Sun Microsystems CEO uses blogging to stay in touch

CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, uses his own blog to encourage his consumers as well as those working in the organization to post comments about the company without inhibition. This resulted in the blog receiving 400000 hits in a single month back in 2006. But more importantly it boosted confidence and gained the trust of its customers in the market.

Multiple IBM blogs

What stands out in case of IBM’s use of blogs is the network of blogs it maintains for separate departments of the organization which allows its workers to post experiences about their job at the company. Not only did this help IBM gain confidence of its employees, but it also gave its consumers the chance to interact with them and gain insight into the operations of the company and its products and services.

Tell us what you think at Starbucks

Websites may be mandatory as part of online marketing strategies for most businesses, but allowing customers to put in their suggestions is what Starbucks aimed at achieving through its “My Starbucks Idea”. Along with customer feedback on their websites, they also maintained a blog called “Ideas in Action” which responded to customer suggestions, notifying them of any relevant changes that were made by the company based on them. This shows Starbucks’ initiative to include customers into its company on a significant level. Along with that, Starbucks also uses Twitter to stream real time opinions with its customers.

Blendtech uses YouTube to blend

One of the most successful examples of social media marketing has been Blendtech which has been the brain child of George White. The idea was to show viewers how to blend different objects in a blender.

Blendtech exploited the subscribers on YouTube to advertise their blender campaign which raised their sales significantly, proving to be the perfect example of an inexpensive method of social media marketing.

Zappos Tweets

Zappos has probably made the most dynamic use of Twitter by encouraging its employees to have active accounts on the micro-blogging site and gain access to the complete stream of tweets on a single page to keep in touch with all its customers as well as fellow employees.

Not only does Zappos use Twitter as an advertisement base for its products and services as retailer, but it also interacts with its customers by updating them about their product facts and keeping them in the loop of interesting ideas and activities of the company.

Burger King encourages you to sacrifice friends on Facebook

Although the “Sacrifice Ten Friends” campaign on Facebook did not last too long because of potential privacy policy violations, it did have a viral effect on the Burger King fans for a while. 200000 friends were sacrificed via the activity for free whoppers by 20000 users. This is an example of yet another cost-effective short-term attempt at making an impact through social media advertisements.

Nowadays, avoiding social media is not good for marketing, so it won’t be long until you will have to create a Facebook business page for your company. After you fill in the necessary details and set up the page, you will have to start offering updates and interact with the community. Here is what you should and what you shouldn’t do if you want to be successful.

Be Natural

One of the most important things that people seem to forget about social media is that you have to be sociable. This means that you can’t treat your audience like they are some strangers that should be happy to receive your updates. You have to communicate with them directly and drop the curtains. You can’t send out messages in a very serious tone every single time you post something. You can do this from time to time, but in other situations, you have to talk like a real person and form a bond with your viewers.

Don’t Forget to Update

Another important social media strategy is keeping things fresh. If you have something new to say, don’t forget to post it on your wall, no matter what it is. However, you have to make sure that you don’t fall into extremes; don’t post more than three things per day and try to post something at least twice per week. You don’t have to follow this rule religiously, but you should try to keep your fans updated without suffocating them with unnecessary interventions.

Keep your Audience Involved

Facebook is a great way to get instant feedback, so take advantage of this fact as soon as you can. Ask questions about products, try to find out what people like and what they don’t like and make sure to attend to their needs. If you have the financial power to make the changes needed, you have no reason to be afraid of some constructive criticism.

Try Not to Censor

The dark side of social media is always out there and if you expose yourself through a Facebook page, you have to be aware of the possibility that some people are not exactly fans of your company. If they decide to post negative comments on your wall, you can choose between trying to solve the matter and hitting the delete button. The first option is definitely the best one and the rest of your fans will appreciate your effort.

Conclusion

Making the right decision on Facebook is not exactly rocket science, but if you have many fans on your business page, you have to keep them happy without making any mistakes. You need to think before you act and try to keep the relationship between you and your audience in good standing. If you know how to react in different situations and if you have enough time to take care of the social media aspect of your business, you will surely notice the results.

