When responding to a complaint:

1. Respond immediately, all hours. This is of paramount importance and a drag on resources. It is one of the only outward indications of our concern; conversely not responding can be seen as rude or arrogant. If you don’t know what the key message is, you will always be OK with something like, “Hi Katy, I’ve received your message, can I get back to you asap? Regards Peter.”
2. Respond personally. No canned responses. Social media interaction is one-on-one communication, in front of millions.
3. Respond in tune with the culture of the channel. Different active company Facebook pages will have different communities of users, and different cultures. The same goes for any social media forum. If you are new to the channel: understand first, be understood second.
4. Don’t overreact. Often a short, sharp post looks aggressive, but it may just be an economical use of words, or may have been hastily written – by a pussycat.
5. Take a complaint offline. Not always but, for instance, if it looks like going more negative or is off-topic. A well-managed phone call is almost always the best way to take the heat out of a situation.
6. If you do go offline, keep a record of the conversation. A good way to do this is to write an email record of the conversation and send it to your superior, using a searchable term.
7. Fix the problem. If you can’t, get the best succinct explanation of why it is not possible. For this you may need approved Q&As.
8. If it might go viral, let your superior know quickly. We need to be always on the lookout for this.
9. Once the problem is fixed, ask the person to go public with a thank you. Some will do this.
10. Be cool. Mostly it’s not about you.

Check out:
eCommerce #7: the scary power of activists, and managing consumer complaints #1 – 6 strategies
eCommerce #6: The Scary Power of Activists, and the Law
eCommerce #5: How activists can manipulate social media; and why companies are scared
eCommerce #4: Losing sleep over customer reviews? 7/10 say it matters.
eCommerce #3: Hoping to Fix Bad Reviews? Take care…
eCommerce #2: Fragile Relationships – Three Myths about What Customers Want
eCommerce #1: A prediction – Online sales climb, but reaching saturation. Really?

Monkey see, monkey do

Companies either fear or embrace online consumer power. Knowing what to do creates confidence.

Crowd behaviour is rapidly changing as people discover this power:

• online blackmail and extortion is down – we were involved in a wave of that;
• trolling/bullying is up;
• individual consumer complaints are increasing;
• community activism is evolving (look out for that!);
• the power of legislators, lawyers and the police to intervene (defamation, copyright) is probably waning. And so on.

The reality is that in the short-term, if an attack upon them is aggressive, a company can only use social media to move from a very bad situation to a bad situation. Longer term of course social media is a valuable tool for improving reputation. This is the same rule that used to apply to traditional media.

There are strategies that are important to achieve those ends.

1.  Be patient, polite and consistent.
2.  Be honest. Never forget that we always stand to lose what we value most: trust.
3.  Different strokes for different folks. There are different types of netizens e.g. Manipulators, Opinionated Users, Readers, Enthusiasts, Resenders, and more. One size does not fit all. Recognising this is the first step towards recognising the need for different forms of communication.
4.  Own the space. Public forums, (in Australia productreview; notgoodenough, whirlpool) like the newspapers-of-old have a vested interest in controversy. They also often have many backlinks and so strong SEO. So try to move complainants to our own company channels (Facebook, Twitter). But remember, different strokes for different folks. Some people may be OK with moving to the company Facebook page, but others will be rusted to forums. So we can entice but cannot demand.
5.  Use social proofing. We are all prone to social proofing, i.e. if a group of people make a choice about an issue, it is ‘social proof’ to watching individuals that the collective opinion might be valid, and should be adopted. Be ready to use this. The use of survey data is a classic application for social proofing (e.g If a survey states that “70% of people think xxxx,” then it’s possible that the release of that survey will push the figure higher as others think “Oh, if they think that, it’s safe for me to think that too.”).
6.  Be judicious. Sometimes we should reply to a complaint, sometimes not. Know the difference. The benchmark for this is, does responding make the situation better, or worse? Sometimes a person simply wants to let of steam. The skill is understanding your audience (the culture of the particular community): knowing who to respond to, who not, and when to ask a superior for advice.

