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February 2010 | Volume 28 / Number 9
Publisher's Outlook

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Adventures in Social Networking


By Rich Tehrani ,
CEO, Technology Marketing Corp.


Last month, I bet the future of the contact center on social networking – well, not really, but I outlined how I think companies need to seriously focus on this space in the future. I have been spending a significant amount of time myself living with social media tools, such as Facebook (News - Alert), LinkedIn, and Twitter, and have slowly begun to really feel the addictive and powerful community-building effects of socializing online 24/7. But, lately I have taken my social interactions to the next level.

The process started quite innocently – as you may know I was invited to go t the Winter Olympics by Nortel/Avaya (News - Alert) and, in
preparation, my wife and I went shopping for winter clothes. On a totally unrelated note, I believe I own the largest SUV in the world. You see, no matter what department store I go to, my wife is able to produce, on-demand, five bags of returns for that particular store. Interestingly, each bag corresponds to a different department, meaning standing in a different line for each set of returns.

It took me a while to realize it, but I learned that I would have lots of time to kill. That’s when I found a comfortable couch and installed the Tweetdeck client on my iPhone (News - Alert) and began to join in the conversation taking place among the people I follow on Twitter and Facebook.

Using Tweetdeck or a program like it is the social networking
equivalent of discovering the wheel…

Once installed, I was able to rapidly see what my friends were saying, keep track of when I was referenced and, just as importantly, I was able to keep track of references to TMCnet based on hashtags people use in their tweets. For example, to reference IBM (News - Alert), you would use hashtag #IBM and this would make it easier to search and find entries that reference the computing giant.


If you don’t use Facebook or Twitter, or especially Tweetdeck, and you are involved in management of a company, you are falling behind. If Richard Branson, Jack Welch, and Bill Gates (News - Alert) can use Twitter, so can you – if you think it is beneath you, please drop me a line so I can advise my other readers to sell your stock. Why is this exercise important? Because every second of every day, there are conversations taking place that are shaping perception about all brands and products. These conversations persist and are forever discoverable via search engines. Moreover, they are often found and used against you by your competitors.


People are complaining and praising you and your competitors all the time. Others are reading this information and forming decisions based on what they see. Journalists are using this content in their stories and other customers are considering this information before purchasing your products. Search engines now integrate social networking results and Twitter feeds at the top of their search results if enough people tweet about the same topic at once.

Let’s say you and companies who resell your products occupy the first 10 search results for a search on your company name and the same goes for all of your products. Imagine that search engines can decide the second search result will comprise all social networking interaction that mentions your company name. A single disgruntled customer who is retweeted (the act of passing along a tweet or micropost to their followers) can disrupt years of SEO strategizing, planning
and dollars invested.


Worse, these tweets will likely influence reporters who happen to see these real-time results as they research your company and its products for a story.


Do you see where this is going?


Moreover, what happens when you learn that someone is trashing your products or company online? What is your strategy to engage these customers? Do you know how? Do you have any experience on staff to deal with the problem? Do you utilize your contact center to help you in this regard? Is there even integration between CRM systems and your social networking listening initiatives? Do you even have these initiatives in place today? If not, what could you be waiting for – an emergency?


In the last two years, we have seen massive problems rock GE, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, GM, Chrysler and Toyota… At this point it seems safe to say that virtually every company will eventually have some sort of crisis to deal with.


Social networking can play a big part in smoothing relations with customers and the media. It can save you millions in
brand value and lost sales. Moreover, your customers are getting absorbed by social media – every day they expect you, too, to be more engaged. Disappointing them means less loyal customers and the chance you will lose them to the competition.


I hope this column gets you thinking about using the latest social media tools available and, moreover, making sure you
train your workforce on how to utilize these tools to keep your customers happy, your brand strong and your sales robust.


I would love to have you follow me at my blog at Tehrani.com and on Twitter at rtehrani.


PS: As I was proofing this column this alert hit me from Tweetdeck… I rest my case: “#Cigna has horrible customer service! No phone #, no email, no fax on website to discuss a claim. Clearly they’re not there to help!”

 




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