Customers and Social Media

In Social Media, a brand only has one thing in mind most of the time: “How do we grab the attention of potential new customers?” and “How do we keep our current customers happy?”

Knowing what your customers think about your brand is not hard to find but how does a brand resolve the issues that are arising without silencing their customers and making them feel mistreated?

With such a high percentage of the world’s population being present in Social Media it is a tough task to in any way attempt to control the sentiment of these mentions. Most brands already have some sort of plan in place to deal with negative mentions but most of them do not do anything about the positive ones.

Negative mentions do not make up the whole of the social sphere, in fact, there is a very high volume of positive mentions which can be used to the advantage of a brand. We took the time to see what people are saying about the new Iphone 5 and we found that the number of negatives and positives are relatively close which can be good and bad.

However, the main issue is that neither the negatives nor the positives have been dealt with which unfortunately may have resulted in loss of customers for Apple.

Below is 4 mentions, 2 negative and 2 positive, the main detail is that the positives are great and they could be used to build brand advocacy, something that Apple may need now seeing Samsung is stepping up and taking Apples long acclaimed title.

Monitoring + Engagement

It has been a long time since we have been watching the fast movement within the Social Media world and throughout we have seen many ups and many downs.

Here in the DGC we take many aspects into consideration when conducting a detailed analysis, sometimes you may simply want to find out who is saying negative things about you and where they are saying it. Others, you may simply want to see who loves your brand and is saying wonders about it.

No matter which you pick them both will have to be conducted the same way. The results however, will be very different and what you choose to do with them is what will count in the end.

We look at the negative results as opportunities to improve a service and sometimes as a way to learn something new about how to deal with customers and how to resolve issues that most of the times are rather simple to resolve.

As a brand, how would you use Social Media to resolve customer complaints, engage with your community and track any possible opportunities? Would  you carry out the normal day-to-day activity or would you continuously monitor for specific mentions?

Social Network King or Queen

Good morning everyone, we hope you’re all well and ready for the weekend, this week went by rather fast don’t you think?

Today we will be discussing social networks and which ones are the best, of course everyone has a different opinion to this as everyone uses these networks for different purposes.

Firstly we will mention Pinterest, not many people seem to talk about it even though it is one of the fastest growing networks out there. But how good is it really? When compared to the likes of Flikr and Instagram, can it perform better? Each of these platforms offer different functionalities but at the end of the day they all do the same thing, share images and this is the key focus, which one allows this to be done more efficiently?

Secondly there is Twitter, of course almost everyone knows what Twitter is and what it is used for. However, believe it or not there is a very high number of people who have a Twitter account but never use it, then there are other users who have an account but are not active very regularly. These points can be used to show how much social media still has to grow to encompass everyone.

Finally, there is LinkedIn, I would say Facebook but it is talked about enough already. LinkedIn is a very different platform, whereas on Facebook you would speak about almost everything, on LinkedIn the context behind what is being discussed is business almost every time. One would not find anyone speaking about the weather on LinkedIn, this is a great platform for professionals but to also share knowledge.

All in all, all these platforms offer great capabilities but in today’s world it is so difficult to decide which one is best for you considering there are so many that have twins.

Which of these platforms do you find most useful and why? Are there other platforms you would like to share with us?

Comment below of join the discussion on Twitter with the Hashtag #SMNetworks

Customer Services & Social Media by @CCADGC

The biggest challenge in Social Media for some is to carry out the well needed customer service over the social channels but the big question is: Why aren’t businesses taking to this new capability so well and quickly?

More and more people turn to social networks to express their opinions, not having to speak to a person directly allows them to be as direct as they wish and say anything they want and this is where the customer services would come in.

Unfortunately, not many businesses have adopted this strategy to deal with their customers’ queries or simple praise as let’s not forget that customers don’t always say bad things about a brand, many times they actually express how happy they are with the service or product and this itself, presents a massive opportunity for a brand to engage.

Take EDF Energy as an example, they use Social Media for customer services but simply by looking at the rate of which people complain about them we can deduct that they do not have any monitoring system in place as many complaints go unanswered.

This is simply one of the unhappy customers we have found which was mentioned by another influential account, this is extremely dangerous for a brand!

What are your thoughts on this?

Why businesses need Social Media

Yesterday we saw how businesses are advertising using Social Media in conjunction with their old ways of advertising that have been done for years.

Today we will look at why a business needs to engage in Social Media and what the benefits are at the end of the day.

First of all, do you think any business (no matter how big) can survive for a very long time without being able to respond to their customers via Twitter / Facebook rather than email or phone call?