Check out:
eCommerce #8: the scary power of activists, and managing consumer complaints #2 – 10 tactics
eCommerce #6: The Scary Power of Activists, and the Law
eCommerce #5: How activists can manipulate social media; and why companies are scared
eCommerce #4: Losing sleep over customer reviews? 7/10 say it matters.
eCommerce #3: Hoping to Fix Bad Reviews? Take care…
eCommerce #2: Fragile Relationships – Three Myths about What Customers Want
eCommerce #1: A prediction – Online sales climb, but reaching saturation. Really?

Traditionally powerful organisations that are used to manipulating the public (parliaments, news organisations, retail companies, advertising agencies) and others that rely on a certain aloofness (government bureaucracies, universities) are still waking up to this phenomenon. We can see it everywhere:

• On a global scale, with massive community activism such as the Arab Spring, or with the way political campaigns are now managed,
• At a community level, with activism halting projects, and
• At the company coalface, with the stress caused by customer complaints on say Facebook.

At a national level, countries’ legislators and politicians are struggling (mostly helplessly) with this loss of control. At the retail/consumer level, it’s causing many CEOs massive heartache.

In Australia two recent incidents have different interest groups complaining about abuse on social media: the Melbourne police calling for more controls to stop extreme abuse following the Jill Meagher murder; Alan Jones in Sydney complaining about the negative community activism attempting to restrict his radio commentary.

A lot has been written on both. The issue is being replicated around the world.

Our view is, it is dysfunctional to try and muzzle social media commentary in situations like these. There are numerous examples on a global scale (Middle East, China) and to attempt it shows a misunderstanding of the public’s perception of who owns social media – the public.

Further, the public is learning to be a discerning audience when it comes to reading social media comments – harsh or outrageous commentary is seen as just that. We think most of us can rank social media comments:

• at the bottom of the pile are random rants (equate to over-the-back-fence gossip),
• nearer the top the considered views from widely read bloggers, who rank just below
• respected newspaper and political commentators (most of whom understand the concepts and laws around sub judice and contempt), and
• on top of the pile are the politicians, lawyers and police.

With freedom of expression comes crowd-wisdom. In other words, we all learn from watching an argument. And if the collective view is different to the law, then either the law-makers have failed to adequately communicate or the law is wrong, in which case it can be changed by the parliament.

So we shouldn’t censor an emotional outpouring over the dreadful events around Jill Meagher’s death, or the distasteful comments on either side of the Alan Jones incident.

In the case of a murder trial, agreed this creates a sub judice problem for those who are tasked with giving an accused murderer a fair trial. One option might be to hold the trial over for a cooling off period, another more extreme idea would be to move the trial interstate where people are less upset.

That said, this freedom of expression is not to be confused with fraud, defamation, trolling or a variety of other crimes which are against the law.

Check out:
eCommerce #8: the scary power of activists, and managing consumer complaints #2 – 10 tactics
eCommerce #7: the scary power of activists, and managing consumer complaints #1 – 6 strategies
eCommerce #5: How activists can manipulate social media; and why companies are scared
eCommerce #4: Losing sleep over customer reviews? 7/10 say it matters.
eCommerce #3: Hoping to Fix Bad Reviews? Take care…
eCommerce #2: Fragile Relationships – Three Myths about What Customers Want
eCommerce #1: A prediction – Online sales climb, but reaching saturation. Really?

Image: article-3.com

One of the reasons companies are scared of the internet is fear of crowd behaviour and the loss of control.

“What if something happens, it goes viral, and sets off a recall?”

“In 2008 we had a ‘situation’. If we do social media it might come back to bite us.”

“We have hundreds of thousands of sales, so even less than 1% of unsatisfied customers can look really bad on Facebook.”

These are real complaints to us from companies wrestling with that fear.

Crowd mania is a problem. It’s not quite panic. It’s ‘me too’. It’s a kind of social proofing*. It’s like a Mexican wave. And as companies we have to be on the lookout for it.

Before social media people used to try and use tabloid papers/radio/TV for this kind of practice. I’m speaking from experience. As a tabloid TV journalist for over 20 years (and another decade at the ABC) I manipulated this kind of crowd behaviour. For many tabloid journalists it is a badge of honour when a story causes a spike in ratings, and leads to further stories about an issue. It sells papers; it gets people talking about your TV program. So the hunt for a tabloid journalist is not so much about the accuracy of a story, although that’s important, but a story that will spike crowd anxiety. Ratings and circulation; it becomes like a drug. At one stage on ACA we used to aim for a story a month that made front page in the newspapers. Truth was important but came second. I’m not saying it was good, but it happened. Then on 60 Minutes I can clearly remember a story that closed a business, possibly undeservedly. It wasn’t just me – this was global practice in the media. Think RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury); think breast implants: both vastly exaggerated anxieties where lawyers and journalists exploited crowd anxiety.

It’s how I got into PR. When I crossed the line to public relations I used to joke that “once I got companies into trouble, now I get them out.” Companies would contact Wilkinson Group because they were being attacked on ACA, TT, 60 Mins, Four Corners or Choice Magazine. What I’ve discovered on this side of the fence, is that often the stories are less than half right, sometimes not right at all. But the crowd panic and damage is the same.

And now we at Wilkinson have a full-time team doing the same with social media. Social media can be tabloid TV on steroids. If a story goes viral it can do immense damage.

That’s what happened to Nestlé a few weeks ago. A baby food product was wrongly blamed for making babies sick. The story took off in social media; it then crossed into mainstream media; this caused a greater response in social media, and so on. This cycle is a growing trend with community activists and it’s happened three times recently to clients of ours. In one case a small group of activists included a couple of passionate lawyers which gave an erroneous complaint an extra cloak of legitimacy. As activists become more aware of how to manipulate this it’s going to happen more.

Back to Nestlé. Melissa Davey is a journalist who wrote a story on an erroneous scare for a lot of mothers concerning a Nestlé baby product for the SMH . She asked a pediatrician to offer comments and he obliged:

”The use of mass media and Facebook by some groups these days really causes a lot of anxiety and grief, leading parents to associate the symptoms of their child with the formula.”

”It’s a placebo effect and, while I don’t deny their symptoms are there, it is no justification for claims this formula is unsafe,” he said.

”Independent comprehensive testing has been co-ordinated by the NSW Food Authority and has confirmed there are no food safety issues with Nestle NAN HA infant formula,” he said.”

So next the activists attacked the messenger. And Melissa Davey wrote about it again , describing the real problem:

“There have never been more ways to engage.

“But there is a fine line between disagreeing with those quoted in a story and partaking in irresponsible, bullying behaviour that risks placing a dampener on legitimate public debate and isolating valuable experts we rely on for comment. The response to a piece I wrote in the Sun Herald and  published on the Sydney Morning Herald website over the weekend shows that some people are not interested in debate but simply for their own view to prevail unchallenged.”

Now we need to be careful here. Sometimes the behaviour Davey refers to is not intended, and is because of a deeply held belief that “I am right and you are wrong; you are doing a lot of damage and must be stopped at all costs”. Whistle blowers make it a crusade. However, bullying crosses a line of civility. Activists are using it increasingly cleverly and it’s why a lot of companies are scared of social media.

(*Social proofing: if a group of people make a choice about something, it is ‘social proof’ to others that the collective opinion might be valid, and should be adopted.)

