It’s starting to look like using social media is becoming important to businesses. In the past year I have been reading more and more that having a place on your site where users can freely interact is almost as important as having a site itself.
What that means is that if you are planning to grow your site it is no longer enough to throw your brochure on a couple of web pages and post it on line. You now need a place where your visitors can add their own feedback or share their views of your site in come way. A new study by the Center for Marketing Research at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth shows that the fastest growing companies are learning this and adding blogs, forums, wiki’s. etc. at a rapid pace.
This also means that you can’t just throw up your site and forget it. You need to add new content, as well as, monitor your social pages. You have to watch for undesirable posts, but you also need to know what your visitors are saying about you. What you are doing well and perhaps more importantly what you are not doing well.
I recently read where a TV station in Philadelphia (CBS 3) is launching a revenue sharing partnership with local blogs and social media websites.
This is a great way to promote your content. Paying them is probably even more than they need to do. Just giving them help promoting their content would probably have been enough, unlike Viacom who is suing Google and everyone else that they can think of. My take on this is that Viacom is shooting themselves in the foot and will regret it.
Congrats CBS3 In Philly. Hey Pittsburgh media outlets, I can probably be bought!
I have written before about how you may find some unexpected things from Google Alerts.
I now advise all of my customers to sign up for Google alerts. One of the things that comes with social media and all of the mass communication these days is that one person can make a dent in your business. Maybe a very big dent.
I believe that’s it advisable for you to have alerts for your name, your business name and any key products you sell. The thinking is that you must respond in some way to bad publicity and can’t respond to bad publicity unless you know about it.
I have not found a faster way of finding out about what’s being said about me on the web than through this great tool.
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I wrote the other day about how many companies just don’t understand just exactly how bad publicity can have a negative effect on their business on the web these days. How social media can take one person’s negative opinion and if left alone can spread faster than wildfire.
While it’s probably more usual these days to hear someone ranting about something that a company has done to annoy or aggravate them, but there are also some wonderful stories about companies that have gone out of their way to be a good neighbor.
For example here’s a wonderful post on a site called zazlamarr.com. You can see from the comments and trackbacks that it has been picked up by many other bloggers and news sources (including this one) and spread all over the world. This kind of goodwill and publicity probably can’t be bought, but if it could it would cost a fortune.
I am so glad that I decided to work for myself. The hours are long, but the work is fulfilling.
I believe that I know how to treat customers. It’s a skill that, unfortunately, many people these days have forgotten or ignore. You have to treat everyone that you deal with as though they could tell the world about their experience with you because some of them can.
Who would you rather be?
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There has been more and more written about how to manage your companies reputation in the new online world. A world where a small misstep can be picked up upon, not just by traditional media, but by a world of bloggers and social media. I have even talked about how the RIAA is doing bad for their members.
I once had a boss many years ago who told me that “There is no such thing as bad publicity! After a short while all they will remember is your name.” I didn’t believe him at first, but over the years I have come to believe that it is, in fact, true.
The thing is that if what you’re doing to get the bad publicity is a mistake then the first thing to do is to stop making the mistake. The next thing to do is to own up to it, apologize and move on. Then eventually most people will “only remember your name”. Nothing makes a person (or business) look more rigid, petty and small than to continue to blindly defend what they know is a mistake, but it happens every day. The bad publicity will continue to pile up and you will not be allowed to move on.
What happens if the bad publicity happens to one of your competitors? My general rule of thumb is not to ever mention a competitor in your own advertising, but in this case there are some great opportunities to turn bad publicity from one of your competitors into good publicity for you, but only if you act quickly. Jennifer Laycock has a post called “Don’t Just Manage Your Reputation, Respond to Your Competitor’s” on this very subject. It’s a good read.
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People tell me that they don’t have any idea how do incorporate the new marketing techniques into their website promotions, or they don’t have the time, or they don’t have the expertise.
That’s just called “So What!”
You don’t have to know about any of these things to be a good promoter, you don’t even have to have a website to use this kind of viral marketing. You just have to be on the lookout for opportunities and know that there are many ways to take advantage of them.
On the Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog there’s a story about a sandwich shop owner who finds out one of his customers is trying every one of his sandwiches and blogging about each one. He had the bloggers URL printed on his bags. Even if his shop didn’t already have a site he’s still taking advantage of the new social media.
Opportunities like this are everywhere! Don’t close your eyes to them, look for them.
