Answering the Social Phone

Executive Social Marketing Bootcamp

View more presentations from David Alston.

In this presentation, David Alston of Radian6 looks first at the worries and objections that people have using social media. I noticed that they are very consistent with questions I hear when I speak at professional associations or in media training workshops.

The more interesting part is that where he gets into the ten conversations you need to listen for in social media. These (his points in bold) are very relevant for knowing what customers are looking for and answering the social phone. My take:

• The complaint - your customers may complain in the absence of a specific problem. In that case you do need to find the root cause of their dissatisfaction. Remember that asking for a discount is a symptom, not a cause.

• The compliment - indeed, one of the advantages of social media is that your customers may be providing testimonials on your behalf, without being asked. In this case, go with the flow and don't try to control their message. Graciously say - thank you.

• The problem - this is one to fix. It's usually fairly specific, or at least it can become specific when you are prepared to find out. When you see an escalation of messages about your service or product, you should be prepared to take action.

• The question or inquiry - be prepared to get into detail here. Questions signal interest and focus. This is not the place or time to get defensive. Also, wherever possible, if you can shine a positive light on the customer, you get kudos.

• The campaign impact - this may seem obvious. If you're out there with a promotion as part of a campaign, the amount of talk will go up. This is an opportunity to cross reference clicks with forwards and comments. The result is very powerful customer intelligence.

• The crisis - if someone had been online from the Motrin service team, they would have probably headed off part of the discomfort the online ad and the discussion that ensured created. You can learn to talk with customers differently if you're listening early on.

• The competitor - sometimes the gloves are off. Especially when facing pressure to deliver, competitors may be less inclined to be honorable. There's a potential pitfall to them when they become too rowdy, and to the industry when they become too careless on pricing, for example.

• The crowd - let's face it, our decisions are often made on the basis of the behavior of the people who are in the same predicament as we are. We see someone do something, and we think it's legit to do the same. We can observe the same behavior online, only magnified.

• The influencer - watch out for stereotypes on influence. Someone can be an influencer in your industry without having thousands of readers or dozens of comments on their site. The other consideration is that an influencer may pick up on an issue from a weak tie in their network with someone who you overlooked because they seemed to have a tiny audience.

• The point of need - if many of the other points did not convince you, this should. Your customers are out there looking for solutions and products like the ones you provide. Are you comfortable relying just on search driving them to your site? Why not put some skin in the game and meeting them out there?

Today at Fast Company Expert blog we discuss how to answer the social phone. What else are you seeing? What am I missing?

Comments

[Susan]

Valeria, I am printing this out and hanging it on my wall at work. After reading it, I noticed that I could apply this to my internal communications clients. I'd like to write that up on my blog and link back to this post. Are you okay with that?

[jgraziani]

Very helpful info and insight. Thanks for posting this. In the past two years since I've been actively listening/engaging for work, I've found that the best way to head off potential problems is to be available and engage. One of the best things a company can do is to be where its customers are and listen/talk to them.

[David Alston]

hey there Valeria,

Glad you liked the preso. And awesome job on putting in the detail around the top 10 reasons. And nice job on the FastCompany piece too today. This is an awesome Monday surprise.

Cheers.

@davidalston
Radian6

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Susan - glad you followed your instinct and wrote the post. It's a big compliment to know you've inspired someone. Also, because I got to these wonderful comments only now.

@Janie - I might have met some of your colleagues in the greater Philadelphia area at a PRSA networking event or program. Glad the post was helpful. Indeed learning to listen more costs a company very little compared to what it could gain it in insights and referrals.

@David - how do you like that? Radian6 finds both posts in no time. Just checking to see if you were monitoring :) I was looking to add people on SlideShare and came upon your great visual, I had to build on the content. Hope I did a fair job with the conversation.

[Diego]

An amazing post Valeria. This analysis is sharp and defined as a logo, very informative.

[David Alston]

@valeria You did a great job of it. Heck you hadn't even seen my preso and from what you wrote was bang on. I'm off to give a shortened version of it today in NYC. Wish me luck. :)

David

[atul chatterjee]

Thanks for this post Valeria. It clarifies a lot of things. There is one added factor not an additional point that I would like to mention, deciding on the timing of response. This has to be done consciously in many cases.

[Mike]

great job in capturing David's performance in a post :) thanks for the reference to print out as well. - @mikemost