The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I clearly remember the wild use of this aphorism by a number of people while growing up. What this means is that crisis can arise anytime without prior announcement, what would you do when that happens. Sometime in December, Justine Sacco, the then PR manager of the New York-based internet empire InterActive Corp, shortly before she boarded the flight on Friday tweeted: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” To cut the long story short, the company had to manage the social media crisis by firing her and issuing a long press statement because they did not understand that if no action is taken the incidence would have hurt them badly.
Social media and other associated crisis in your business could occur when the public begins spreading negative remarks regarding your company on various popular social media channels in a manner that adversely affects the overall image of your organisation, which could arise as a result of your action or inaction; other than its enduring credibility and market reputation, built over an extended period of time.
Whether the business you own is moderately small or it may even be a prominent international brand, businesses of nearly every kind are known to have sometimes suffered the overpowering pressures of severe crisis generated through the social media platforms like the example given above.
Companies Must Manage Their Social Media Effectively:
In the very first place, efficient management of social media is termed essential for prevention or solution of any kind of crisis that may occur in the scope of your engagement with social media. Firstly, there is no role that technologies have to play here. Besides, it is also not regarding just how good you are at making the most of prominent social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other such platforms.
Managing Social Media Calls for a Lot More:
Management of social media is about how you manage people and your effectual relationships with them. During all your social media engagements you will need to deal with real people. As such, you will consistently need to look for paths that could help you in winning their hearts, along with their unwavering trust. Expensive and fanciful advertorial campaigns alone may not suffice as an all time resolve in helping you achieve that target. Through experience, you will soon learn that this really calls for a lot more than just that.
Naturally, there are many questions that come to mind, including: what could be the possible benefits of social media to your specific type of business? How could organisations use it to grow their bottom-line? What social media success tips must you search for or learn? Are there any specific benefits of ICT to productivity? What you must learn and understand at this point is how a relatively straight forward equation, termed as the “Earn Your Social Plus”, may be effectively applied for maximum gain to your business. A team must be put on ground that quickly monitors and tackles issues related to social media crisis as soon as they arise.
The ‘Social Plus’ Equation:
If the ‘social plus’ of your business is greater than its ‘social minus’, then your management of social media can be termed as simply fabulous and, conversely, if the ‘social minus’ of your business by far exceeds its ‘social plus’, then you should certainly take for granted that your management of social media is now in dangerously deep waters, and is desperately screaming out for immediate assistance! It is important to get the word of more positive news about your business out there on social media.
Social Plus Vs Social Minus:
Social plus is referred to as something which particularly stands out positively where your brand or overall business is concerned. For instance, that could be a ‘Like’ for your page or a great post on Facebook, a note of appreciation from one of your customers who is particularly impressed with a product or service rendered by your business, the comment of your satisfied customer who commends you via some social media channel, a great press review and many other such things.
On the other hand, social minus is referred to as something which may be publicly seen to reflect as an issue that has a negative overbearing, in particular when it boils down to your business, its performance or predominant ethics. For instance, negative feedback from a customer or criticism posted on your social media page, outright bad or poor online press reviews about your business, customer complaints or discontented employees venturing to air their grievances through social media channels, in addition to other such and similar discerning matters of public concern.
Solving Social Media Related Crisis:
Crisis related to social media is mostly a probable outcome of poor management of your social media setup. It often becomes apparent when your business slackens down and begins gaining on the social minus scorecard. What’s more, the social minus impact gets so overwhelming that it soon starts magnifying itself in a matter of hours, if not earlier.
Hence, to resolve such an impending crisis of social media, you must first acknowledge and admit your mistakes, which helps in increasing your social plus score to levels that now exceed the social minus side. In this manner, you will be encouraging the public to regain the faith and trust they were beginning to lose in your brand and overall business.
In conclusion, creation of social plus ought to be on the priority list of every businessman and woman who aims at running a successful company in today’s stringent social media environment. Spending large amounts on advertising does not create a social plus for you; it’s a lot more about excellent customer care and service. Since, that’s all it takes, start creating your social plus – right now!
Relationship of Your Business with Social Media
People are probably by now bored with hearing words such as: social media describes one’s online presence. The truth nevertheless is that today ever more people are steadily turning towards various outlets on social media for information, be it business or otherwise. For many businesses this implies that an increasing number of customers are now ranking places where they conduct business by first verifying how accessible a company is when it comes to social media presence on different sites. Larger corporate entities such as Pepsi, Coke, and many other companies have special divisions entirely devoted to developing and maintaining a highly visible presence on social media platforms, keeping a close watch on their online presence, as well as facilitating customers to enjoy vastly improved interactions with these organisations.
Customers, on their part, now commonly buy products and services from those they could directly relate to. For years, businesses have seen a growing push towards local shopping and the support that home-grown business derives from this trend. A recent ‘Bain & Company’ study indicates that customers spend 20-40 per cent more cash with companies they could directly engage with through social media channels. If you succeed in using social media aptly, by making wise and timely decisions, and are able to target your audience correctly, your business too could benefit on a vast scale from the enormous bank of opportunities created by this growing global trend.
There are several reasons for customers to shop from your company. They either like the products, need the products, or simply want to have them. As generally observed, in a number of cases, your customers will turn towards you because of an interest commonly shared between both of you. To develop a meaningful relationship with your customers, that also convinces them to put their trust in your products and of course you as well, you will need to post some useful information on commonly shared interests. If you mean to form a meaningful connection with them, a proven means of doing that would be through your blog posts.
So, you must learn a few helpful blogging techniques that will come in handy, when initiating a direct connection to your audience. This is a subtle marketing technique that is guaranteed to strike a pleasant chord with your customers. They are curious to know if your business has diversity, and that it is not centred on just what could be readily sold to them at the first given opportunity.
An informal, simple survey is all that it takes to learn about what social media websites your customers tend to commonly frequent. Take time out to create a good survey format, send it out to them, and do a small compilation exercise as soon as you have assimilated the needed data. Apply this information to target areas most frequented by your customers. If done with a little devotion, you would soon be on the path to guaranteed success. So, what’s the wait and why lose your precious time, while the world could be an oyster for you!
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