Posts Tagged ‘communication’

• Are you still ignoring Facebook?

  Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

  Major companies block access to it, many poo-poo it as the haunt of the shallow-minded seeking to share their everyday trivia with the world, and many marketers just haven’t adapted it into their social media strategy. (Usually for at least the above reasons – there are more).

  And yet, Facebook is now the number 1 communications tool according to a survey by Prompt Communications. Netimperative state in their article:

  When consumers were asked which method they used most frequently to communicate, 37 percent said SMS followed by Facebook and the phone at 28 percent. Respondents feel that email is now less important than social media, but only 20 percent said they could live without it entirely.

  So, are you giving your potential and existing customers every opportunity to communicate with you using the method fo their choice? Also, just before you ramp up a new email marketing campaign, think about who your target audience are and which methods they might respond best to. Do you need to be looking at integrated marketing media rather than sticking to the same old techniques?

  Tags: communication, facebook, marketing, sms
  Posted in Social Media, Stats & Trends | No Comments »

• Is there still a place for forums?

  Thursday, November 19th, 2009

  Having spent much time over the years in forums, it strikes me that forums are being ignored by many in their internet marketing mix with the dash to incorporate Twitter and other social media.

  However, there is much value in forums, which cannot be replicated in such depth using the likes of Twitter or Facebook. It all seems to hang around community and the level of engagement that occurs in forums, which is difficult to maintain in other noisy and fast-moving environments.

  Additionally, for many people, forums have become a place where they hang out regularly, recognise old faces, welcome new ones, and get to know and respect (or not) each other’s views and thinking over a period of time.

  There are obviously forums which struggle to achieve this ambience and sense of community, often not helped when forums are inundated, as the UK ones are, by people from other countries seeking to promote to the UK market rather than use the forums for their primary purpose – sharing and communication.

  For the many who operate small businesses, SOHOs or one man bands, forums can become a social scene as much as a place to seek expert advice, and threats or dilution of that environment are often taken badly. Beware the guard dogs!

  When you need an SEO or SEM answer or an opinion in a timely manner, do you head to:

  a) Twitter

  b) Yahoo Answers

  c) your favourite forum – which?

  d) a forum from a search result

  e) offline eg colleagues via mobile, phone, email etc

  f) somewhere else? Where?

  Let us know!!

  

  Tags: communication, community, forum, marketing, search, Social Media, twitter
  Posted in Small Business Resources, Social Media | No Comments »

• Communicate with your visitors/customers

  Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

  It’s strange but even in 2009, some companies seem determined to hold their customers and site visitors at arm’s length, making it nigh on impossible to contact or communicate with them.

  Whether the customer has an enquiry, a complaint, a business proposal, or just wants to say how fab the product is, if you do not provide multiple routes to communicate, and then MONITOR points of contact and respond to anyone and everyone endeavouring to reach you, you are going to lose business.

  Obviously, if you are a major brand, the damage to reputation caused by a single person whingeing on a forum about the fact they can’t reach anyone at your company may have a minimal impact on your branding. But when people type onto forums, Twitter, Facebook etc and that comment is then pushed out to multiple, interlinked sites, asking “Does anyone have an email address for a real person at XYZ?”, the implication there is that you have  little interest in your potential and actual customers.

  The facts need not even be known.

  How many attempts at contact have already been made? How important is the query? Is it life or death? Have repeated attempts to reach a human been met only by automated messages sent by autoresponder? Are the phones not being answered?

  None of us in reading the request for an email address need to know the answer to any of those questions. The implication is clear. XYZ company are difficult, nay impossible, to get hold of by the normal routes. So, Mr Desperate of Acacia Avenue has decided to put it out on to the blogosphere, twittersphere, to everyone he can think of to find a way to reach XYZ.

  Whether it was a completely trivial reason to ask, or a vitally important one threatening a multi-million pound business venture, none of us are likely to ever know. But, when any of us think of XYZ company in the future, our perception is likely to be tainted by that one question. And the assumption which goes with it, which is that XYZ don’t know how to operate a business where customers matter.

  

  Tags: Brand, business, communication, E-mail address, internet marketing
  Posted in Social Media, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »