With so many companies still struggling to make sense of social media, it baffles me to see the same mistake being made over and over again. Forget the new and innovative uses for social media. Start with the basics. Treat social media like the telephone.

Your Bottom Line Is Calling

Social media is not a megaphone. It’s a two way vehicle for conversation. You talk to customers, they talk to you. Would you ever ignore a customer who called you? Would you let the phone ring and ring, or let messages go unreturned? If you would, social media isn’t your problem, caring about your customers is.

Before your open your Twitter account, consider what customers and prospects might ask you, not just what you want to say to them.

• Will they ask you product questions?
• Pricing?
• Order status?
• Will they ask you how to locate a store?
• How to contact someone within the company?
• How to special order something?
• How to return a product they don’t like?

You can’t go into social media thinking only about what you want to say. That’s like picking up a ringing telephone and talking into it without listening. You have to know what your customers and prospects are asking, and you have to be prepared to answer those questions.

Crickets

Three times (that I can recall) in the past few months, I’ve addressed different companies on Twitter. Once I wanted to purchase a product and needed to know where to buy. Once I had gotten the wrong product delivered and needed help getting my order fixed. And once I was complimenting a company on a job well done.

Three times I got no response.

The company who’d gotten my order wrong might not have responded because they didn’t want to help me. That’s bad service, but at least the lack of response makes sense. The other two are complete mysteries. Why wouldn’t a company answer a question telling a customer where to buy their product? Why wouldn’t a company thank (or better yet, retweet) a satisfied customer?

Many businesses open Twitter, Facebook and even GooglePlus accounts because they think they have to. It seems like the thing to do. While it may be wise to secure your name on social networks, giving customers the impression that they can interact with you on social networks only to ignore them is worse than not being there at all.

It’s Not All New

Were a customer to call a company with the same question or complaint, a customer service representative would have to deal with it. Perhaps what’s happening is that companies that don’t have good answers to customer service challenges are simply ignoring them entirely on social media, whereas on the phone their customer service reps are talking but not actually helping.

Social media is about interacting with customers and prospects. Businesses have done this forever. It happens in person when someone enters a physical store. It happens when a customer picks up the phone and calls. Now it’s happening on your Facebook page or via Twitter. The vehicle may be new but the principles aren’t. You can’t ignore your customers. Pretend it’s the telephone if that makes it easier.

The hard part isn’t answering a customer, it’s figuring out how to solve their problems.

[Image credit: Zvone Lavric]

Social business is the phrase of the day. The fact that it’s used in so many ways suggests that we don’t have agreement about what it is. I’ve considered whether it’s real, and I’m not the first to ask that question. Others debate who is qualified to provide social business consulting.

When a phrase appears out of nowhere but is widely touted as the most important thing a business can do for survival, we owe it to ourselves and our customers to be really precise about the definition.

When we have trouble defining something, we tend to offer examples. When I see examples of good customer service being referred to a social business, even when that positive interaction gets a tweet, I have to pause and ask if that’s really accurate.

Social Media Marketing versus Social Business

Social media marketing is about using social tools to share marketing messages and increase demand for offerings. It’s a function of sales and marketing, and is limited in scope and function within a company. Social business takes a more broad look at how social tools, and in fact the idea of being social impacts a company. Social business changes the way companies interact with customers, suppliers and partners, how data is gathered and shared and how core business processes are managed.

Given those two definitions, it’s easy to see why we’d take customer service and put it in the category of social business. But is that really right?

A company that chooses not to be a “social business” might still have great customer service. Companies have been differentiating on their treatment of customers (at all stages of the sales and support process) since long before there was social anything, and long before there was an internet. To suddenly take a basic element of how all businesses operate and call it social business doesn’t make sense to me. Our job is to see how things fit together, not to view everything through our social lens.

Is It A Foundation?

That said, there is a relationship between customer service and social, though it seems to me that it exists at both the social media marketing and social business levels. If you treat customers poorly, social tools will amplify that. That will be true whether your company chooses to use social tools to market or not. If your customers are using them, your reputation of bad service will precede you.

If your goal is to use social tools for marketing, respect for and good treatment of customers and prospects is required. All the basic practices for participation in social media come back to this. Listen more than you talk. Share the work of others. Respond to comments, don’t just blast out your own information. If you aren’t actually interested in the people you’re talking to, social isn’t likely to be effective.