Most brands are starting to emerge in the social media world and offer transparency in a way never before seen. You can now talk directly with the people from Coca Cola on Twitter or you can become a Nike fan on Facebook. The gap between the consumer and the brand is gradually closing, but you should expect all around advantages from this merge. In fact, one of the biggest problems with going online and following the social media current is dealing with negative feedback. If your business is just breaking out of its social media shell and it seems that people have opposing views regarding your actions, you should learn a few things about how to react.

Identify the Cause

The first step in solving the problem is identifying its cause. If you are lucky, the negative feedback you receive will be to the point and you will figure out exactly what’s happening based on the comments you receive on your social media profiles. In other cases, you will simply fall prey to unjustified attacks and you will have to find the underlying cause on your own. Keep in mind that some people will simply cause problems because of a personal habit or previous experience with your brand. In these cases, you should focus on finding a solution indirectly, rather than dealing with each individual in particular. You should be able to make the difference between someone that has a real problem with your brand and those who complain merely for the fun of it.

Acknowledge the Problem

The easiest way to get some space between the problem and the solution is by acknowledging it. A simple tweet or blog post should suffice in most situations, but you have to make sure that your visitors know that you are working on solving their problems, but only if you really plan on offering a solution. If you won’t live up to your promises, this whole plan can easily backfire.

Customize the Solution

Once you know what the problem is and you start thinking about the solution, you should make sure that even those who are not complaining will notice your actions. You shouldn’t create a hotline for those who have problems and make them do the work; you have to reach out to everyone and offer some type of solution which you think will satisfy them. The solution might be expensive, but desperate times call for desperate measures. In some situations, you might even have to discuss the problems with your customers directly.

General Tips

If you are communicating with your audience and you notice negative comments, you shouldn’t censor these opinions unless you absolutely have to due to bad language. You also have to learn how to control your temper and treat each complain with professionalism if you want to get ahead. If you can handle the verbal abuse without any problems, you can engage in conversations and see if you can find a reasonable solution. If not, you can simply ignore these comments, but only until you figure out a viable strategy for dealing with negative feedback.

If you are passionate about something or if you are an expert in a certain domain, you should consider sharing your passion with the world through the help of a blog, website, or YouTube channel. You should focus on following a few steps if you want to increase your chances of gaining an audience, but you will eventually get what you want if you have enough time, patience, and quality content to offer to your visitors.

Getting Started

The first step is to create your website and start posting content. Depending on how much you know about the online world, this step can cost you some money or you can do it yourself for free. Either way, you have to make sure that your website looks decent, it is easy to access, and you also need to start putting out content regularly. Keep in mind that if people like what you have to say, they will return for more in the following days, but the only way to maintain their interest is by posting something new on a regular basis. This is the toughest step because gaining an audience takes time and you will feel like you are not receiving the attention you deserve. If you can hang in there for a couple of months, you will see that things will start to pick up, so keep an eye on those statistics along the way.

Improve Your Strategy

When you first start joining the online world as a content creator, you will have a hard time organizing your thoughts and finding your perfect niche. You have to experiment for a while, but after that, you should analyze your work objectively and try to go on the path of self improvement. You should make some minor, but necessary changes until you zero in on what your audience is looking for or until you are absolutely happy with the result.

Get Involved in the Community

The easiest way to gain an audience in the online world is by getting involved. Even if you are not a big name amongst those who are working in the same field, you will be surprised to see that some of them will accept interviews for free. You should start joining forums and make your presence heard. The better your content, the easier it will be for people to remember you or recommend you to their friends. You can always start contests or similar activities that will draw people to you, so think outside the box, and try to offer something special to your audience.

Conclusion

If you are offering quality content in any field, there are people out there who would love to hear you out. You simply have to start writing or creating videos and you will gradually obtain what you’re looking for. It will take time and patience, but if you get involved in the community and focus on creating the perfect strategy, gaining an audience is inevitable.

