This is a site that will search the internet for you, looking for conversations about YOUR Brand! How cool is that!
When it comes to social media the most important thing you can do as a company is to get into the conversation. You need to engage. People are going to talk about you anyway. Would you like to know what they are saying?
What does getting engaged mean? Here are a few tips to help you build a strong online presence.
1. Use Whos Talkin (or other tools) - to see what people are saying about your company. If people, customers, fan's, followers have an issue with you make sure you find out what happened and address it right away. The idea that "it will pass" NEVER happens with social media. If you do the wait and see or give it a few days approach you will only feed the fire that will be harder to put out. Having an issue with your company can spread like wild fire... much faster that you would think. I wouldn't wait any longer than 8 hours to reply.
2. Give your customers a voice - Give them a chance to speak! NOW this doesn't mean you do what Skiddles did and allow people to post whatever they want. Skiddles made a huge mistake a few years ago. They allowed their fan's freedom to post on their fan page. Once their fan's realized that there was no monitoring, there was a huge amount of inappropriate posts put on their Facebook fan page. Resulting in a huge negative campaign. YES, give your customers a platform to be heard. But monitor it. What most people want to know is they count and that you appreciate them and that what they say is important. Find a way to respect your customers and they will respect you back.
3. You need to be consistent - if you start using social media keep with it! If you're not consistent with your posts or comments people will stop following and commenting. Tip: if you're just starting out pick one social media site and start with that. Make sure your comfortable with it before you start another one. If you pick twitter, find followers, post regularly, retweet, start conversations, follow interesting people then when you're comfortable try Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, Youtube or linkedIn. The key is not to get overwhelmed. If you take on too much and get frustrated you'll stop all together. There are too many benefits to social media to stop. So start slow and be consistent.
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Lynne Conrad @activ8business
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