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5 Social Media Monitoring Tools to Simplify Your Marketing
Social Selling: The New Practitioner’s Guide
Where to Find Your Next Social Media Post
8 Ways to Discover Valuable Social Media Content
Do you struggle to find good content to post on LinkedIn, Twitter or your Facebook page?
Would you like to find reliable sources of content your fans and followers love?
This article contains eight tips to help you quickly find great content.
Why Share Other People’s Content?
It’s all about becoming a valuable resource. When you can dig up great articles your audience is interested in–regardless of the source–you’ll become more respected and your content will be widely shared.
And when you have some of your own content to share, people will be more likely to help spread the word.
Here’s where to find valuable content:
#1: Watch Large News Sites
Depending on your industry, you may find topical and interesting articles on large news sites such as USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If you have a news site or magazine for your niche that provides industry news, make sure you have that bookmarked as part of your content.
The Huffington Post has a lot of different categories to draw your content from.
Dive into the different categories and subcategories available on the Huffington Post to watch for content.
#2: Watch News Aggregators
If you want to make content sourcing a little easier, use a news aggregator website or tool. Certain sites do a great job of bringing in the latest news and sorting it by industry or niche all in one place.
Stuff To Tweet has some of the most popular posts on different sites including CNN, YouTube and more. Yes, it does mention tweeting, but these articles are good for Facebook, too.
View some of the popular posts on several sites at once.
Popurls is another similar site that has a few more sites listed. You can also customize the results if you sign up for an account.
Alltop is another news aggregator where you can customize your results. The topics are organized by topic alphabetically and by site.
Find topics listed alphabetically or by site.
Inbound also uses categories to help organize their content. They tend to be more online-related topics.
Inbound also uses categories.
If you like receiving an email with aggregated news, SmartBrief may be a good fit for you. They include a variety of industries and send you an email with the popular news.
SmartBrief sends the news stories to your email address.
#3: Pay Attention to Popular Posts
You can also see things that are trending and popular on some of the other social media sites and share them to Facebook.
LinkedIn today has some great features such as Trending in Your Network, which is a natural filter if you are connected to a lot of people in your niche.
LinkedIn today has generally trending articles and also Trending in Your Network.
You can also see what’s trending on Twitter even if you don’t have a Twitter account. Just go to any Twitter account (such as www.twitter.com/smexaminer) and look on the left side to see the hot topics.
See the trending topics on Twitter from any Twitter account.
Notice that you can switch the trends by clicking the Change link and selecting a certain region to get more localized results. Are these trending topics always the best things to share on Facebook? Maybe not, but they can be relevant.
You may be better off just using Twitter Search and plug in some of your niche keywords to find some good articles to share on Facebook.
You can narrow your scope to see what is trending on Twitter in your region.
#4: Have Go-to Sources to Share
Many times you know which other Facebook Pages consistently have good content and valuable posts. They may be in your industry or they may be a complement to your business so your audience will also be interested in their content.
There are a few different ways to watch their Facebook posts. One is to like their Page as your Page and then watch your Page news feed. This makes it easy to share their posts when you see them in your news feed.
Another way to easily monitor other Pages is to create an Interest List of all of the Pages on your personal profile and periodically monitor that feed.
You can make this Interest List public so other people can follow it, or you can make it private so only you know who is on it.
Mari Smith made a public list of Facebook Experts and it’s followed by almost 30,000 people!
Use an Interest List to generate a separate feed of your go-to sources for content.
When you have the Interest List on your personal profile, sharing it to your Facebook Page is not hard. Just select the Share button and then switch the selection to On your Page. Then make sure the right Page is selected and the post will be shared by your Page.
Easily share content from your Facebook Interest Lists to your Page.
You can find public lists that other people have created by going to Facebook Add List (this is the same URL you use to create your own list). They first show you some of the lists that your friends have created or may be on and then they sort the popular lists by topic.
Find other lists to follow or create your own list.
#5: Use Google Reader and Google Alerts
If you have several (or even several hundred) blogs you enjoy reading that provide great content, use Google Reader to access them all from one place. You can easily see the latest posts or just click on the particular blog in the left sidebar to see some of their latest posts.
Google Reader gives you a dashboard for all of your best content sources so you can see which ones have new posts rather than checking on each individual site. You can sign up here.
Use Google Reader as a dashboard for all of your content sources.
Google Alerts are another great way to monitor the web for fresh content. Google Alerts use the latest relevant Google results and send them as an aggregated set of stories to your email address.
You can use keywords related to your niche and have a set of fresh posts brought to your email inbox every day.
You can sign up here for Google Alerts. If you find that your keywords aren’t bringing the right content in, you can always delete the alert by clicking “Manage your alerts” in the lower-left corner.
Having your company name as an alert is also useful to watch for any new mentions of your company on the web.
Try adding a few Google Alerts to bring fresh content into your email inbox.
#6: Look for Funny Posts
People are typically on social media to have fun and be social. Even if you’re a more serious brand, don’t forget to lighten up every once in a while with a humorous post. Humor can be difficult and you always run the risk of offending someone, so be careful.
George Takei posts a lot of humor (but not all posts are appropriate for a business Page).
Sometimes you can create your own funny posts using sites like Quickmeme or Someecards.
Or you can find sites that post a lot of funny content such as Know Your Meme or Cheezburger.
Just make sure you know the rules of the sites and understand how you can share their content so you don’t have any problems with copyrights.
#7: Create Your Own Images
Images are still getting a lot of engagement on Facebook. They continue to get a lot of comments, likes and shares even if they don’t have the same reach as a text post.
Images take up more space in the news feed and 0are generally more interesting than a plain text post.
But what if you don’t have many pictures to share? You can find images to illustrate a point at sites like iStockphoto or 123RF (you can’t just find images on Google and upload them to Facebook).
If you would like to find free images, you can use the Creative Commons area on Flickr or stock.xchng (make sure you read the guidelines on giving proper attribution).
You can also use Compfight to help you search for photos that you can use. You can use the Commercial hotlink to see which ones are for business use (again, make sure you read about proper attribution).
Use Compfight to find images you can use.
If you want to add your own text to the photo to illustrate a point or add some special effects to make the picture more interesting, use an online editing tool like PicMonkey or iPiccy.
Special quotes are popular things to share on Facebook, but you can use these tools to turn the quote into something more visual. Of course if you’re well-versed in something like Photoshop, creating an image to use is a breeze.
You may also have an occasion to take a screenshot and edit it. This technique works really well if you’re teaching something about websites or computers.
At Social Media Examiner, we frequently have “Hot Tip Tuesday” where we share a hot tip from one of the social sites.
Use a screenshot tool to create a picture that helps your audience do something.
Use a screenshot tool such as Jing or Snagit to help you easily create and edit screenshots.
#8: Monitor Your Stats
Finally, make sure you watch what works with your audience.
Dive into your Facebook Insights and sort the posts you have by Engaged Users. The Engaged Users stats include the number of unique users who have clicked on your posts, which can include people clicking on the photo or link, liking the post, commenting or sharing your post.
Notice what types of posts your audience responds to and post more of those.
Sort your posts by Engaged Users to see what interests your audience.
Hopefully this gives you a running start to find more awesome content that your audience will love.
Once you get some of your favorite content creators in place, don’t forget to continue to monitor the web for new sources of great content. And make sure you work in plenty of your own original content!
What about you? Where are you finding your best content to share on Facebook? Let us know in the comments below.
PinAlerts Notifies You When Something From Your Website Is Pinned
Love Pinterest but not really sure if it’s right for you? Set up a PinAlert for your website and see if your followers feel the same way – you might be surprised!
It’s a free service and it works much like Google Alerts (which you should also be familiar with) – and it’s a great way to see what, if anything, folks are pinning from your website.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Easy Social Media Content Creation
4 Ways to Grow a Twitter Following That Matters
Is Twitter working for your business?
Are you looking to grow a larger and more relevant Twitter following?
This article will show you four actionable steps you can take to improve your Twitter experience.
Why Twitter Is Not Just a Numbers Game
Many brands, businesses and marketers have already discovered how powerful Twitter is for finding and engaging their audience.
Its low cost, immediacy and viral nature make it a favorite tool for everyone from news organizations to celebrities to small businesses.
Yet when marketers jump on Twitter for the first time, they wonder why they don’t get an overwhelming response to their initial tweet. Soon they learn that they must develop a following.
They see others with followings of 500, 5,000 or 50,000 and they want some of that. So they start to Google “how to get more followers on Twitter” or falling for tweets like this one:
If it sounds too good to be true…
Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not too difficult to build a following on Twitter if you’re willing to partake in some shady, bad-karma tactics—from following and unfollowing people to creating hundreds of bogus accounts that follow you and retweet everything you say to buying followers on the black market.
But few if any of those followers will provide you any value for the time you put into Twitter.
So I’m also here to tell you that it’s not how many followers you have, but how many relevant followers you have. Having 20,000 followers who don’t respond to anything you share is equivalent to shouting from the top of the Empire State Building and claiming all of New York City as your audience.
Yes: more engaged followers are better than fewer engaged followers. So, let’s focus on getting more engaged followers.
Building a relevant Twitter following comes down to four core concepts:
- Find and follow relevant people.
- Tweet content that will be interesting to your target audience.
- Engage with your audience.
- Promote your Twitter account through other channels.
With that framework in place, here are some tips, tools and tactics to attract relevant followers on Twitter.
#1: Find and Follow Relevant People
Your audience is out there… Now, how to find them?
Start with a strong profile.
Because most people will check out your profile before following you, it’s important to put your house in order and present yourself in the most engaging way possible.
This includes:
- Profile photo: Make sure you’re using a photo of your face for your personal account or a logo for your business account. Research has shown that people trust faces more that they’ve seen multiple times, which is why a photo of your smiling face works best.
- Detailed bio: You’ve got 160 characters, so get creative! Let people know why they should be following you.
- Location: Because so much of business is local these days, make sure you include your location as appropriate. It can be the make or break for follows.
Strong profiles increase your followers. Blue hair doesn't hurt.
Discover new people with third-party tools.
One of the first places to start your search for relevant people is at one of the many Twitter directories out there.
In a discussion around Twitter tools in Social Media Examiner’s Small Business Networking Club, everyone seemed to have a favorite tool or tip.
Social media marketer Paul Wylie recommends Twellow (for the clean interface) and WeFollow (for finding influencers). You can search by industry, location or keyword for starters.
WeFollow has many categories. Thus, whether you're targeting personal trainers or WordPress trainers, you'll find them here.
Karen James, a social media coach from the UK, likes Tweepi to check out people before she follows them. Karen Black, a digital marketer also from the UK, uses ManageFlitter to do bio searches, as well as keep an eye on her followers.
Use these tools to search for your own industry and the industries of your ideal customers.
Leverage other people’s Twitter lists.
A great source for new people to connect with is other people’s curated Twitter lists.
Whatever your interests are, you can find well-curated lists and subscribe to them.
Twitter users often create lists or subscribe to other people’s lists to improve their
signal-to-noise ratio. As long as people make their lists public, you are free to subscribe to them, quickly getting access to dozens or hundreds of vetted Twitter users.
Some lists are more serious than others.
Use Twitter’s search functionality.
You can use Twitter’s search functionality to find relevant people and engage with them.
For example, let’s say you had a product or service for NASCAR fans. Start by doing a search on #nascar within Twitter.
Searching on #nascar will help you find passionate NASCAR fans whom you can then follow.
You could then join the conversation by @ (mentioning) them, answering their questions and otherwise engaging them.
If your business is more local, like a restaurant, you can find out who’s hungry and in driving distance.
Filter your search by geography to find local people on Twitter to follow.
You could then reach out to those starving denizens on Twitter and offer them a discount or free drink if they come in now and mention “Twitter” as they place their order.
For more ideas on finding and following the right people, be sure to check out 7 Twitter Strategies for Growing a Great Following.
#2: Tweet Interesting Stuff
Easier said than done, right?
How do you find interesting content? Here are some ideas.
Use Google Alerts.
Set up Google Alerts (or a similar service) to get daily email updates about all of the things that are of interest to your audience—from “vegan recipes” to “grilling product reviews”—and share them through Twitter.
Share media.
Photos and videos are a proven way to engage your audience. Use photos to share your activity or events so your business will get click-throughs and comments.
A real estate agent might share a video walkthrough of a new house and ask “what do you think?” A retail shop may share photos of some new additions to their display window. A travel agent might share pictures from a beach vacation and ask, “Are you ready for your getaway?”
Photos engage, especially if you tie them into a giveaway.
Talk to people, not at them.
Chances are, what is of interest to your audience is what they’re already talking about! Rather than trying to get the ball rolling, why not keep it rolling? See what your audience is talking about and engage them in that conversation. Ask questions, answer them, retweet and respond.
For more ideas on how to create more interesting tweets, check out 26 Twitter Tips for Enhancing Your Tweets.
#3: Engage
People on Twitter who don’t talk to other people are significantly less engaging and less likely to get followers.