Now all this is interesting enough for a Twitter user, because someone is always coming up with applications and services that allow users to enhance their Twitter experience. One of the latest trends to have emerged on Twitter, and indeed all other social media websites, is mapping. Mapping tools, as the name suggests, allow you to pinpoint the location of your followers on a map, which is really something!

Here are 5 terrific tools for mapping your twitter profile:

Tweography – an interesting service

You need to have a geo-location enabled Twitter account to use Tweography. This is a really interesting service; it lets you view your location when you publish a certain tweet. This means that you will get to see the place where you visited last summer, and you can see you friends’ locations as well when they tweeted something recently. If you are a regular traveler, then this is a must use application, if only for the sense of achievement that you will feel when you see the places you have been. Of course it may not be as interesting if you don’t travel much, but it’s still a worthwhile service.

Schmap – beyond the map

This is a service that lets you go “beyond the map”. What Schmap allows you to do is add a map to any of your tweets. But Schmap isn’t limited to this. It allows you to attach photos and notes to any of your tweets. It also allows you to rate a place that you have visited. Obviously, you can see why Schmap can be a useful service. You can recommend restaurants to friends, places of interest, pubs and bars. Your “geotweets” will be very useful to any followers who are going to places you have been. The same is true when you decide to visit a place that your friend has been to.

TrendsMap – maps the changes

Trends change constantly, and where Twitter is concerned, drastically. TrendsMap is a great service that lets you keep track of Twitter trends from around the world. You can get an overview of what people are discussing internationally. These Twitter trends are displayed on a world map through keywords, tags and through @’s. You can track any trend that you deem interesting. You can also search major cities for the latest happenings through TrendsMap.

Long.tud3 – fully customizable

This is a service similar to the Tweography. Any messages that you or your friends post can be seen on a google world map. Live updating is available, and so you can keep track of all the places that your friends are moving to. Custom markers can be chosen, so Long.tud3 is customizable. You can also choose an avatar. As of now, Long.tud3 is simple and easy to use, and is a no frills option for Twitter users.

Stweet – an innovative service

Stweet is an innovative service that uses Google street view to show you the neighborhood from where you received a tweet, or from where you tweeted. You can search for locations, as well as move around certain areas. This service is operational in only a select few places, but the vantage point experience is worth your while.

Platform selection decision should be made wisely

After you complete figuring out your strategy, it is important to select an appropriate platform. There are some basic factors affecting the selection of a platform:

Reports: Identify the process you will use for sharing your information. It is better to actually go for a premier tool when it comes to reports. It is possible to have emailable and embeddable data & charts. You should be able to access them directly via mail as well.

Data: Decide what you actually need to measure and what the appropriate channels are. Otherwise, you will end up measuring data which is not at all required for measurement.

Actionable insights: An analysis is always important to measure your social media campaign; remember, data and actionable insights should not be mixed.

Ease of use: The platform should be easy to use and understand. Otherwise, you or your workers managing the campaign may become confused. Convenience is the key here!

Auditing is important

A basic requirement is to audit the different metrics. Actually, it is important to know where you stand and also where your competitors are. Once the auditing part is complete, you will be able to make your baseline for each month or year.

Another utility of auditing is to understand the customer reactions to specific businesses and products. You will be able to understand the conversation share of different channels and players. Thus, you will know the sectors to check for service issues and also the area where building a relationship with influential and thoughtful leaders is mandatory.

Dig deeper in your channels

For all the channels, it is important to know the volume of conversation. So, a channel wise comparison is recommended for you and also your competitors. You will know which sections are doing well and which require some improvement.

If you take a glance at the customer’s voice, what they are buzzing about and what kind of sentiment is flowing in, you will be able to make most of the opportunities. Suppose, there is some negativity flowing in about your competitor’s product, if you can identify the root cause, you can modify your plan accordingly to acquire one or a set of customer.

