How Not to Suck Using Social Media

If we had a dime for every time that the nebulous phrase, “social media”, was uttered in the context of some new fad that everyone in the corporate world is doing, well, we wouldn’t be wasting our time writing articles for our web site, now would we?  But we digress.

Social Media and Money

It’s no secret that the business world is emphatically excited about the potential monetization of social media.  Not everyone has figured out how best to utilize social media to help their business grow.  We hear lots of interesting stories from prospective clients about their incessant tweets or their Facebook fan page and we applaud most of them for trying to ride the wave while it’s hot.  The enthusiasm is fantastic and it’s great to see colleagues and clients get so excited about the promise of something big.  But do you think many of them have figured out a way to monetize it?  Nope.  Not a single one.  I’m sure they are out there, but the people I talk to are still trying to figure it out.

My favorite conversation about social media epitomizes how a majority of the corporate world thinks when it comes to social media.  A Fortune 100 client was recently in town to discuss their marketing plan and they were eager to share their internal “Social Media Marketing Plan” with us.  It was more of a manifesto than a marketing plan but now we’re being nitpicky.  When they were presenting their marketing plan, they mentioned that their goal was to create a social community of die hard fans of their product/service.  It included all the popular social media concepts like a blog, Facebook integration, Twitter integration, a discussion forum, an “Ask the Expert” section, etc.  A novel idea, in concept, but it’s been done a few times before.  The part of their plan that caught our attention was their plan for moderating the discussion forums.  Their plan was to have an internal administrator review all posts and approve only the ones that spoke favorably about the company.  In essence, they didn’t want anyone saying that their business “sucked”.  Let’s extrapolate on “sucking”.

A Word or Two About “Sucking”

No one wants to hear that they “suck” unless they are the State Fair Lollipop Sucking Champion.  This is especially true in the corporate world.  But lets face it, everyone sucks sometime in their life.  No company is perfect and no one is immune to criticism.  Arguably, it’s your customer’s job to tell you when you suck and when you don’t.  This allows you to do a couple of things:

1. Engage with the customer.  Find out why they think you suck and fix the problem, if there is one to be fixed.
2. Correct the customer’s expectation if they have the wrong impression or were led astray by an external source.
3. Fix your mistakes in a public forum so that other customers (or prospective customers) can see that they are dealing with a company that cares and is willing to own up to their mistakes.
4. Show the world that you are listening.  At the very least, it will make them think twice about posting potentially misleading information on your web site.

There’s a common saying in the business world that, “for every customer that has the guts to come forward and tell you that you “suck”, there are 10 more that feel the same way but will not admit it”.  We’re paraphrasing of course, but you get the point.  What other medium allows you to interact with your clients and potential clients so quickly and easily?  I can’t think of one.

One of the great values of social media is that it allows you to interact with someone in a raw and unfettered way.  It gives you the opportunity to confront your biggest fans and your worst enemies on a level playing field and gives you the opportunity to defend yourself (or apologize for your misgivings) in a public forum so that the world can see that you are a company made up of human beings that have feeling.  This personification of your corporate image has the effect of making customers want to do more business with you.  After all, no one wants to do business with a robotic organization that doesn’t have a soul.

Just in case you were wondering, our recommendation to the client was to lay of the moderation and let people be who they are.  Sure, there will be some whack-jobs that want to blow off steam at your expense, but when you professionally respond to them publicly in an attempt to address their issues and they don’t subsequently make an honest attempt to work with you on it, the world will quickly realize that they are just looking for attention.  People aren’t dumb.  And if they do respond and you can listen first, then address their issue  – imagine then how your customers will appreciate your honesty and integrity.  It’s going to take a while to figure out how that impacts your bottom line, but it doesn’t take an MBA to figure that any positive interaction with your audience is a good one.