All Posts, Social Media
Years ago, the only way to really get a companies attention on a product was to picket, rally, or boycott. Even then with all of that, most of the world would never hear a message that minuscule. Well enter social media. Now if you have a product that you don’t like, fails, or has major defects, you can broadcast your complaint not just directly to that company, but to everyone that may be following them online.
Let me give you an example. Same you buy a new anvil from Acme. It arrives fine, but when you open it up, its all scuffed up, poorly packaged, and doesn’t weight a full “1 ton” like advertised. Obviously you’re going to be a little upset because your Road-Runner trap won’t work. Instead of writing an angry complaint letter to Acme, you can go to your Facebook wall and tell the whole story for all of your 300+ friends to see. They immediately read it, and decide they too will no longer use Acme and will seek other vendors. Two weeks later, this small ripple effect starts catching even more wind, and Acme stock prices start to take a hit. A website gets created from another angry user that now has a forum for all other users to unit. They talk about Acme on that site and on the new Facebook groups, Fan pages, Twitter lists, etc. all about how bad Acme’s products are.
Sad thing about that scenario is that Acme never acknowledges the “small” complaints, and before two weeks, what was a snowball has now turned into an avalanche. We are now living in an age where companies can no longer play the elitist role and not listen to their customers and consumers. The mainstream media used to be the choice medium for these types of news, and even they can’t keep up with “right now” stories.
What does this mean for you as a business owner? A few things actually. For starters, you can grow your brand easily by keeping a listening ear to your industry. Listen for complaints to the big boy companies so that you steer clear of those woes. Hone in on your immediate competitors and find out what they’re doing and NOT doing. You can then adjust your sales strategies to fit the gaps, and emerge as the one company who actually services the key niche overlooked by all others in your market.
How do you do it? Simple. Follow your competitors social streams. Why not, I mean if you don’t, they will be following you. Especially as you start to grow your brand and recognition. Engage in consumer complaints. And when I say engage, I don’t mean “sell.” What I mean is to provide alternatives to their complaints. Answer their questions and provide quick fixes to issues. They’ll appreciate you more and most will end up looking to you next time they need that particular service again. No one forgets a bad service experience. Likely, people sing praises about good experiences. I promise, you’d rather be at the tail end of a lengthy complaint that highlights the faults of your competitor, and ends off with a praise to you for providing a solution.
This all takes time, research, and dedication. A lot of businesses are waking up to this new era of “right now” media. Most want to do something about it, but a large percentage won’t take the proper initiative. It may not look like so now, but it is worth the money to hire a social media marketer. If necessary, vet a company out. Ask around, contact their clients for feedback. Or simply contact us here at Design Theory. I know, shameless plug. (could you blame me?) The bottom line is that we all know good news travels – but bad news travels farther and faster. As always I’d love to hear your comments about this. Especially if you have a similar story you’ve experienced!
All Posts, Social Media
By now you’ve already heard of the heavy hitters in social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I could easily list out a lot more, but there’s no need for all of that. Now with all these sites vying for your attention, status updates, friend requests, link sharing, liking, recommending; at what point is all of this “too much?”
I could be biased in my opinion on this because I’m a web designer. Or should I say consultant. Talking with my peers about this very subject matter recently posed the question about “social media noise.” That noise to us is getting a bit louder. Kind of like those TV commercials that purposely run with double the volume than the normal ones regardless of the volume level on your television set.
Why do we call it noise? Well that’s because on our side of things we’re inundated with it all. Our line of business demands that we are fully aware – if not experts on all of the types of media, how they work, and be versed in using them. We need to know their strengths, weaknesses, and their rank against other similar mediums. Now as a business owner, marketer, or average consumer, this may not seem like noise. Most are already conditioned to seeing such buttons and interact with only a few of these sites with much less frequency.
Now let me paint the big picture. Those of you who own or manage websites, already know the value of social media. We don’t need to explain why it is so important. Advertising is huge. And if you look at the progression of ads from just 5 years ago to this date, you can see it has come a long way. But lately, technology has given us ways to purposely limit the ads we see, how we see them, when and where we see them. With a DVR we can skip commercials entirely. With RSS feeds, we can read articles without having to buy a newspaper and fumble through ads. Spam filters block or capture ad emails. Wouldn’t it only make sense that there would be a way to limit the noise or advertisements of social media? Think about it and post your comments below. I’d like to get your feedback and/or debates.
All Posts, Social Media
So the social media giant Facebook held a joint press announcement today with Myspace about a new feature. Some people are wondering if it’s or partnership or the beginning steps of a take-over, but really its being toted as a “mashup”. I’ll let you decide once you finish reading this.
This new product allows MySpace users that also have Facebook accounts to port their Facebook interests, profile, and likes into their MySpace profile. What this does is allow for personalized MySpace media streams of these features to your Facebook profile. You’ll see more or should I say, different posts in your streams and trends in Facebook to reflect the likes, and topics, and such from Myspace. You’ll be able to “like” these options as well and share them along with your other friends. I wonder if this will also worth with Facebook Fan pages? Anyway below are some of the highlights:
- Fans within the Myspace community are connected through “friending” and “following” features of Myspace topic pages and profiles
- Facebook “likes” and “interests” are matched to relevant Myspace topic pages, profiles, video programming and other content in entertainment categories such as, music, celebrities, TV, and movies.