What about for a social business? What role does customer service play there? Let’s refer back to IBM’s definition which says that a social business is:

• Engaged—deeply connecting people, including customers, employees, and partners, to be involved in productive, efficient ways.
• Transparent—removing boundaries to information, experts and assets, helping people align every action to drive business results.
• Nimble—speeding up business with information and insight to anticipate and address evolving opportunities.

If a company does these things, a customer talks to the right person when she wants to, and that person has the right information to address the customer’s need. The company also has the data to stay ahead of upcoming trends and anticipate market needs. These are elements of providing truly great customer service, beyond getting a polite person on the phone (who may or may not be able to help you).

The Relationship Between Customer Service and Social

Are these reasonable conclusions?

• Good customer service can be mutually exclusive from social. Not every example of good customer service is social business, even if someone tweets about it.
• A company that has bad customer service will likely suffer even more because of social tools, whether that company chooses to use them or not.
• A true social business will be even better positioned to serve customers well.

What do you think? What role do you think customer service plays in social media and social business?

 [Image credit: Thad Zajdowicz]

If you’re using social media as an individual or a small organization, you probably have just one account on each of your key social networks. But when your organization is larger or more complex, it can be hard to know how many accounts to have. For example, IBM has lots of Twitter accounts depending on the brand, business unit or country. In working with local government, the same question arises. Do we offer one Facebook page for the town? One for the town and one for the Board of Education?

If you offer one account when you really need several, you run the risk of giving people too much information they’re not interested in. They may disconnect. If you go too granular, users may get frustrated that they have to Like 6 different Facebook pages or follow 3 different Twitter accounts to get all the news from your organization.

As usual, there’s no magic number. But here’s 5 questions you can ask to get the answer that’s right for your organization.

1. How do your users see you?

Step outside of your organization. How do your customers or constituents see you? Would multiple accounts fit the way customers see your company or do they simply mirror your org chart? In my civic example, do people make the connection between the Board of Education and town government? Understanding how your potential audience sees you is the first step in deciding what accounts make sense.

2. Who is the audience for each possible account?

Why are you creating these accounts? Who is your audience? Start with who you’re serving and why. Be as specific about this as possible. Don’t just say “potential customers”. Who are they? Are they in a certain geographical area? How will they find out about you? How old are they? Are they very tech savvy? How often do they use social tools? You want a clear picture of who you’re trying to reach.

Consider the size of your audience as well. If you have a lot of potential users, you may have more of a case for creating multiple accounts than if your total universe of users is say, 50 people.

3. What information do your users want?

When you know who you want to connect with, you can think about what they want. Do they want all the information your organization offers? Just some of it? Are people who purchase one product typically interested in others, or are your offerings mutually exclusive? Developing an idea of the specific kinds of content you will share on social networks now will not only help you determine how many accounts you need on each network, it will help you prepare for being active and meeting users expectations.

4. How much overlap will there be in your audiences?

If you are considering multiple accounts, you have an idea of what sub-groups in your organization might need their own account. How much overlap is there between the audiences of these subgroups? Would a person who is interested in corporate updates also be interested in updates from one of your product lines? Would a person who wants to follow what’s happening with the town Parks and Recreation Department also be interested in news from the Board of Education? If there is a lot of overlap, combine accounts. Don’t make users sign up for multiple accounts unnecessarily.

5. How will you manage the information you’ll be providing?

Who will manage these accounts? Where will they get their updates and the content to share? While your accounts on social networks should be organized based on what makes sense to your user, you do need to consider how you will maintain them before you start. Don’t create multiple accounts and then hand them off to other parts of your organization unless there’s a resource ready to do the job.

If you’ve answered these questions, you know who you’re targeting, what they want and how they view your organization. Now you’re ready to decide how many Facebook pages or Twitter accounts to create. Whether you decide to create one or several, be clear about what the account represents. Your users should know if news they receive via that account represents all activity for your organization or just one part of it.

What have I missed? Is there anything else to consider when deciding how many accounts an organization should create?