Just because someone didn’t immediately follow you back doesn’t mean that you can’t engage them. Check out their conversations and see if you can jump in with relevant comments, or retweet some of their links.
Also, being part of conversations will get you in front of more people, increasing your chances of being followed.
Get involved with #chats.
Anyone can start a chat on Twitter by using a hashtag. You can find a long list of chats in this Google doc, along with days and times.
By joining the conversation at appropriate chats, you can quickly build your relevant followers… Assuming you have something valuable to add!
If you're looking to engage bloggers, you could chime in at the #BWEChat.
Schedule chats to reach a wider audience.
While there are many marketers who hate scheduled tweets—I’m looking at you, Unmarketer—many others embrace the tactic.
Using a tool like HootSuite or Buffer, you can schedule out a day’s, week’s or month’s worth of tweets. I would recommend you use a scheduling tool to supplement your regular tweets rather than replacing them.
If you’re going to schedule your tweets, try to be aware of when people respond to anything you share. When people respond to your tweets and you’re not there to respond to them, they’re less likely to engage you in the future.
#4: Promote Your Twitter Account Through Other Channels
Leverage the following you’ve built elsewhere by promoting your Twitter account.
Talk up Twitter at your website, blog and through email.
At flyte, we include our Twitter handles—with clickable links—next to all of our bios. We also include links to our Twitter handles from all appropriate blog posts.
People can follow you without having to leave the page they're on.
You can also include a “follow me on Twitter” call to action in your email signature file, email newsletter and all other correspondence.
Leverage your social media outposts.
Likewise, include links (and calls to action) on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.
You may be tempted to sync all of your updates and tweets together using a tool like Ping.fm, HootSuite or TweetDeck. While there’s nothing wrong with this, use this technique judiciously.
Certain platforms may not be as “chatty” as Twitter, and if we’re already connected on LinkedIn and you’re syncing all of your tweets and LinkedIn updates, what’s the value of getting the same content on Twitter?
Get more visibility with a Paper.li newspaper.
Paper.li is a free service that allows you to create “newspapers” out of your Twitter feed (as well as some integration of Facebook and Google+).
Your daily paper.li can pull from the people you follow, your lists, or specific keywords or hashtags you include. Paper.li can also tweet out your daily paper, including which people contributed your “top stories.”
I’ve found that these tweets often get retweets from the people mentioned, and suddenly they’re sharing your content with their network, elevating your brand.
Promoting the people you're following encourages more follow-backs and engagement.
In this video you can see how to create your own paper.li daily:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PbYbQswqXg
One caveat: I no longer recommend including hashtags to pull in new people to your paper.li. Turns out some disreputable people might be using the same hashtags, populating your paper.li with spam.
So how do you bring in fresh content from new people to your paper.li daily? Here’s what I did: find people you respect and look at the targeted lists they’ve created. Then you can include their curated lists to help round out your paper.
Using others' lists can greatly improve your own paper!
Now It’s Your Turn!
What do you think? What tips, tools or tactics have you been using to build your own relevant Twitter following? Share something in the comments box below and include your Twitter handle and you’ll be sure to pick up a few new followers!
3 Steps to an Effective Social Media Strategy
Do you have a social media strategy for your business yet?
If you don’t, you could be missing out on game-changing results.
According to the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 78% of marketers saw increased traffic with just six hours a week invested in social media.
The businesses that do social media marketing well will see even bigger wins in 2012, as the gap between who “gets it” and who doesn’t grows wider by the minute.
The good news? You don’t need to be everything to everyone anymore. Chances are your strategy will be more effective if you keep it simple.
As Michael Stelzner predicted, “The old mantra of ‘be everywhere’ will quickly be replaced with ‘be where it matters to our business.’ …It will be essential to focus on where you’ll see results.”
Below is a three-step plan designed to help you develop an effective, streamlined road map for social media success.
Step #1: Assessment
Start with a single question: “Why social media?” The answer will dictate everything you do in this first phase. Assessment is to evaluate where you are, where you want to go and what the wins will be along the way.
Put Your Audience First
First things first: You need to clarify your audience’s needs, wants and challenges—not to mention where they’re spending time online. Use tools like Survey Monkey or Google Docs to quickly and inexpensively survey your customers.
Each time I want to learn more about my audience's behaviors, I create a quick survey and post it on my social networks to go straight to the source.
The five major benefits of knowing your audience are considerable:
- Laser focus: You can create content that resonates instantly.
- Break barriers: Confront pain points head-on to build trust.
