Social media is a concept that bubbled up through the masses starting, roughly speaking, around 2005. While social media sites like MySpace and Facebook began as ways for primarily young people to find each other and keep in touch, corporations soon saw how these sites could be used to improve customer relations. By 2009 social media begun to revolutionize the way corporations managed customer relations.
According to IT research and advisory company Gartner, by 2010 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will be using social media in some form as a way to improve customer relations. That's the good news. Gartner also posits that over half of the companies using social media for this function will do it wrong and actually harm customer relations. Gartner suggests that companies focus their analysis on customer online buying in order to offer a direct calculation of return on investment in terms of sales and customer loyalty coming through social media sites.
Gartner has said that there are four steps that businesses need to pursue so as to use social media successfully as a means to improve and manage customer relations. The first step is to clearly define what the purpose of the social and media initiative is. The second step is that a company must be willing to surrender some control over social media as a means to customer relations, because the public at large wants to "own" part of the relationship as a reward for their participation.
The third step is that companies actually have to focus on rewards for those customers that participate in social networking. For example, they may vote on, rate contributions or information on the site, etc. The fourth and final step is that companies must have their own in-house staff who can head up social media customer relations as an initiative. Using social media for customer relations should never be done as a throwaway. Instead, someone should be devoted to its use and impact full time, with ancillary staff as necessary.
There is no question that social networking has changed the behavior of a critical mass of individuals as customers and prospects. According to Gartner, they can no longer be described adequately based on demographic information, which is the usual target for corporate customer relations efforts.
However, with that said, don't spend a lot of time or effort in trying to use social media as a focus with any great effort unless you know will pay off by driving truly valuable traffic to your website.
Non-linear Creations did a year's study of five social media sites, and their effects. These social media sites were Stumbleupon, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. It was determined after that year that social media sites drove about'% of its site visitors from referring sites in aggregate.
In the Case of Non-linear Creations, Linkedin and Facebook outperformed the other social media sites. That's important, but it isn't the whole story. What about conversion rates? Non-linear Creations measured conversion rates by whether visitors downloaded one of their white papers, subscribed to their blog or newsletter, or contacted them by phone or email. In this case - driving real prospects - Linkedin outperformed the other sites. Traffic from Linkedin was much more likely to convert than the average site visitor. Other social media sites actually underperformed the average.
There's no guarantee that Linkedin will give your company the tangible results that Non-linear Creations got. It probably depends on what type of business you have. It is not quite understood what the less tangible benefits are of reaching customers online in a way that makes them feel as if the brand is listening and cares enough to interact in the way they desire. One of the things people dislike about customer support call centers is their anonymous feel. It keeps them from feeling a sense of relationship to the brand. So far no obvious downsides of using social media for customer service, so it would seem to be in any company's best interests to use this form of outreach.
Creating accounts on social media sites certainly is not hard. It is difficult, though, to interact with customers, listen to them, and analyze online visitor numbers to see which social media sites give the most return on investment in terms of more business or other chosen metrics. Once you know, you can then determine how much effort you should put into making those social media referrers that have been less effective, more effective. - 33376
According to IT research and advisory company Gartner, by 2010 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will be using social media in some form as a way to improve customer relations. That's the good news. Gartner also posits that over half of the companies using social media for this function will do it wrong and actually harm customer relations. Gartner suggests that companies focus their analysis on customer online buying in order to offer a direct calculation of return on investment in terms of sales and customer loyalty coming through social media sites.
Gartner has said that there are four steps that businesses need to pursue so as to use social media successfully as a means to improve and manage customer relations. The first step is to clearly define what the purpose of the social and media initiative is. The second step is that a company must be willing to surrender some control over social media as a means to customer relations, because the public at large wants to "own" part of the relationship as a reward for their participation.
The third step is that companies actually have to focus on rewards for those customers that participate in social networking. For example, they may vote on, rate contributions or information on the site, etc. The fourth and final step is that companies must have their own in-house staff who can head up social media customer relations as an initiative. Using social media for customer relations should never be done as a throwaway. Instead, someone should be devoted to its use and impact full time, with ancillary staff as necessary.
There is no question that social networking has changed the behavior of a critical mass of individuals as customers and prospects. According to Gartner, they can no longer be described adequately based on demographic information, which is the usual target for corporate customer relations efforts.
However, with that said, don't spend a lot of time or effort in trying to use social media as a focus with any great effort unless you know will pay off by driving truly valuable traffic to your website.
Non-linear Creations did a year's study of five social media sites, and their effects. These social media sites were Stumbleupon, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. It was determined after that year that social media sites drove about'% of its site visitors from referring sites in aggregate.
In the Case of Non-linear Creations, Linkedin and Facebook outperformed the other social media sites. That's important, but it isn't the whole story. What about conversion rates? Non-linear Creations measured conversion rates by whether visitors downloaded one of their white papers, subscribed to their blog or newsletter, or contacted them by phone or email. In this case - driving real prospects - Linkedin outperformed the other sites. Traffic from Linkedin was much more likely to convert than the average site visitor. Other social media sites actually underperformed the average.
There's no guarantee that Linkedin will give your company the tangible results that Non-linear Creations got. It probably depends on what type of business you have. It is not quite understood what the less tangible benefits are of reaching customers online in a way that makes them feel as if the brand is listening and cares enough to interact in the way they desire. One of the things people dislike about customer support call centers is their anonymous feel. It keeps them from feeling a sense of relationship to the brand. So far no obvious downsides of using social media for customer service, so it would seem to be in any company's best interests to use this form of outreach.
Creating accounts on social media sites certainly is not hard. It is difficult, though, to interact with customers, listen to them, and analyze online visitor numbers to see which social media sites give the most return on investment in terms of more business or other chosen metrics. Once you know, you can then determine how much effort you should put into making those social media referrers that have been less effective, more effective. - 33376
About the Author:
To find out more about Social Media, visit David Baxter's site www.SmartMediaInnovations.com to help strengthen your customer relations today.
