Socially Satisfied: Search and Social Hawaii

Becky Carroll, @bcarroll7, founder of Petra Consulting and author of, “The Hidden Power of Your Customer” hosts this session. This talk is about social media and employees [she says the name of the session is misleading]. What she is going to talk about applies to bigger companies but the small company should consider this.

According to research, 87 percent of Americans online use social media.

Customer loyalty is a social media sweet spot. That is what her book is about.

There’s a lot you can do in social to help your customers feel good about your company.

Four keys to grow business using social:

• Relevant marketing
• Orchestrated customer experience
• Customer focused culture
• Killer customer service

Eighty-one percent of Fortune 500 firms have a social media policy but only 31 percent have a formalized program for these policies. Training and policies together are important, not as a stand alone.

Training

• Three good reasons for training: Understand expectations, ramifications and supports company if legal issues arise.

What does training look like?

• Branding and communications
• Difference between personal and corporate
• Importance of disclosure
• Social media voice
• Actions to avoid

Sharing the knowledge:

• Make social media part of the on-boarding process
• Existing employees
• Partners, vendors and execs
• Refresh annually at least, review quarterly

Ongoing process:

• Get creative and share information more to the employees
• Best practice sharing sessions with practitioners – everyone meets and learns from each other.
• Create certification. Intel has one. You can get a “black belt” in social from the company. They have about 60 classes.
• Update immediately after crisis and events.

Policies: A Safety Net

• You have to want an environment that makes it easy to succeed
• SocialMediaGovernance.com is a great resource for best practices.
• Some of the best social media policies are Coca-Cola, IBM, Kodak, to name a few.

It takes a team:

• Social strategist
• Training
• Marketing
• Legal
• Product
• Web development

Trust and verify:

• Watch and listen. There needs to be a monitoring program. What are people saying about you and your competitors? What are your employees saying?
• Lots of free tools such as Wildfire’s social media monitor, Google Alerts, etc.

Case Study: Best Buy

• Best Buy staff = 180,000 of 24 years or younger. Ideal candidate for a policy.
• Customer service on Twitter: @twelpforce

Resources:

• Social Business, Smart Business by Michael Brito
• Social Media Today, Social Media Examiner (sites)
• Community Roundtable (site)

Jessica Lee is the founder and chief creative for bizbuzzcontent Inc., a marketing boutique that focuses on digital content strategy and professional writing services for businesses.

See Jessica's author page for links to connect on social media.