 [Image credit: Ivan Prole]

You can’t drop in and out of social media any more than you can drop in and out of healthy eating, exercise or an in-person relationship. Showing up some of the time won’t cut it. What’s daunting to people about being present on social tools day in and day out is often the idea that they don’t have something brilliant or witty to say every day.

Most of us don’t. But that’s ok. You don’t have to dazzle every day with something original. In fact, what works best is when you spend more time promoting the work of others than you do promoting your own. A rule of thumb is 90% promoting others, 10% promoting yourself. You don’t have to start counting your tweets, the exact number isn’t important. What matters is that you share the work of others more than you share your own.

Here’s an example of how well that can work.

Christopher Penn’s #the5

I’m a big fan of Christopher S. Penn. I read his blog, I follow him on Twitter and on Google+. His posts are just my style – they’re easy to understand, logical, actionable and timely. He is on the edge of what’s happening without the annoying jargon. He offers just enough opinion but always plenty of actual data.

He does something called the #the5. It’s 5 items he finds each day that he thinks are important. Sometimes he includes his own stuff. More often it’s other people’s work. He starts out by introducing himself and #the5 with a link to a specific page on his site, so if you’re a new follower you can learn a little about him. If you’ve been following for a while you just know you don’t need to click that one.

#the5 is always good stuff. It’s so good that I have consistently read posts via #the5 written and shared by other people I follow, but that I had missed. I’m trained to look for #the5 every day and I know that the best stuff will be in it, even from people I already follow.

I don’t know how long it takes him to put #the5 together each day. I’m sure it’s a commitment. But by regularly sharing #the5 which is mostly the work of others in a reliable format, Christopher Penn has become one of the best sources for information I have online.

What Can You Highlight?

What can you do to highlight the good work other people are doing, while increasing your own consistent online presence? As a start, read. Read more than just the same posts that the people you follow are reading. Read articles related to your industry that not every person in your industry knows about. Find a new perspective on something. Retweeting the same post that has you’ve already seen in your stream 8 times isn’t going to offer the same value as sharing something new.

Show how one thing relates to something else. Maybe a new technology has implications for your industry that other people don’t see yet. Share that, and point out why it’s relevant. You might see connections that others don’t. Or maybe someone else has done a really detailed analysis that most people will gloss over because it’s complicated. Highlight it and point out why it matters.

Once in a while, change the subject. I follow Christopher Penn for internet marketing information, but when he shares economic news, I read it. People like a change every once in a while.

Take the focus off yourself. There’s lots of good work going on around you. Highlighting it helps other people and can make it a little easier for you to stay in touch on social networks.

 [Image credit: Flavio Takemoto]

Whether you are using the internet to build relationships for personal networking purposes, for your business, for your non-profit or for any other reason, you have to be consistent. You have to be there, day in and day out putting in your time. You can’t drop in now and then for a sprint and expect it to feel good or produce results. It won’t.

You already know this is true. You can’t eat healthy one day a week and pig out the other 6. You can’t exercise once a month and be fit. You can’t make the birthday phone call exclusively and call the recipient your closest friend. Almost anything that yields results requires consistent work.

What is consistency online?

Posting regularly

If you blog, post regularly. Regularly doesn’t mean daily. It means on a basis that is regular. Maybe that’s weekly, maybe that’s twice a week, maybe it is daily. But users will expect something from you, and you should meet their expectation.

If you write your own content, it means writing, writing, writing. You may not publish everything you write. But the one bit of advice almost all writers seem to agree on is that the only way to improve is to write. You may not be comfortable blogging today, but you’re not going to get better tomorrow unless you do it. You may feel awkward, but keep going. Read other blogs and write. You will figure it out.

Participating in Social Networks

It means actually participating in the social networks where you have accounts. Participating. Posting is not participating. You have to answer comments. You have to read other people’s posts and comment on their stuff. Really read it. Take an interest in other people. You have to share the work of others and not just expect them to share yours. It means responding to questions and comments quickly, even if they’re negative. You are there to interact, not broadcast.

Managing Your Content

It means taking active control of your content. Use your site. Is your content still up to date? Are you listing events that are over? Do you have links to pages that have been removed? Your website is alive. It’s never done. Look at it regularly from the perspective of the user. See what they see. Make sure your site reflects what you want to say today.

