SMBs should be social – tips from The NOW Revolution

The monthly Triangle AMA (American Marketing Association) meeting at Brier Creek Country Club in Raleigh was last week. Each attendee had the pleasure of hearing a presentation from Amber Naslund and Jay Baer about their book The NOW Revolution. The talk was filled with humor and entertainment; Jay even cracked on my coworker Chris Moody for having so many connections & friends.

Amber & Jay kicked off the event with an example of how every customer is a reporter. They pulled up a “highly negative” tripadvisor.com review of a budget hotel. The review was funny and effective; no one in the AMA audience will ever plan a trip to this hotel. Not only are the friends and family of this reviewer hearing of his horror movie like experience but the thousands of TripAdvisor users are hearing it.

Marketers have created their own Frankenstein; we now have real-time business. There is no time to call a meeting to decide how to respond to each review or tweet. This information is immediately public. Social media changes the company/buyer relationship from a master-to-servant relationship to a peer-to-peer relationship.

Responding to real-time business

To adapt to the changes and success of social, companies must be faster, smarter, & more social.

Amber & Jay emphasized that doing social and being social are different. Having a Twitter account doesn’t make a company social. What makes a company social is the ability to trust employees enough to empower them to respond consistently to thanks & complaints.

ThinkGeek.com has a strong culture and they act like one organism. They hire for passion and train for skill. One of the first screening questions for interviews is “Star Wars or Star Trek?” This question is asked to each potential employee from the President down to warehouse workers. By asking this simple question, they have put a barrier up to restrict non-geeks to working for them.

Don’t just pick up the positive phone calls

Social Interaction Steps

1. Thank people for compliments, and apologize for complaints.
   • Complaints are an opportunity for market research. Without the complaint, your company would be unaware of an occurring issue.
   • Studies have shown that people who observe companies responding to complaints have a more positive view of that brand.
2. Reward
   • Sweet Leaf Tea responds to some positive comments with a coupon; they respond to negative feedback with an apology & a coupon.
   • Customers want to be heard. It is a missed opportunity when a customer keeps trying to attract the attention of a brand and the brand is not listening.
     

Social should be a skill and not a job. Just like typing documents started as someone’s job and is now a skill everyone needs to know, so is social for a company seeking to keep up.

Follow Jay Baer (@jaybaer) and Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra)