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Social Media’s Value

May 5, 2008 on 4:50 pm | In Blogs, Customer Service, Marketing, Reputation Management, Social Media, Web 2.0 | View Comments

As DJ Francis pointed out in his THINKing guest posting, many marketers are having a hard time coming to grips with what – if any – ROI comes from social media involvement. PR people, as our sister site points out, understand that it’s all about dialogue.

Listening to – and interacting with – your customer is a good thing for a company to do. Because, guess what? Everyone else is listening online and asking questions about your brand. Word-of-mouth as an influencing factor ranks highest in every marketing-oriented survey I’ve ever seen. When I worked on the NC Tourism account, all of our research pointed out the power of personal referrals to get family and friends to visit our beautiful state. The internet and social media have amplified that power and have made it searchable.

A recent report says that affluent audiences in particular are “listening” very closely to what others have to say online about a company’s customer service. According to MediaPost,

As social media usage becomes more ubiquitous, says the summary report, affluent consumers are using social media channels to share their personal customer service experiences and learn about others’ care experiences when making purchase decisions.

If your organization is going to survive, it must be actively involved in building and monitoring community online. Says Lynda Kate Smith, vice president, Care Business, Nuance Enterprise Division,

“With consumers increasingly using social media to share feedback on their care experiences, it has become increasingly difficult for businesses to ignore or hide from bad experiences.”

There’s your ROI.

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Double H, your preach the truth. But you and I already know this. My CEO talk about reaching out to the younger generation of the affluent, and I keep telling him they are online (MySpace, Facebook, you get the picture) and if we want to engage them in a conversation. that’s where we’ve gotta go. I secretly monitor what’s going on in cyberspace with the tools I have, which isn’t much.

Comment by Rodger D. Johnson — May 5, 2008 #
Social Media’s Value…

many marketers are having a hard time coming to grips with what – if any – ROI comes from social media involvement. PR people, as our sister site points out, understand that it’s all about dialogue….

Trackback by Anonymous — May 6, 2008 #
[...] Social Media’s Value – As DJ Francis pointed out in his THINKing guest posting, many marketers are having a hard time coming to grips with what – if any – ROI comes from social media involvement. PR people, as our sister site points out, understand that it’s … [...]

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