Sticking With Your Plan

Mostly consistency online  means not abandoning your plan to chase today’s shiny object. There is always something new to try. But not everything will be a good fit for you and your goals. Evaluate the new, but don’t give up on your plan 5 seconds after you’ve started just because it’s hard or because you haven’t seen results yet. The web is fast, but it’s not that fast. People still take time to build trust and relationships. Your single, brilliant tweet today will not deliver 87 new customers tomorrow.

Real results rarely come overnight. You have to put in your time.

Your thoughts?

[Image credit: Brian J Matis Creative Commons]

Organizations big and small are getting in the social media game, even if they aren’t quite sure what their success metrics are. Twitter is integrated into the iPhone’s OS. Our phones have cameras, we can shoot photos and video everywhere we go. We check in. We share where we go, what we ate, what we saw and who was there. Facebook Timeline makes us feel like our whole life should be documented from start to finish in photos and status updates.

The message is clear: be social.

But if you make a mistake, we jump. Accidentally tweet something you meant to DM? Get caught on video doing something rude? Have a bad photo taken? Write something that wasn’t what you meant to say? Forget it, it’s out there forever. And the simple advice is usually, “don’t be a jerk”.

I suppose the people who give that advice have never been jerks. To anyone. Ever.

Do It Right

We expect people to replicate their lives online but for the online version to be error-free. Want to get a good job? You’d better be able to demonstrate your expertise when someone Googles you. A resume is not enough. Your work needs to speak for itself, online.

And for God’s sake be authentic. That’s the way to succeed! Be who you are. People will know if you aren’t being you. But not too you. Just you enough that you don’t seem fake. But keep your sketchy opinions to yourself.

On the fourth hand, if you don’t offend anyone, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s crazy. And it’s all said and done to tell people how to build an online version of the person they already are.

But who we already are is imperfect. We are all jerks sometimes. We all say stupid things sometimes. We don’t know when we’re about to do it, otherwise we wouldn’t, right?

So all this advice – authenticity, don’t be a jerk – it’s all kind of silly. If you use social tools, you will eventually mess up. You will. It’s ok. Or at least it can be ok.

Be Nicer

Here’s how. The next time you see someone else mess up, don’t jump on them. The next time someone tweets something you think is stupid, keep it to yourself. Your tweet about their dumb tweet makes two dumb tweets.

Just let it be. Focus more on what you like about people online than on the “20 things that have to die”. Give people a break. Yes, that person probably is being a jerk. But tomorrow it might be your turn. And then it might be mine.

Just like in real life.

Your thoughts?

 [Image credit: Hobbes Yeo]

Last night as I was watching Jersey Shore (not even going to lie about it), I saw a commercial for MTV’s new show. It looks like a show about a few twenty somethings living in the city, falling in love, trying to make sense of their lives and work. The characters look clever, irreverent and witty. They’re enough like us so that we can identify with them, but funnier and better looking.

Which was Friends. Or How To Make It In America. Or 20 other shows, some that didn’t quite make it.

Yesterday I read and reposted something Chris Brogran wrote on Google+ about Path. Path is a new social network, billed as the way to connect and share with your close friends. From what I can tell, it doesn’t seem any different than existing social networks. I see people using it in the same way, and it seems to offer the same functionality (although I think the interface is better).

There was a similar discussion about Pinterest. When explaining this to my friends on New Year’s Day, I found myself getting annoyed (though several months ago I had pinned the dessert I ended up bringing that day). What annoys me about Pinterest is that it reminds me of a big Pottery Barn catalog. I’m not a fan of Pottery Barn. I like some of what they sell, but overall I find the style to be manufactured perfection. Things are made to look vintage but purchased by people who would never actually buy something old.

And just two days ago I wrote about social business being real but not entirely new. Despite the fact that we talk about it as if it were the latest business need, many of the challenges have been around for decades.

What’s New In The World?

In my post-10pm, Jersey Shore induced stupor (you become stupid while watching Jersey Shore), I said to my husband “nothing is new anymore”.

But that can’t be true.