- Tailored recommendations of new topic pages and profiles are surfaced in real-time to enable discovery of new entertainment experiences and greater customization
- Subscriptions to a broad array of entertainment programming, including originals, exclusives and content from around the Web are automatically enabled based on personal preferences and settings
They say this new product will be available in a few hours. I would anticipate by tonight the normal time people get home from work, and normally get on their social media sites they’ll be able to configure these new options.
If you’re one of the millions of active members on Facebook and are active on your Myspace account, this is probably something that you’ll enjoy. Being able to cross polinate your likes back and fourth will help with bridging a gap between friends of different sectors of your life. Another words, the people interests you associate with on Myspace will easily seen by your parents and aunts on Facebook. I’ve always seen Myspace as underground rave party and Facebook as the clean and spiffy afterschool club. But that’s just my opnion. What do you think about this new feature? Will Myspace see more traffic because of it? Is Facebook testing the waters on a possible take-over in the near future?
All Posts, Social Media
No matter what your business is, a blog is increasingly being regarded as a necessity. From architecture, to web design, having a blog to talk on your relevant subject matter is a great way to show knowledge and offer tips on your industry.
- You’ll learn more about your industry by blogging. You’ll be forced to continually learn more specific details about your trade, and also find a need to keep your finger on the pulse of newest developments. By blogging about up to the minute topics, search engines will see your blog posts on relevant topics and you’ll actually show up. For example, when Apple does a press conference about a new device, sites like Engadget and Mashable are already talking about it (in some ways live) on their sites.
- An audience will see you as the authority on a subject matter. Do you have inside tips on how to flip realty properties? Well the more you give out this “coveted” information, the more people will visit your site looking for more. And they’ll tell others about your site and blog too. Why? Because the tips you’re providing are practical, and actually work. So going forward, they’ll look to you before even trying Google!
- The ability to engage. What you blog about, people will be able to respond do. Which is nice because for one you get to hear great feedback (good or bad) about what you’re talking about, and also it grows your contact list. These responders will be registered on your site to comment, which gives you their contact information for your newsletters and such.
- To help people. It’s not always about pushing your products and services. It should be more about how you can give back to your community. I think this is a key element because it shows how humble your business is. And if a visitor to your site feels comfortable with you (even having to never have met you), chances are they’ll contact you for services.
- A Social Media hub. As you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites, you link back to your blog on relevant subjects. So if you wrote a new blog post, you should tweet about the subject and link it back to your blog. Same with this the other sites. The hope is that your followers Re-Tweet it, “Like” it, and share it among their friends and followers. This also amplifies your message to lengths that you would otherwise never be able to reach.
- Blogging grows your network. The more you blog and circulate your posts among people on your lists and followers, the more search engines will pick you up in organic searches, and the more visibility your blog will get from people all around the internet.
- Promoting your product and services. Just released some new software that will help save people 30 or more minutes in conversions or calculations? Well put out a press release on your blog about it. Talk about the details, how it works, why it is better than your competition’s software, and how compatible it may be with existing software.
- Compensations. Yes successful blogs do actually make money. Maybe not enough to quit your day job over, but you can make some change by hosting ads on your blog pages. At first it may start with free ad placements from various local or lesser known companies. Eventually as you grow your traffic, you can sell these ad spaces to reputable vendors for their products and services. You’ll want to keep things relevant to your trade and industry.
- RSS and syndication. One of the first things you need to do is setup an RSS so that people can sign up and get your newest posts directly to their RSS readers. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. So that means each time you hit that “publish” button, you readers will get your post directly to their emails, smart phones, and RSS readers almost instantly.
- Because it’s fun. Yes blogging can be fun. I think at first it is seemed as a necessary task, but eventually it becomes something you’ll enjoy doing. Especially when you hear feedback from your readers. The more engaged they become the more you want to provide quality content for them to read and pass along to others.
Do you have some other tips to ad to this? We’d love to hear them in your comments below.
Social Media
Unless you’ve been diligently dodging the news of late, you are fully aware of the rants and complaints to online user privacy. Specifically from users and former users of Facebook. I’m not going to get into that too much because it isn’t necessary and I may post some links to articles you can read if you want.
Here’s the thing you really should be paying attention to; your digital profile. As a web designer and social media user, my information is all over the place. Most of which I knowingly posted and signed up to share. Some of which I did not particularly care to have shared about or past my set restrictions. As I Google my own name I find interesting websites that have farmed my information and added to their sites. Some relevant, and some not. What’s becoming a bit alarming to me is how my “digital profile” is starting to look like a social security number.
Why is this alarming? Well because if you’re one of the millions out of work and submitting your resume online to many different job forums, and career sites, your information isn’t always nested and secured within those sites. So yes, employers are searching for you by name and through Facebook, or Yahoo, and other social sites and engines. And yes they’re finding information. We all know banks check your credit history, but should they be allowed to follow your online history? What TV shows you “liked”? What web forums your signed up to (gun, porn, racial, gaming, etc). Even parents are getting into this by checking out their neighbors, or they’re children’s friends parents, or potential babysitter.
Remember cookies? Sure you do. Just as much of a pain that they were before, they are again now. Through these cookies websites like Facebook can see where you’ve been and associate that with your Facebook profile. They then use that to calculate the best advertisements you’d be interested in to try and pitch to you. Smart right? Haven’t you noticed the plethora of ads in the free apps on your smartphone? Those ads will be getting even smarter soon.
Moral of the story is to check out your online profile. There are sites that you can request to remove your personal information. Not all but there are some. For more details please feel free to contact us.
