Social Networking to Engage Customers
Had you figured out how to use social network to engage customers? A well planned and executed social strategy has value to all you stakeholders, with strong and positive social reputation, helping you to stand out and drive business the good old fashion way – word of mouth! Scale your social media initiatives beyond one-off marketing or communications initiatives – think of providing customer support on Twitter with employees managed through custom built systems that can keep track of who participates. A sign of things to come as more companies look to uncover cost savings or serve customers more effectively through leverage of social technology.
If the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year. From how to conduct yourself as an employee to what’s considered competition, it’s likely that you’ll see something formalized about how the company views social media and your participation in it.
Mobile becomes a social media lifeline! With approximately 70% of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smart phones on the rise, it’s likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices. What used to be cigarette breaks could turn into “social media breaks” as long as there is a clear signal and IT isn’t looking. As a result, we may see more and/or better mobile versions of our favourite social drug of choice.
Sharing no longer means e-mail. The New York Times iPhone application recently added sharing functionality which allows a user to easily broadcast an article across networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Many websites already support this functionality, but it’s likely that we will see an increase in user behavior as it becomes more mainstream for people to share with networks what they used to do with e-mail lists. And content providers will be all too happy to help them distribute any way they choose.
These are a few emerging trends that come to my mind — I’m interested to hear what you think as well, so please weigh in with your own thoughts. Where do you see social media going next?
In Barack 2.0, Brent Leary and David Bullock detail the 21st century marketing strategies used by the Barack Obama Presidential campaign to catapult him from virtual obscurity to front runner to president of the United States!
Using Social Media sites, video sharing, blogging and more. Use Web 2.0 marketing strategies to your business just like the Obama campaign did, take your business to the next level! And the good news for today’s business owner is that the social media sources used by the Obama campaign and referenced in the book are virtually all free!
I can’t say enough about this book except that if you’re in business, you need to read this book Barack Obama’s Social Media Lessons For Business! And if you don’t know a thing about MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, don’t worry, your kids do…just give the book to your teenager then hire him or her to teach you how to implement the social media strategies that put Mr Obama where he is today!
What about Exploitation of Social Media by Businesses & Celebrities?