Do the A/B Testing

Do you have more than one social media campaigns going on for your product? Then check which of the many campaigns is working best. Check out the methodology it is adopting and try to ensure the same for other campaigns as well.

Social media campaign measurement is not a thing that is one-go kind but it is rather of continuous. The strategy giving you success today may fail in future, so adopt successful strategies, but make sure to implement timely changes as well. Do not be afraid to experiment and measure the results periodically.

Now, if you have understood the difference between monitoring and measuring, try to ensure taking the best possible strategy to success. This will ensure that along with your business’s social media health, other online activities will be benefited as well. Make sure, to take the best steps to ensure that:

A Goal is required

Without a definite goal, it is impossible to achieve success. It is important to understand what you are doing and the reason behind doing so. Before engaging into social media have a plan. Therefore, the metrics you use to measure your social media campaign will vary along with the objective you take:

• If you want to drive awareness about your product, metrics like voice, readership and the engagement of readers is very important.
• If you are looking to increase the satisfaction level among the customers, some metrics like sentiment of customers, success rate of resolving customer needs, the time taken to resolve the query or satisfaction percentage shown in the customer surveys are important.
• If your intention is to create better products through your social media measurement campaign, then depend on the surveys of other competitive products. Measuring the current market trends is also important.
• If you want to develop customer advocacy, then have a look at your advocates. Check on their influence on customers and also their reach. It is also important to know how much they know about your product or business.

For your business, your goal may not match any of the aforementioned conditions. So, make sure to manipulate your goal accordingly.

All your Departments should be on the same page

For a successful social media campaign, co-ordination among different departments is necessary. Otherwise, it will not be possible for them to work together ensuring a common goal.

Now, how you make them co-ordinate is an issue. E-mails are not that useful in this case, rather you may create charts, graphs or a common dashboard which can be accessed by all the concerning departments. Ensure that meetings are being held between those departments on constant basis so that they are updated about each other. For an example, the department finding the latest news relating your business should be in touch with the department taking care of your tweets. Otherwise, same news may be repeatedly tweeted or you may miss some as well.

Context should be considered

It is absolutely meaningless to have a goal that is without context. Suppose, for your business, the social media conversation share is around 35%, that means your campaign is in good health.

So, if the results are good, then the plan taken is correct. Otherwise, you will need to reconsider your approach.

Out of the 7 essential steps, the 3 to start your social media campaign measurement is discussed here. The next article will make you aware of the next essential steps.

For a local business, Facebook places has come as a bless in disguise. Wonder why?

Connect with local people

For a local business, the target market is local people and it is more important to reach them with your services or products rather than others. For an example, if you are selling dairy products through a San Francisco store, you don’t need to make Washington inhabitants aware of your offerings.  Those from Washington are not very likely to visit your restaurant so you know who your primary audiences are.  In the very beginning, you need to tag people interested in your business (It gets easier if you already have a Facebook page devoted to your business from where you can easily pick up fans), then add your business and check it. Now, you can find people related to your business and most importantly who are nearby your business and likely to visit it.

At the same time, local people will be able to find your business quite easily through Facebook places service. So, it’s a both way benefit for your local business.

Page facility comes with places

Find the location where your business is situated, then add your business there at that location. The same thing can be done by any other Facebook user as well. Now, when you click the link “Is this page your business?”, it will automatically become a Facebook page for your business (You need to claim your business through a dialog box opened though) and you can create updates, share some piece of news with your customers via the page.

Remember, to claim your business, you need to upload your license or some other related information of your business. So, including your business to places mean you are authenticated and therefore, your customers can keep faith in your business.

Praising Customers and keeping them

Facebook places can easily help you out to keep your existing customers as well. Encourage your customers to post their favorable experience regarding your business. This is simple word of mouth publicity for your local business.  For certain number of check-ins, give them discounts. Somehow, if your local business becomes a leader among all the places, more and more customers will know about it and profits will pour in.

Though, some security issues have been raised by many, Facebook places service is surely a new feature that can turn local businesses into gold mines provided it is used properly.

What social media is?

First of all, let us do a Social Media 101 class for the people who have no idea about it. The word Media means some kind of advertisement to attract people in. The word Social means a group of people who are united in a place, here the Internet. So Social Media can be defined as the communication or publication of a data within a group of people.

Social media campaigns

You need a mission for your Social Media campaign if you want your product to reach the correct set of people. If you have an NGO, your mission should be to protect the environment. If you own a restaurant, your mission should be focused to make people eat healthy. Even if you don’t have a proper mission, you should have a proper statement. Now, you need to propagate that through various carriers of Social Media – Blog, Facebook, Twitter and many more.

When the Internet world first developed, websites were found. If you allow a teenager of today to access those websites, he will get tired and sick of them. It is probably because those first generation websites were one dimensional. They were like a book which you read. But Social Media has enabled the readers to engage in the news given. They can question your work, ask doubts and appreciate your work if they want to. That is why Social Media has an untouchable place in today’s world.

Furthermore, it facilitates the user to get close with your work. So it is very important to add user engaging elements to your work. If you are hosting a party night at your restaurant, ask the users to pick the theme of the party. Ask them to prioritize the food items they like and hate.

Why do it on your own?

So, why should you do this on your own? Okay. Now let me rephrase the question – why do you like spending more? The very concept of Social Media is to market your goods for free and if you are going to pay for that, you may as well be paying money for your neighbors rent.

Moreover there are some things which will feel alive when you do them yourself. For instance, you cannot hire an actor to marry your fiancé just because he will do it better than you!

If you hire a company to do your social media work, you are just one in hundred clients of him. He will treat you in a way which he does for every other company. But when you do that yourself, you can add a bit of tanginess to your work by adding latest pictures of your place, reviews your users give you on spot and by sharing your upcoming events at your Facebook account. Your readers will feel a bit more close to your place when you yourself update and post the details rather than making some dumbfound company do it.

Easy subscription facilities

The Internet brigade does not know about your business unless it is listed in top search engines like Google and Yahoo. Getting a webpage on top of the search engines results isn’t as easy as you might think. For this, you would have to hire an experienced Search Engine Optimization company and that will cost you huge bucks. But if you go with a blog, let’s say from Blogger (Google’s blogging platform) or From WordPress (Be it the free platform or paid hosting one), you will be given the benefits of SEO for free. After you add a subscribing form to the blog, you can keep in touch will all the users who want your service. This will help you to be in touch with your existing customers as well as making new ones.

Making a loyal customer base

Posting new things periodically is vital for any blog. When you update your blog, the new post will be mailed off to all your subscribers. When your subscribers get a mail from you, they will feel satisfied and appreciated. Making your subscribers feel that way is vital in any business. Now, your subscribers will feel a need to come back to get your service. By this way, you are building up a loyal user base. When you have thousands of users in your subscriber list, a single post in your blog can generate a massive response.

Announcing the news

The most basic usage of a blog is getting the news out! Let us say that you own a café. To increase the popularity of your café, you can mail discount coupons to your subscriber list. This will create a huge frenzy and other people will become your subscribers instantaneously. If you are hosting a sports night, you can post that in your blog. When people other than your regular customers see it, they will automatically want to watch the game with fellow supporters. So they will try to come to your café even if they are not near it. PayPal, as well is a fine example of how a business stays connected with the customer base via the regularly updated blog.

Help the customers to interact

By having a blog, you can always reason with your customers. Few weeks back, PayPal canceled their e-transfer option to Indian users. This created a humongous agitation amongst its Indian users. But they tried to reason every bit of their decision in their blog. Articles from their CEO and other departmental heads were published and that seemed to calm down the Indian users. They felt satisfied with the explanation that the officials gave and waited for the service to resume again. Similarly, having a blog can make users engage with you. It will help them to share their likes and dislikes about your service with you.

These are only the four best pointed out reasons to state the use of having a blog. There are many more to this list and you will begin to understand all of them as soon as you open a blog for yourself. So why are you still waiting?