I know that it can’t be true because I live with two children. If you have children, you know that creativity is alive and well in the world. It borders on problematic (for me) with one of my daughters. She has so many ideas, I can’t keep up. Her ideas are grand and exciting and I dislike having to say no, though sometimes time and resource require it. Let’s build a stage in her room. Let’s make a mural in the diningroom. Let’s write a movie and invite all of our friends and family over to participate.

Would she be the first person in the world to build a stage, or paint a mural? No. But to her, she is. She is taking an idea (tap dancing in the hall) and thinking about how she can make it better (for her) and more fun (for her). Then there was the three headed alien with a jet-pack. That was all her.

I find it inspiring, which is one of the many gifts of being a parent.

So rather than sit around and grouch during the dumbest TV show ever, I’m going on a quest for the new and creative. I’ll be on the look out for things I haven’t seen before. I’ll tweet them using #nowthatsnew so anyone who wants to see what I’ve found, or share their own findings can do so.

I know it’s out there. Let’s see what I can find.

[Image credit: Steven Goodwin]

Yesterday I (awkwardly) commented on an interesting post by Geoff Livingston, Social Business or Social Bullshit? On Friday he will pick the top 5 comments and send each person a copy of Jason Fall’s new book. Take a look if you want to give it a shot.

I’ve wondered this myself which is why I commented (not that I wouldn’t like the book). For me, the question is more about terminology.

Here is what IBM (where I am an internet marketing consultant) says the characteristics of a social business are:

• A Social Business is engaged—deeply connecting people, including customers, employees, and partners, to be involved in productive, efficient ways.

• A Social Business is transparent—removing boundaries to information, experts and assets, helping people align every action to drive business results.

• A Social Business is nimble—speeding up business with information and insight to anticipate and address evolving opportunities.

Those are valuable characteristics for an organization. As I’ve thought about the term “social business”, I’ve asked myself whether I’m really struggling to understand it or if I’m simply playing a semantics game.

Social Business Is Real, But Is It New?

Using IBM’s definition, I don’t doubt that the traits of a social business are real in the sense that they can exist, and that they would provide value. An organization that wants to use social tools to connect with customers will be best positioned to do so if it adopts the characteristics attributed to a social business above.

But are these new characteristics?

• Supply chain management solutions promise us the ability to sense and respond to market demands at low cost.
• Customer relationship management solutions promise us a deep understanding of our customers and the ability to connect with them making use of all the data in a well organized manner.
• Knowledge management solutions (one I haven’t heard in a while) provide all the relevant data to anyone in the company who needed it at the right time.

Social tools may be shedding a particular light on these challenges. We have more access to customer data than ever before because people are sharing more via social networks. The issues businesses are facing are being packaged up in a new way, and yes, I think the perspective is somewhat different because of social tools. But I don’t think the business challenges are entirely new.

Why Does It Matter?

So who cares? Whether it’s new or old, whether we call it social business or something else?

I suspect that part of why anything “social” is looked at with skepticism is because it isn’t entirely new. We are circling around with solutions we call “social business” but to some degree, we’ve been here before and business owners had the same problems then. That doesn’t make social business invalid, it just acknowledges that the promise is to solve challenges that businesses have been struggling with for years.

Another part of why “social” is met with a raised eyebrow is because of the period when anyone with a Twitter account called themselves a social media marketer. Businesses are spending hard-earned money on social media marketing and social business consulting/tools. We (I) owe it to them to have discussions and be clear on the terms.

Your thoughts?

[Image credit: Asif Akbar]

Disclosure: Though I mention this elsewhere on this site, it is worth repeating here since I discuss IBM. Though I am an IBM employee, this is a personal site written and edited by me. It, and my postings elsewhere on the internet do not necessarily reflect IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

My family always made pizza and fugialuni on Christmas Eve. Fugialuni is something my Great-Grandmother made with her family. It’s Sicilian, though I’ve never met another person who has heard of it (Italian or otherwise). It has been my family’s tradition for years.

When my husband and I got married, we tried to blend our two Christmas Eve traditions. We invited both families to come to our house. First we served his family’s traditional meal, then we made 6 pizzas and 6 fugialuni. The result was that there was too much food and way too many dirty dishes.

Realizing that this wasn’t going to work, we switched things around a bit. Now we have pizza and fugialuni day on December 23rd. My family comes over and we spend the day cooking, eating and enjoying each other’s company. It’s much calmer and more enjoyable. But it was hard to say good-bye to the tradition the way we’d always known it.