Check out:
eCommerce #8: the scary power of activists, and managing consumer complaints #2 – 10 tactics
eCommerce #7: the scary power of activists, and managing consumer complaints #1 – 6 strategies
eCommerce #6: The Scary Power of Activists, and the Law
eCommerce #4: Losing sleep over customer reviews? 7/10 say it matters.
eCommerce #3: Hoping to Fix Bad Reviews? Take care…
eCommerce #2: Fragile Relationships – Three Myths about What Customers Want
eCommerce #1: A prediction – Online sales climb, but reaching saturation. Really?

Image: allthings.womma.org

The Widget

The concept of the digital community has come one step closer by allowing a news widget that can be embedded onto a website in real-time. This is a massive addition to online news sites who can now provide their readers with a live feed of tweets from their staff journalists. Of course, this is provided that the journalists don’t fill up the feed with non-relevant tweets like what they had for dinner or pictures of their favourite pet.

Could this be a step closer to a creating paid positions for social media reporters? Think about the ABCs political reporter Latika Bourke.

Another great thing about this new widget feature is that anyone can create one and simply flick the link to the IT bloke down the hall who can then install it. The features are fairly limited in terms of design, but I’m sure this will evolve in time.

Below is a step by step example on how to create a widget that can be easily uploaded onto your site.  Since embedding your own timeline is old news, I will use the Lists tab instead.

1. Enter a list that that you have already created for your widget.
2. Select the Height you want for the feed. More tweets will be shown the bigger size  you select.
3. Select a theme – currently there are only two options, Light and Dark.
4. Change the link colour so it stands about – Be creative!
5. Enter the website where this widget will appear.
6. Click the Create Widget button.
7. A code will appear which you can use to embed into your website.

 The Cover Photo

Ever since Timeline was introduced, social media marketers have been begging Twitter to get their act together and introduce something similar. Now the wait is over and brands can begin exploring ways to take advantage of the new cover photo.

Setting up the new profile layout is fairly easy. Go to Settings and click the Design tab. Under the Customize your own section you will see an option to Change header. Once you have uploaded an image you will need to fiddle around with the positioning to get your logo or profile picture in the centre. If you don’t like the results you can opt out by removing the header photo at any time and go back to the old style display.

 Image: webdesignerdepot

How they did it

The Mars landing was a huge success. On the eastern USA time zone, at around 4pm, Curiosity Rover had around 150,000 followers on Twitter. By Monday afternoon the tweeting space truck had quadrupled its following to over 700,000 fans.

Scoring a gold medal for space exploration, the red rock explorer successfully landed and tweeted:

NASAhired social media specialists, Veronica McGregor, Courtney O’Connor and Stephanie Smith. They came up with a plan to “turn the agency’s jargon into a witty, palatable form.”

For example, on Monday, @MarsCuriosity tweeted, “FYI, I aim to send bigger, color pictures from Mars later this week once i’ve got my head up & Mastcam active.” “The difference between ‘I will deploy my remote sensing mask’ and ‘I’ll get my head up’ is all the difference in the world,” Stephanie Smith said in an interview with USA Today.

Here is what social media marketing managers can learn from NASA highlights:

Run a contest

A cool way to get people interested in what you are doing is to have a contest and give away free stuff. Everyone loves it and there is no downside. In a previous article I wrote about how important it was for social media marketers to start using giveaways and promotions.  A large proportion of the audience follows brands for discounts and giveaways.

Engage with your community

This is a critical step when developing a tribe of dedicated followers. Retweeting other peoples content and commenting is a great way to show that you care about what other people are saying. NASA kept the content specific within its niche and promoted content relevant to space enthusiasts.

Publish interesting photos and videos

NASA folk kept their Twitter feed alive with colourful images and videos when the truck finally landed. Publishing interesting photos and other visual content is important in any social media campaign. People are more likely to comment or engage with images and videos on social media.

Develop a personality

Curiosity Rover spoke in a witty first person voice that could be enjoyed by everyone. There was no pretentious tech-talk that no one understands. It also created a timeline that fits perfectly into Facebook’s Timeline: A New Kind of Profile. theme, which was also used in this campaign.