- Language: Increase engagement by being a person your audience relates to.
- Empathy: The more you listen, the better you can respond to specific needs.
- Positioning: You can become the go-to source in your niche.
Define the Guiding Theme of Your Strategy
In their book, The Now Revolution, authors Jay Baer and Amber Naslund explain the importance of defining your theme. Since you’ve identified your audience, the next step is to ask yourself what you want them to do . What’s your theme? It’s usually one of three things:
- Awareness
- Sales
- Loyalty
Loyalty and awareness can both lead to sales, of course—but stick to just one overarching goal for your strategy. Consistency and simplicity are key here.
Now it’s time to get really specific. This might be the hardest piece in the assessment process, and yet it’s critical to your success. Ask yourself, what does my business actually do? What do my fans say when they’re happy? What is at the core?
Talk it out with your team. Together you can hone in on what Jay Baer calls your “One Thing”—the heart and soul of your brand. Your “One Thing” will affect every content and posting decision you make.
To borrow Jay’s examples, if Disney = magic and Apple = innovation, what do you equal?
Your “One Thing” is the voice of your strategy across every network.
Identify Metrics and Monitoring Opportunities
How will you measure your strategy’s success? Depending on your theme, the metrics may change. For example:
- If your theme is awareness, you’ll want to measure growth, engagement, brand awareness, sharability, likes and subscribes.
- If it’s sales, look at click rates, social e-commerce sales and conversion rates.
- For loyalty, look at engagement, sentiment and influence (HINT: Klout and EdgeRank Checker are good sentiment-measuring tools).
How will you measure your strategy's success?
It’s useful to monitor some overall trends too, like mentions of key people at your company, your company name, brand names, product services, competitors and industry keywords.
And if you’re new to data measurement, take baby steps. Start with a simple free tool like Google Alerts.
Put It All in Writing
Don’t wait for an emergency to nail down your communication policies. For example, what happens when there are negative comments? How should the company’s social sites be used? Are there guidelines for what fans and followers can post to a company Facebook page?
Drill down on the answers in a written editorial guide tailored to your business, team and goals. A good guide will address:
- Who is your team? Who is responsible for what?
- What’s the point? Identify why you’re using social media, and what you want to track.
- Where? Identify the networks you want to focus on.
- When? Be as specific as possible; e.g., blog at 8 am, post it to Facebook at 10 am.
- How—identify team tools and platforms. Including examples is great, especially when it comes to formatting of content. Your guide should enable anyone new on the team to know what’s going on.
Step #2: Implementation
Next up: execution. The implementation phase is all about zeroing in on the details and day-to-day tasks you and your team are now responsible for.
Create a Content Calendar
Now that you have an editorial guide, it’s time to translate policy into concrete actions—preferably on an editorial calendar. The more information and detail you include, the better you can measure effectiveness. Consider:
- What is the theme or essence of your content?
- Who will create it?
- When and where will it be shared?
- How often will you create content versus share third-party content?
- How will you deliver content—as eBooks? Blogs? Video? All of the above?
Have a Step-by-Step Plan for Promotion and Growth
There are literally hundreds of ways to get your team promoting and sharing on the key social media sites you plan to use. Here are a few to get you started:
- Integrate social mediaon your website with plugins and icons.
Visible social media icons and social plugins are some of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your social media networks.
- Run contests and promotions or offer rewards.
- Showcase your expertise. Drive traffic (and build a reputation) by offering webinars and training programs, interviewing experts and guest blogging, to name a few.
- Promote your networks consistently. Add networks to letterhead, email signatures and business cards.
Identify Core Sales Campaigns
Yes, social media is about relationships first. But the fact is, once you’ve built solid, genuine relationships online, you’re going to want to use your influence to grow your business. That doesn’t mean shoving it down fans’ throats or putting sales above the relationship. It simply means that you can and should promote what you offer to the people who believe in your mission.
Establish an action plan for the core campaigns you’ll use to collect and nurture leads, like:
- Outline promotional policy—what is acceptable, and what is not allowed?
- Identify and implement opt-in opportunities—like a custom welcome tab on your Facebook page.
- Determine where to direct leads—for example, will you create an eCommerce platform on Facebook with a custom tab, or sell only on your site?
Step #3: Monitor, Measure and Get Momentum
After about two months of running your brand-new social media strategy, it’s time to hunker down with your team, evaluate your progress and fine-tune the details.