Sure, there should be all mediums of communication available but phone calls and emails are a lot more time consuming and sometimes give way to even worse situations with customers already unhappy about the service and then having to either be on hold for an eternity or receiving bad customer service.

Do you agree that companies need to incorporate Social Media into their communication strategies and keep a consistent line of communication with their customers and potential new customers?

Here is a little example of how much the general public hates to be on the phone to brands they get products from, let us know what you think of the statements above.

From the green to the red:

Virgin is where it is simply because it has a twitter account that can be used to resolve this, however, the mention about the insurance company is not so positive, considering the person did not mention which company straight away is a risk itself. They will surely mention it to their community both online and offline which makes it hard to resolve for the company in question.

Apple is in the red, this is because they do not carry out any sort of customer service on Twitter and this may be working for them now but it will soon prove to be a challenge as the loss of customers could be contained if all the complaints were resolved like this one.

Ignorance in the social web

We hope you are all well and that your weeks are going well too!

Yesterday we saw what people are saying about the new Iphone5, the negatives as well as the positives. The mentions found were rather surprising considering Apple does not currently have a Twitter account to deal with any of them.

Enough about Apple now, let’s talk about communication, not only when responding to complaints but in general. How vital do you think it is for a brand to communicate with their customers on the social world?

We personally think that building relationships with your customers will save a lot of time and hassle in the future when a crisis hits. It is sometimes peculiar how a brand has such a good name in the outside world but when you take a look at them online you find out a completely different side to them.

Today we will be looking at how brands engage with their customers on the social web, there will be good and bad ways of how this is done currently.

As it is shown in the image,  there are different types of bad mentions in the social web, the ones which the brand in question replies to and attempts to resolve and the ones that the brand doesn’t reply to because they can’t find it.

There is also a positive outcome in the mention below as the brand responded in a quick and concise manner resulting in the issue no longer being in the public space, a very good example of how brands should carry out their social media.

 What do you think? Do you agree?

The Importance of Moderators

Last week we took a look at many aspects of Social Media that affect businesses and that also benefit them! But today we will take a deeper look at one of the most important aspects of having a Social Media strategy in place.

Today we will talk about Moderators, you may be familiar with them as without them a brand would be right in the firing line and not be able to get out of it.

So why is a Moderator so important for a brand? All of us may have different views on why they are important so feel free to share yours with us.

But to begin, the online world has offered many new opportunities but also has offered everyone the platform to share their experiences, this may be both bad and good for a brand. Let’s just say, the bigger the brand the more damage it can cause.

Take GiffGaff for example, their moderators are actually their customers, this is an achievement for a company as anyone is more likely to trust a statement from another customer rather than an employee.

Brand moderators are always important when it comes to resolving issues relating to a brand on the social web because as seen in the last year, if these issues are not resolved straight away they remain in the social space giving space for a much bigger crisis.

Below are simply some comments made online that could potentially turn into a crisis as well as some other comments which were resolved straight away leaving behind only peace of mind for the customer.

Social Media Hastiness

Last week we discussed how Social Media has had an impact on many businesses, to the point of making them shut down due to the loss of customers.

It is great to be able to find what people say about you and then decide what to do about it, and possibly use it to increase productivity but how do you know when you are moving too fast?

Take Facebook for an instance, a complete Social Media platform that offers many tools to aid the user in reaching the right audiences but now a new tool is being introduced which is causing a lot of discussion among users (businesses as well as people).

The Facebook Graph Search, what will this mean for anyone using Facebook? Making many new types of information available to anyone who wants to find it can be an advantage but it can also bring many issues with it.

Take the introduction of Timeline for an example, it all looked so good but the people who use Facebook were not so keen on the new implementation.

Facebook has introduced many new functionalities into their platform, some made the user happy but others didn’t go down so well but they were implemented anyway and as the stats showed last week, it had an impact on their community in the UK, losing 600K users is not a very positive outlook for such a massive business.

We have tracked the mentions surrounding this topic and have seen a massive spike in conversations, we have also determined what the sentiment around it is and by doing that we will be able to state whether it will be a smooth implementation or whether there will be complications along the way. Take a look below.

With 15% overall negative sentiment across all Social Channels, it is enough to be wary about. Especially when there are people writing things such as Facebook = Divorce and making jokes about the whole tool itself.

As shown in the popularity graph, it is clear how the discussion initiated so quickly once the Facebook made the announcement, now we shall see where this discussion leads to when the time to implement this tool comes.

What are your thoughts on Facebook’s new approach to search engines?