Multiple social channels

Facebook also helped spread the word about NASA’s exploration project which has grown a crater-sized community of over 210,000 fans. Because Facebook encourages users to be more visual, this channel was critical in achieving success. The agency also used Ustream which is a popular social network that provides a platform for live video sharing.

Earn a positive reputation

Over time and if organizations do the right thing the trust factor will rise and people will be more likely to engage with you, write about you, retweet you, share your content etc., in a positive way. This was a major part of NASA’s success.

Here is a simple formula that can be used to explain how a campaign has achieved success.

Time + Promotions + Engaging + Personality = Success.

Cartoon via Dashburst
Mars Photo via National Geographic

Image: toucharcade.com

The baseline for a discussion about productivity is financial sustainability. If we don’t operate to make a profit then we must at least make a profit in order to operate. How does this impact on the productivity debate? Well, the more community services we provide, the more we spend, the less the productivity. The more government, or companies, or families throw money around, the less the productivity. Largesse & luxuries and productivity are opposites.

There’s a wonderful explanation of this by SMH economic commentator, Ross Gittins (see below). He discusses the balance between ‘equity’ and ‘efficiency’, where efficiency means making maximum use of “the scarce resources of land, labour and capital available to the community” and equity is the “fairness with which the proceeds from all this efficiency are distributed between individuals and households”.

At a government level this is seen in the way wealth is redistributed, like the Carbon Tax and the Mining Tax, and the various services governments provide, hence the Obamacare debate in the US and the dental care debate and the current education-funding debate in Australia.

At a company level it impacts the extent to which a company can afford to be a good corporate citizen, which brings us to the balance of Financial, Social and Environmental Sustainability. The trouble with the old models of Triple Bottom Line Accounting (accounting that scores financial, social and environment success) and more recently Corporate Social Responsibility is that the social and environmental components were at the expense of the financial component. In other words social and environmental sustainability cost companies money, which shareholders don’t always like. Michael Porter is an economist who has since come along with Creating Shared Value, which is a model that looks at ways to contribute to social and environmental benefits and increase a company’s profits. For instance a company that sells coffee invests in the education of coffee farmers; while the farmers gain with an education for themselves and their children, the environment gains because the farmers are educated to use less water and fertiliser; productivity goes up; the company (and everyone else in the production cycle) makes more money. Everyone wins; hence the ‘shared value’ that’s been created.

We need a more balanced approach to progress

SMH WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29, 2012

A lot of the problems the nation struggles with and argues over boil down to the considerable potential for conflict between what economists summarise as “equity” and “efficiency”.

We act as though one is right and the other wrong but, in truth, sensible people want a mix of both. So, though we don’t always realise it, the hard part is finding the best trade-off between the two.

“Efficiency” means taking the scarce resources of land, labour and capital available to the community and employing them in such a way that they produce the combination of goods and services that maximises the satisfaction of the community’s material wants.

So it’s about improving the productivity of our work effort – getting a bigger bang for our buck and minimising waste. But it’s also about being flexible in our response to the change that comes along.

Technology is always improving, allowing us to achieve the things we want more efficiently or even allowing us to satisfy wants we didn’t know we had. So we accept it as a force for good, but it can greatly disrupt the lives of people whose jobs have been geared to the old technology.

No one tends to argue against technological change, but we’re often less willing to accept change coming from that other major source, change in how the rest of the world relates to us. Why should we change just because they’ve changed?

Let’s say the economic development of China and India reaches the point where they need huge quantities of coal and iron ore to make steel. They’re willing to pay much higher prices and their need for a lot of steel is likely to run for several decades.

Are we willing to take their money? Sure. Are we willing to build a lot more mines to accommodate their needs? Sure. Are we willing to pay the various prices that come with this good fortune: the high dollar that makes life a lot tougher for manufacturers and others, the need to shift workers and other resources to other parts of the country, the two-speed economy this will bring? Not so sure.

All this sounding familiar? The efficiency story is one we hear all the time from economists, business people and politicians.

Taken narrowly, “equity” refers to the fairness with which the proceeds from all this efficiency are distributed between individuals and households. Is income being shared more unequally between the top, middle and bottom, or less?

But I want to use the term more broadly to encompass all our non-efficiency objectives. Not just monetary fairness, but our need to preserve the natural environment, need for strong relationships with family and friends, need for recreation and our desire to live in a community that’s free, democratic and subject to the rule of law, with harmony between the many groups that make it up.

You can see the scope for conflict between all these objectives. We don’t want to be so efficient we’re unfair, nor so fair we’re inefficient.

Conflict arises partly because people tend to specialise in one objective or another. They bang on about the economy or the environment or social concerns as though their speciality was all that mattered. Business people and economists are particularly prone to having one-track minds, but they’re by no means the only super-specialists.

An even bigger problem arises because so many people tend to conceal pursuit of their own interests behind the banner of a larger, worthier cause. Cutting my taxes would be great for the economy. If you care about People not Profit, you’ll protect my job from change (what this implies for other people’s jobs is not my concern; they can look after themselves).

I have doubts about the sincerity of business groups demanding reforms to correct our supposed weak productivity performance. Why? Because the “reforms” they choose to advocate would benefit themselves in the first instance and the rest of us only indirectly.

But, similarly, unions fight to preserve a status quo that’s been overtaken by events and to protect their (surviving) members’ interests at the expense of other workers.

Perhaps many of these urgers aren’t knowingly dishonest in the way they frame their case, just so conscious of their own interests that they’re unable to see how self-serving their arguments are.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but it seems to me the public debate about government policies is getting more self-seeking, strident and polarised.

It also seems the people who worry most about money have more of the stuff and are able to use it to buy a bigger say in the debate. We’re always hearing how much money we’ll lose if we fail to improve our productivity performance, but we rarely hear about what we have to give up to preserve and enhance our material affluence.

The people reminding us there’s more to life than money and the things it buys don’t get much of a hearing. Are we being asked to work longer hours (including at the end of a mobile phone)? Will we be required to work on weekends and public holidays? Will that mean we see less of our spouse, kids, extended family and friends? If so, how exactly will we be better off?

Will the hastening pace of modern life make us more stressed and damage our health? Will more people succumb to depression? Will greater efficiency make our jobs less secure and less permanent? Will we continue destroying the environment and losing species? If so, how exactly will we be better off?

We need a more balanced approach to progress. One that weighs the pros and cons of “reforms” more carefully and doesn’t go overboard in one direction or another.

Image: The Vecci Blog

• Media Relations - traditional and social;
• Crisis PR;
• Sustainability PR – in the corporate and consumer sectors.

For many of our clients these three pillars are integrated. They have strong media and social media relationships, they consider risk and are crisis prepared, and they are working within a sustainability model. This is what we encourage.

P.S. The above requires that we have expertise in government relations and community relations.

The journalism/social media mix

This is what we believe sets us apart. We are known for our understanding and ability to place stories with traditional media; and sometimes to pause, or where necessary, work to stop inaccurate stories.  With our insider’s mindset and experience, it is the cornerstone of our company’s skillset.

But our approach to traditional media has changed. While we believe a good relationship with the traditional media is still a prerequisite to successful relationships with all other stakeholders, this importance is diminishing with the growth of social media.

Journalists and politicians use social media extensively, and so should companies.

We are now encouraging all our clients to use social media as a primary means of engagement.

Social media and Risk

However, many companies perceive social media as a high risk medium.

So, we use our journalism expertise and caution to ensure optimum outcomes in social media. The skills of understanding how media operates….