Schedule an Evaluation Session
Don’t put off analyzing your results. Schedule your first evaluation meeting when you start phase one. I recommend scheduling a meeting about two or three months out from your start date. That’s just enough time to start seeing results and identifying weak spots.
Make sure you or your team members bring numbers and data to the table and are prepared to discuss them. Metrics, no matter how simplistic, will help you figure out what’s working and what’s not. Include time for brainstorming new ideas, too.
Take Advantage of the Momentum
If you’re seeing traction with your strategy at this first evaluation milestone, consider mixing it up and adding some more advanced strategies into your plan. You have momentum building—run with it!
Here are ideas for some “next steps” to take:
- Facebook ads are a good, inexpensive way to grow your fan base, increase engagement and collect leads. Try mixing up different ad types and destinations.
- Run a multi-level contest integrating multiple channels (like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). Use a promotion, event or reward that will resonate with your audience. Word-of-mouth is a powerful way to leverage momentum.
- Live Q&As on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ hangouts.
Ultimately, everyone’s social media strategy will look different—and will get very different results. To be effective, know your business and the metrics that matter to you. A consultancy might need just 100 high-quality fans, whereas a company that sells a product might need several thousand to see financial results.
Now It’s Your Turn
Does your business have a social media strategy in place? What tips do you have for someone putting a strategy together for the first time? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
10 Ways to Deal With Upset Customers Using Social Media
How are you responding to upset customers?
No matter what you sell or what industry you’re in, you’re going to experience negative word of mouth.
You know, those customers who are expressing their complaints on social media.
It just happens.
Things break, problems come up and employees have bad days. But it’s how you handle it that separates you from everyone else.
Remember: Negative word of mouth is an opportunity.
A great response strategy can convert angry and upset customers into loyal, raving fans. The rule of thumb is that while unhappy customers talk to 5 people, formerly unhappy customers you win back talk to 10.
So get out there and embrace the negativity. Start responding. Here are 10 steps you can take to stop the negative, earn new fans and generate a ton of respect.
#1: You Can’t Respond to Conversations You Don’t See
Great response starts with great listening.
- Set up Google Alerts for your brand and industry keywords.
- Keep a close eye on your Facebook page.
- Listen on Twitter.
- Depending on the type of business you have, read reviews on sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor and Zagat.
- Make a list of any forums or communities where your customers congregate and regularly check in on them.
Whether you’re paying attention or not, the conversations are happening. But a great listening program makes it easier for you to catch negative buzz and spot issues before they build momentum and become much harder to turn around.
Google alerts are free, easy to set up, and instantly help you keep an eye on key conversations.
#2: Determine if it’s Worth a Response
Not all negative comments are worth a response, and not all critics are worth trying to win over. Sometimes, as hard as it can be, it’s best just to move on.
Avoid these situations:
- The criticism is on a really small blog or forum, and your response will only bring attention and credibility to an issue nobody saw in the first place.
- It’s a blatant attack that’s clearly rude and outrageous—and anyone who reads it can see the critic has a personal problem.
- A known crackpot who is only looking to pick a fight.
There’s just no way to win in these scenarios. So stay out, move on, keep your head up and focus on the wrongs you can right.
#3: Act Quickly
When you’re facing negative word of mouth, time is not on your side. The longer you wait to respond, the angrier the customer will get—and the more likely others will pick up on the issue and spread the negative buzz.
At the very least, say this:
“Hi, my name is ____ and I hear you. We’re looking into it now, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If you have any questions, contact me directly at _____.”
A message like this does two things:
- The ranter knows he or she has your attention—there’s much less incentive to keep spreading the anger and
- It makes a real person with real contact info available, so if the person is still angry, you’ve at least specified a place to vent other than online.
#4: Speak Like a Human
The only thing worse than ignoring upset customers is to respond with a canned corporate response. If you thought they were mad before, wait until you see how they react to an excerpt of your policy terms and fine print.
Show empathy, communicate in a friendly tone and use your real name. And if the forum supports it, it helps to include your actual photo.
It’s easy to yell and scream at an anonymous company. But when someone shows up and says, “Hi, this is Emily and I’m so sorry for the trouble…” it changes everything.
The critic now realizes he wasn’t yelling at a giant, faceless company. He was yelling at Emily. Quickly, the anger fades—and you’ll often get an apology.
Check out how Zappos replies to this fan. It’s human; it’s friendly. And even though they couldn’t immediately fix the problem, you can bet this fan will be back.
Check out Zappos’ Facebook page for a real-time guide on how to respond in a personable, friendly tone.
