Sumolabs

How Not to React to Negative Customer Feedback...

I recently assisted a friend of mine who works at a large corporation in the US. He is in the marketing department, and I helped him setup some basic monitoring tools using Netvibes.

Often times, I would peak at the brand monitor to see what was being said or whether I could improve the monitoring for him.

One day, I stumbled upon a particularly bad post, where a number of disgruntled customers were being very vocal about how dissatisfied they were with a recent product decision.

I notified my friend, and indicated that his marketing department should be aware of the conversation and authentically join it to resolve the issue.

What happened, baffled me. When I visited the next day, there were 5 or so posts, all written in the same tone (but allegedly by different people) defending the product decision and stating how it was the right decision to make and "everyone should be happy". This was not the response I expected from such a large company.

I was a bit shocked: It was all clearly written by one person, and it made the company appear ever more negatively in the eyes of their customers.

Rule for Social Media: Be Authentic. Be Honest.

My Definition of Social Media:

Let's beat a dead horse.

What exactly is social media? Here is how I define it:

Social media is the ecosystem of conversations and interactions around traditional content AND user generated content.

These conversations and interactions are enabled by various technologies, including, but not limited to, blogs, wikis, podcasts, microblogging (i.e. twitter), social networks (i.e. facebook), RSS, forums, rating sites and UGC websites (i.e. YouTube). Anything that facilitates these conversations and interactions can be seen as being part of social media.

Simple. Factual. I don't try to scare people with the whole "the media world has been completely turned upside down". Baby steps, People, Baby Steps.

Targeting Influencers in Social Media Campaigns

Many people in social media are following one variation or another of the Forrester POST method.

In a nutshell:

• People - Understand how your customers are using social technologies
• Objectives - Define your objectives
• Strategy - Define your strategy for social media
• Technology - Select the technologies that you want to use (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, or whatever startup has their current 6 months of fame)

This is great. Social media is chaos and this gives us a pragmatic approach to developing social media strategies to coalesce the mess.

However, I sometimes feel like we spend too much time simply thinking about how the target demographic interact with social technologies. My colleague, Lorraine, and I, spent lots of time talking last week about how targeting the influencers of a target demographic is almost as important as the primary.

For example, consider trying to raise awareness for a particularly embarrassing medical exam, the prostate exam. The target demographic here is men over 40+, but several other demographic have influence over our primary: Fathers, Wives, Kids, etc. A social media campaign can engage any of these groups, educate them, and drive them to inform the primary demographic on the facts and importance about the exam (and ultimately get them into the Doctor's office).

Obviously, different campaigns would be needed for influencers vs. the target demographic, each with their own set of key performance indicators. As such, we need to look at how these influences utilize social technologies as well (if we are to target them with a separate campaign)

Are social media technologies making people less social in 'real life' ?

A hot topic of debate lately amongst my professional colleagues, friends, and fiancee has been concerning whether or not social media technologies are making people less social in 'real life' (and the consequences of less face to face contact). Often times this argument will be solely about youth, and other times regarding any participant of social media.

I am going to present the two main arguments of others, my own opinions, and request your thoughts about where the next generation culture is heading culturally.

Let's get our hands dirty.

THE ARGUMENT: Social Media is decreasing (or will decrease) the amount of face to face time upcoming generations spend with each other.

I refute that this is not the case. More and more research is showing us that not only are social technologies helping people connect in the digital world, but they are facilitating more meaningful connections in the real world. Relationships are now made based on interests and not by convenience. Take for example a young girl suffering from Crohn's Disease. She is now able to use social media to connect with others who share similar disorders and form deeper and more understanding relationships. Or, on the more entertaining side, take the Beard Team USA (http://usabeard.blogspot.com/) which is a place where beard obsessed men of all sorts can share pictures and engage in discussion. The only part of this argument I acknowledge is that without variety and people of different interests getting together, creativity and therefore progress is stiffened (I have no rebuttal for this other than "That is what businesses and corporations are for -- bringing together people that wouldn't normally get along").

My primary counter argument is this: My generation grew up with Television which was a one way medium. The generation before grew up with TV and Radio -- still one way mediums. In the same way our parents worried about us watching TV instead of hanging with friends, we now do the same for the upcoming generations regarding social technologies.

There is a key difference through: This is the first generation since the time of the troubadours and storytellers where the primary form of human entertainment is two way and interactive.

I do think social media is game changing. I think we are just returning to a time when things were more social. The difference is now that our ability to be social is no longer limited to spatial time and place. Are we are moving towards a world wide collective consciousness where borders are only things of government legacy? That may or may not be a stretch.

My secondary argument is this: When mail, email, the telegraph or the telephone became popular -- did people stop visiting their friends and loved ones? Did it make people more social or less social? Social media/networking is simply a communication medium which in my view isn't terribly distinct from mail, email, telephone and the telegraph.

THE ARGUMENT: Social media allows people with social disorders to 'hide' behind their computers and not learn the social rules of the 'real world'.

Recently, I was debating with a smart colleague of mine, Daniel, and he stated that he believed a friend of his has a social problem. She sits at home all day on Facebook (et al) talking to friends without ever leaving the house. His argument (Dan - please correct me if I am wrong) was that -- if not for social media -- she would be out and about willfully socializing with people on the street, in the coffee shop, or at the library. Unfortunately I don't buy it. It is my perception that social media is, in her case, helping her form relationships despite what social disorder or anxiety she has. I believe, that if not for social media, she would be spending more time feeling alone, feeling neglected, feeling isolated, and depressed.

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To revisit my main underlying argument: I believe that Social Media is this generation's Television. There will be complaints of "addiction", "people losing track of time", but at least kids won't be "anti social" anymore. At least not fully.

Furthermore, I believe social media is helping many people with social problems get over their social fears and become more social via the internet.

I am excited to have you rebuttal these thoughts.

Imagining the potential of Portable Social Graphs

A few of the lads over at Razorfish put together a deck exploring the potential of portable social graphs (albeit through a Facebook Connect lens -- can you tell Microsoft owns a slice of Razorfish and Facebook?).

It is a great perspective on what will be possible in a few years without having to have 'friending' or 'friend importing' built into websites anymore. It will all be automagic.