• high quality content;
• our working knowledge of media and the law;
• knowing many of the key players;
• being up-to-date with news and current affairs;
• journalistic integrity: as fast and accurate written and verbal communicators,

….continue to be crucial skills for this agency.

Practical Social Media

We have experimented over three years to find what we believe is the best approach to brand management/sales in social media.

The skills required now for good quality media relations are diverse. It is no longer only a matter of selling-in a story.

Our approach is to bring five specific skilled people to each campaign:

1. Strategist – senior person; monthly analysis
2. Writer / senior media relations expert – account director level input
3. Monitoring and measurement – senior tactical skills
4. SEO and A/B testing – senior level
5. Social media engagement (tactical skills with Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest/etc).

Our startup social media plan 

Simplicity is the key to a powerful social media plan that is manageable. Use the hub ‘n spoke concept and start with a blogsite. House it on the website; then use emails, newsletters, Facebook and Twitter to attract customers to the blog. Once that’s running, start optimising with SEO and other techniques. Then expand, with YourTube, Pinterest and elswhere.

For more on blogs click on the ‘blogging’ tag.

Social media measurement

This is a vexing area of social media because it is so new.

We are conscious of the quote attributed to Einstein: “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.”

However, we put a lot of effort into measurement, and in our experience our monthly reports are providing our clients with a useful guide on audience patterns and level of engagement.

To ensure we are leaders in this area we liaise closely with other partners in the IPREX network to monitor global ROI initiatives.

A new survey comprised of 1,709 CEOs conducted by IBM found only 16% participate in using social media. Among Fortune 500 CEOs, only 7.6% are using Facebook and only 4% use Twitter. However, LinkedIn is the most popular of the networks with 26% of the CEOs surveyed saying they use it or have an active account.

While there are there so few CEOs active on social media, the IBM study predicts the amount of CEOs using social media is likely to grow to 57% within 5 years. CEOs are now starting to acknowledge that consumers are engaging with brands more and more each day and that using social media to engage with staff or customers demonstrates how savvy their company is in the age of instant messaging and live help services. In another survey by BRANDFog 82% of respondents said they would trust a business whose senior executives communicated via social channels.

Here are 5 reasons why CEOs should be active on social media:

1. The face of the company. More people are likely to tune into what the CEO is saying rather than what the brand’s logo is tweeting or posting on Facebook. It’s this trust factor that has put the CEO at the top in the first place.
2. Media opportunities. CEOs are generally intelligent people and have an abundance of industry knowledge and wisdom acquired over the course of their career. The type of conversation and content they can bring to the table will more likely attract business journalists to write more stories on Mr. X who works for XYZ brand.
3. Savyness. CEOs who use social media are more likely to be perceived as agile and adaptive to new communication tools.
4. Good for employees. A company that uses an internal Facebook group to communicate would raise moral if the CEO dropped in once and a while to post something.
5. Listening and being Familiar. One of the biggest advantages to using social media is listening. Setting up a river of news from Radian6 or some other social listening tool might inspire a CEO to go social. CEOs love feedback and on social media people there are plenty of people who are more than happy to give their opinion.

Social media is becoming something that CEOs can’t ignore. Over the past 2 years, the blog space has exploded with quick and easy self-publishing platforms making it much easier for CEOs to get involved. Social listening tools like Radian6 could become quite valuable for CEOs when deciding on what topics to write about.

Having a good understanding of social media is important for CEOs so they are not oblivious to what people are saying. It will take some time to trend, but as companies move deeper into social strategies more and more CEOs will join the pack.

Car Shoppers Head to Review Sites for Research: e-Marketer

JULY 26, 2012

Almost seven in 10 consumers said dealership reviews affected their purchase decision

Read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1009219&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4#xkJ3MwmmMlljfbrm.99

Digital Air Strike Releases First Automotive Study to include both Consumer and Dealership Activity on Social Media and Review Sites during Car Purchase Process