Adapting

Things change. Relationships evolve. Children grow up and become adults who make their own choices. The pain comes not so much from the fact that things change, but from the fact that we cling so tightly to the way they used to be.

This is true for individuals and for organizations. We all have our way of doing things. We can call them habits, traditions or best practices. They become ingrained because they work. We try something and find success, so our inclination is to repeat it.

But when circumstances change around us, our traditions or best practices have to change as well. What worked at one time won’t necessarily work forever. We can either lament the changing times and stick to the things we’ve always done, or we can adapt.

The degree to which adapting is painful depends largely on our attitude. If we’re open to change and to the possibility that something new and better may happen, it can be exciting. If we insist that the way we’ve always done it is the only way, change will be difficult and unpleasant. We can easily miss out on the good right in front of us.

I loved making pizza and fugialuni on Christmas Eve. It was something special that my family had done for as long as I’ve been alive, and even before I was born. But if I’d rigidly stuck to it having to be done on Christmas Eve, the night would have been exhausting. And none of us would have enjoyed the food.

Instead I have another day, a special day with my family when we can take our time and enjoy each other’s company. What’s important hasn’t been lost. The sense of tradition is still there, it just happens a little sooner than it used to.

The ability to grow and change with time is maybe the most critical thing we can develop to ensure our survival. Whatever your traditions are, or whatever they may become, I hope you enjoy them. I wish you peace and happiness for the holidays.

[Image credit: Mike Towse]

The web is fast, right? We can create content and make changes quickly. Direct mail, advertising and events all take time to plan and execute, but putting up a new page can be done quickly. Right?

Yes and no.

While it’s often technically possible to create a new page quickly, some early planning will make your page much more useful. These are some of the steps I consider:

• Strategy: who is this content for, what does it need to communicate and what is our goal in creating it? This is always the first question because the answers drive many of the next steps.

• Keyword research: you know who you are writing content for, but do you know what terms they use to refer to the thing you’re writing about? Knowing the language of your audience makes it much more likely that a page will be found, read and understood.

• Content development: often a problem, who will actually write the content? Who provides the images? Ideally it should be someone with a background in writing copy for the web, who will understand how to write copy that is both well optimized for search and readable to a person.

• Measurement plan: how will you know if this piece of content did it’s job? What will we measure and what do we need to do behind the scenes to support that? If you want to know whether a particular piece of content drove more calls to call your call center, or more downloads of a file, how will those events be tracked? If you’re tracking a customer all the way through the sales cycle, do you need any special tactic codes tied to this page? Thinking this through now will help make available the data you need later.

• Information architecture: where does this new piece of content fit within your site? Is it a landing page? Will it be a permanent part of the site? Keeping your site well organized is crucial for users and search.

• Promotion strategy: how will users find out about this new piece of content? Will you add a link from your homepage? From a newsletter? Will it be shared on social networks? You aren’t doing all this work just have your new masterpiece sit there unadored. So how will you make sure users see it?

• Linking strategy: What will you link to from this new page? What pages will link to it? Some of these will be within your control (like the pages on your own site) and some will be pages you’d like to link to you to boost traffic and search rankings. This might be something you considered as part of information architecture and promotion but it’s worth calling out, just in case you didn’t.

• Development: this is the step we usually jump to. Who is going to actually code and publish the page? Yes, it’s critical. But it comes toward the end. If you start by coding the page, and then try to retro-fit your content into your site, optimize it for search and consider what you want to measure, you’re making a mess you might not be able to clean up.

• Maintenance and/or sunset plan: is this content a permanent part of your site? If so, how often does it need to be updated? If not, when will it no longer be relevant? Think of this now before you end up with hundreds of pages you don’t need cluttering up your experience.

For those of you who blog, don’t panic. These steps apply to your blog as a whole, but not necessarily to every single post. Your promotion strategy for your blog may not vary significantly from post to post. While some of these steps should be considered, there are types of content which don’t require each step to be checked off every time you write something.

These are some of my thoughts about how to plan for a new piece of content. What have I missed?

[Image credit: Vees via Creative Commons]