after mass numbers is important, but if that's the objective, traditional media channels are the best way to achieve results.

Real social media marketing success occurs when the focus is on the micro level, building and establishing real relationships with customers. Establishing relationships builds trust between the consumer and the brand, which opens the door for the brand to provide the reasons and means for the customer to share. That's where the payoff results because when they talk about a brand, their social connections listen.

eMarketer notes that brand recommendations from friends and fellow community members carry a lot more weight in influencing consumer decisions than messages from brands, themselves.

Micro Interactions

Micro is not easy to do. It can be meticulous, and results aren't necessarily fast. Still, here are a few simple ways to get started.

• Monitor and Respond. Listen to online conversations about your brand and category to identify opportunities to reach out to consumers. Offer customer service to those in need, answer questions and reward advocates with special deals, offers and even, sneak-peak information.
• Bring Serendipitous Joy. Don't be afraid to surprise advocates. Single people out, and offer to do something for them. That's what people in relationships do. They help each other. This doesn't have to be public, and there shouldn't be a requirement from the recipient to take any action. Be nice to them, and remember, what goes around, comes around.
• Respond to Your Advocates. Too often brand channels (e.g., Facebook Pages, Twitter profiles, etc.) receive questions and comments from customers that go unaddressed. They are opening the door for a brand to enter their lives at a deeper level. Respond and prove that you're there for them. If the opportunity is there to encourage them to share more, do so.

The Set-Up to Win at the Micro Level
Only the most nimble of brands are able to create real relationships with consumers, so it's important to set the organization up for success.

1. Be internally aligned on who is responsible for social media.
2. Establish a workflow to identify how consumers will be identified on an individual level, how the response process will work and who will be needed to address questions and comments.
3. Empower those representing the brand with enough freedom to take actions to address customer complaints and reward advocates without too much red tape and hesitation.

Relationships, trust and advocacy--all the pieces build upon each other, while starting at the micro level.

Live for the Moment: Communicate in Real-Time

Source: stock.xchngEffectively using social media for business requires planning. Lots and lots of planning. It's absolutely necessary to do the prep work, align the resources, plan to produce content, produce the content and align on workflow. With all of the careful prep work and ongoing maintenance, it’s really easy to catch yourself being too careful and process oriented. 

Don’t get me wrong. Process is integral to protecting yourself and your business, but you have to be careful not to let it slow you down when there’s an opportunity to market in real-time.

There’s Opportunity in Speed

News, information, memes and everything else moves super fast. The zeitgeist of the social media world changes so fast that if you weren’t online for an hour, something may have passed you by.

The always-on, constant flow of information allows marketers to be a part of brand- and category-related conversation at a moment’s notice like never before. With social media, marketers don’t have to plan commercials, test copy, look at indexes and hold focus groups. They can be flexible and leverage content as it happens.

Follow Your Plan, While Living in Real-Time

Pretty much everyday, we know what’s ahead of us and we go through the day, but unexpected things come up. When those happen we still stick to our plan, but we adapt as necessary. That’s how marketers need to live in real-time--stick with your social media plan but be aware of what’s happening at any given moment to tap opportunities.

Principles to Live in Real-Time

1. Remember your content isn’t set in stone. If an opportunity arises, take it. See if the content you've prepared is time sensitive. If it isn’t, save it for later, and seize the opportunity at your fingertips.
2. Monitor for opportunities (and threats). Follow the news, use Twitter Search and be aware of what is happening at any given moment. You can look for industry and category-related information worth sharing, but also monitor for mentions of your brand. When consumers speak, good or bad, about you, that may be an opportunity to respond and support them in real-time.
3. Avoid the pitfalls. Responding fast can lead to problems. Maybe someone will say something they shouldn’t, or the lack of oversight will degrade quality. Prepare! Set a policy for those engaging on behalf of the brand that identifies what topics are okay to share and respond to, what to watch out for and how to move quickly and wisely.

2011 Predictions: Maturing Innovation

It’s hard to believe (at least for me), but 2010 is wrapping up. The year has been full of surprises, innovation and changes that will impact marketing in the social space in 2011. What can we expect? I think the biggest change will be marketers' approach to social media, maturing as they learn what it is capable of and what it isn't, while consumers adopt and adapt to the social media world.

It's impossible to predict for sure, but with November already here, it's not too difficult to look back at 2010 to look forward to 2011. So, here’s my start to a list of 2011 predictions:

Facebook Pages Step Up Even More. In 2010 Facebook hit 500 million users. It’s massive and very active user base have rightfully earned it the attention of marketers. 

Facebook Pages are going to be how brands move into interacting with consumers in 2011. Micro-sites will become Facebook tabs (not stand-alone sites), in conjunction with the Wall to generate ongoing engagement.

Listening to Learn and Listening to Engage. There’s a ton of conversation out there, and if it’s not about your brand specifically, there’s certainly conversation about your competitors or category that can lead to incredible insights. 

2011 will continue 2010’s trend of marketers listening to online conversation to learn who is talking, what they’re saying, where they’re saying  it and how they’re communicating to extract insights.

More marketers will see that the real-time nature of social media allows them to monitor for crises, identify advocates and build relationships, while making it one of the first and primary methods for consumer communication.

Shopping Goes Social and Mobile. Consumers will continue to make shopping a social experience in 2011. Whether it’s making a purchase on Facebook, reading and writing online product reviews or working together for a deal on Groupon, consumers will continue to work together to make purchases.

In addition, as phones continue to cost less, they will become a primary mechanism for making purchases of physical goods. Right now, people have no problem paying for digital goods, such as apps, from their mobile devices, but soon services like Square will make payments card-free.

Deeper Social Integration. Marketers will continue to direct customers to their social platforms through their various touchpoints, but 2011 will bring an increase in brands that integrate content from their social platforms, including adding open-graph functionality to Web sites, adding real-time Twitter feeds and sharing content via YouTube.

Location, Location, Location Matters. 2010 made checking-in common terminology, and 2011 will make it mainstream behavior. Marketers will continue to look at Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla and other geo-location services to deliver contextually-relevant marketing.

Blogging Grows and Becomes Easier. Twitter, Tumblr and Posterous are a few of the platforms that make sharing interesting information with some context incredibly easy. Blogging no longer has to be time-intensive with these mini-blog platforms. 2011 will continue to be a year of sharing information created by others with original contextual commentary by the poster.

Reputation Matters. How you come across online will matter more than ever in 2011 and consumers will behave as such. LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, as well as Twitter accounts, will grow in importance to both job recruiters and job applicants. Up-to-date profiles that reflect a positive lifestyle will grow in importance to maintaining positive offline reputations.

Social Gaming. Xbox LIVE, the PlayStation Network and…. Facebook? That’s right, gaming is no longer limited to the common household names. Zynga has brought Farmville to 62 million active users on Facebook, and more social games are hitting Facebook as well as mobile devices where consumers spend real money on virtual goods.

With all of the users spending money, social games will continue to garner interest from marketers.

Innovation Refinement. The landscape has changed dramatically, but no one has figured out the magic formula. 2011 will bring refinement to what is already out there as platforms and tools start to mature a bit more. Industry standards and processes will be established for 2010’s creations, while new innovations will raise more questions (I can’t wait).

What Else? That’s my list so far, but it certainly doesn’t encapsulate everything. What do you think 2011 will bring?