#5: Offer a Real Apology or Don’t Apologize
A strong, direct apology will always earn more respect than a flimsy, “kinda-sorta” apology.
Consider the difference between an apology like “We’re sorry you feel that way” to “Absolutely, positively unacceptable”—which was the headline to FedEx’s blog post after a delivery driver was caught throwing a package over a customer’s fence. The post included this straightforward video from Matthew Thornton, a senior vice president at the company:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ESU_PcqI38
And it doesn’t get much better or more direct than Jeff Bezos’ apology for how they handled pulling copies of 1984 and other novels off Kindles:
This simple, straightforward apology from Jeff Bezos drew more than 750 overwhelmingly positive responses.
#6: Offer to Make it Right
Apologizing is part of turning around negative word of mouth, but to actually fix a problem is how you really win over critics.
We all make mistakes. It’s how we fix them that people remember.
At burrito chain California Tortilla, making it up to customers is part of every response they send when someone is upset. It’s this simple:
California Tortilla replies to every upset customer with a simple, straightforward offer to make it up.
#7: Never Get into a Fight
Any time you win an argument online, you’re losing. All anyone really remembers is that you’re combative.
This doesn’t mean you can’t respond, explain your side of the story and start a conversation. You just need to be in the right mindset:
- Don’t get emotional.
- Remember, it’s a real person. Just as they see you as a faceless company, it’s easy to see them as just another complainer.
- The critic is actually doing you a favor. They’re helping you learn to be a better company. For every person who actually speaks up, many more walk away quietly, never to return.
For more on how to reply, check out this quick explanation from Jeff Diamond of Oakland’s Farmstead Cheeses and Wines:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ_DJGDIIMM
#8: Keep the Discussion in the Open
When a negative issue comes up, a common gut reaction is to ask to move the conversation offline. But when you do this, the world can’t see all the effort you put into fixing the problem.
Nobody sees the private email where you give that sincere apology. We can’t search for that phone conversation where you politely explain why the situation happened in the first place.
But when you do it online, in public, you earn word of mouth. For the same effort and cost, thousands more people see that you actually care about customers. Plus, you save on all the people who now don’t need to call in (or write a similarly angry post) to find an answer to the same question.
Graco’s quick and transparent use of Twitter during a recall of more than 2 million strollers, for example, helped get an important message out much more quickly, showed customers how much they cared and it just might have saved some lives, too.
Customers were thrilled with how Graco kept them updated and informed during a product recall.
#9: Use Fans and Third-Party Sources to Help Tell the Story
What you say about yourself isn’t as powerful as what others say about you. It’s true when people are promoting you, and it’s true when people are calling you out.
When their brand was under attack from a competitor-led PR campaign, UPS’ Debbie Curtis-Magley and her team pointed to third-party content from news articles and industry experts to help explain the full story.
And even more powerful than experts can be the voice of your fans. You never want to put them in an uncomfortable situation, but it’s OK to ask for help sometimes.
For example, a blogger might share how he’s frustrated with a particular product feature. In which case, you might turn to your Facebook or Twitter fans with this message:
“Hey guys! Chris over at [blog name] is having trouble with [feature]. Can anyone share how they’re using it?”
#10: Involve Them in the Fix
If someone’s criticizing you, it’s often just a form of tough love. They’re doing it because they care. They see potential, and they want you to do better.
So instead of seeing them as critics, start looking at them as frustrated fans that might have some worthwhile ideas.
On one hand, Dell’s IdeaStorm is just a big list of things people think they’re doing wrong. But it’s actually a release valve—a proactive community that gives people with ideas, suggestions and complaints a place to share and vote on their favorites.
Every idea on Dell’s IdeaStorm can be voted up or down, and Dell keeps everyone updated on progress.
A platform like IdeaStorm isn’t right for everyone, but giving your biggest critics a way to get involved is. Try inviting yours to customer advisory boards, beta tests of new products and brainstorming sessions.
See! Negative word of mouth doesn’t have to be so bad after all.
How do you handle critics? How are you making the most of negative word of mouth? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
3 Tips to Manage Your Social Media Reputation
Reputation can affect purchase decisions and influence the growth or decline of a business.
Many businesses are using social media to develop online reputations, manage and respond during a crisis and monitor the conversation to prevent future crises.
Try searching your company and product names to make an assessment of your online reputation. What do you see in the top 10 search results?
What follows are three tips to help you manage your reputation with social media.
#1: Establish Your Online Reputation
When someone Googles your brand name, your business should be sitting right there on the first page waiting for the user. And yourbrandname.com shouldn’t be the only branded search result.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social brand pages should assist in owning the first search engine results page. Especially if you have a common name, owning your brand name search queries is important for users to find the right information.
Social media can help you create a stronger online presence, so old news doesn’t turn up at the top of search results. If you don’t control your brand, someone else may post inaccurate or derogatory information that could tarnish your reputation.
Take a look at the search results from Lululemon. The first result is for their website, but the next four listings are all social media channels that they own or have the ability to edit and monitor.
These owned channels help push down search results that misrepresent your brand.
According to a click-through rate study published by Slingshot at the end of last year, the number-one ranking on Google gets about an 18% click-through rate and the number-two organic listing gets about 10%. Regardless of the actual percentage, the data proves that the first search engine results page is the most important for your brand’s reputation.
The reason you want to control several of your first page search results is if a crisis strikes and you have set up several social channels, your brand will have plenty of platforms ranking well to disseminate your message.
These branded channels help push down negative or competitor results that you don’t want representing your brand.
Creating social media profiles has given people the channels to voice their joys and complaints about your company. Owning your social media profiles can help you better control and manage the conversation, so you can respond in a timely manner.
If you aren’t marketing with social media, those conversations are going to happen on other channels that may prohibit you from getting involved in the conversation.
#2: Control Responses During a Crisis
A crisis for a company can range from unexpected website issues to a lawsuit. How a crisis is handled online makes a huge difference to the future ramifications. It’s important to monitor and respond to customers who write on your wall or send you messages to resolve any issues and let users know they’re heard.
Facebook was one of the channels Anthropologie used for announcing a huge online sale in May. Right after they posted about the event, the site went down for maintenance. It didn’t take long for Facebook users to complain and point out that they couldn’t get to the site to buy any products.
The social media team did not respond to every comment personally, but was smart to send out a note to fans that they were working on the issue and the site would be back up soon.
Customer complaints were acknowledged and customers were told that the company was addressing the issue.
When the site was back up, a user still couldn’t access the page, so the social team provided a direct email contact to resolve the issue off of Facebook. Providing an email was a good solution because it gave the user somewhere to go to have her issue addressed.
If you can’t solve a user’s problem with a simple post, take the issue offline and out of the public eye as soon as possible.
Within 10 minutes, Anthropologie responded with another method of customer service.
Sometimes brand ambassadors will even step in to resolve a conflict for you. Though it is helpful when customers support you enough to calm a disgruntled customer, do not assume that will be the case every time. Set up tools and a strategy to monitor the conversation, so you aren’t surprised with the conversations happening about your brand.
#3: Monitor Conversations
Now that you’ve created and are updating several social profiles on behalf of your brand, you may find it a bit overwhelming to keep up to date with what is being said about your brand online.
Savvy businesses are monitoring their brand for mentions with social media monitoring tools.
“Social media monitoring tools are the first line of defense when managing your online reputation,” explains Andy Beal, CEO and founder of Trackur. “Monitoring tools allow you to quickly fan the flames of any praise or fight reputation fires while they are still manageable.”
Before a negative review goes viral or enters the top 10 search results for your brand name, wouldn’t it be helpful to respond and solve the problem or take the issue offline to address?
Social media monitoring tools range from free to more advanced enterprise-level to tools that only monitor certain platforms. Although online monitoring tools capture a vast amount of mentions on the web, no tool can capture every mention due to privacy policy settings.
Here are a few tools worth checking out:
There are several Twitter-specific monitoring apps, like Seesmic and HootSuite, as well.
Social media is real-time, so the faster your brand responds, the better your customer service will appear.
While people have the right to voice their complaints, it’s up to you to remedy the situation and turn negative comments into positive opportunities. Since social media is public, your quality customer service will be seen by other users and may influence their purchase decisions.
One company that monitors their brand name very well, especially on Twitter, is Morton’s Steakhouse. Taking a quick look at their Twitter page shows that they respond to many online mentions and try to provide the best customer service they can.
In the second tweet, Morton's offers an email to take the conversation offline.
People love to feel like they are being heard and mentions of a brand are invited opportunities for a company to respond.
What Are Your Experiences?
What do you think? Do you own a business and use social media to provide customer service and news about your company? Are you a customer who has had a positive or negative experience with a company and voiced that experience online? Did the company respond? Share your experiences in the comments box below!