Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

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Using Social Media for Business Success and Development – Social CRM

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

In a recent research done by myself in which some top social media experts participated from across the globe, it was found out that customer experience ( CX ) was the most important element of using social media for business purposes. Customers are in the heart of any successful social media campaign and, thus, need special attention and extra care. A lot has been written about customer engagement, however businesses now have to think further and concentrate on improving customer experience. Obviously customer engagement is important by itself, but it is not enough to get long lasting results and getting loyalty in social business era.

Social media is a double-edged sword and can be a blessing or a curse depending upon the consumer experience. If companies (or any authority) ignore customer experience, they will have to suffer as we already have witnessed it throughout this year (2011) in many countries. Poorly-run companies or businesses have real threats from Social media front so they need to lift their business standards. It is now impossible to hide away poor quality and have unhappy customers and uncompetitive prices.  Customer service to delight customers is the real marketing in social media age.

Technology is there to be used but it is important to change the mindset as well.  Actually, technology is useless as long as companies are not willing to change their mindset.  Now customers are more powerful than ever before and they have more ways to get and share information and make more accurate decision. They have smart phones with cameras to create huge amount of uncensored user generated contents and social media to share all that stuff.  They no longer listen to marketing tones and monologue rather than want companies to collaborate with them. So the companies which ignore them will have to pay the penalty and will likely to face reputational issues. Companies can get much out of social media and know about their customers and their needs by active listening, efficient monitoring and responding proactively.

One thing which companies need to understand is that social media is a not a quick fix. Simply joining these channels cannot solve problems at all.  Once executed rightly, social media campaigns result into happy loyal customers and improved business designs.

Social Media, Customer Experience and SEO

It is important to keep customers happy from SEO prospective as well, because satisfied customers are likely to share positive experiences with peers. Positive contents regarding brands increase visibility of the companies over search engines and hence help with brand awareness, reputation management and positive words of mouth.  Search engines have already started giving weight to number and sentiment of reviews.  On-site user experience has always been a core element of SEO!

See also: Top 10 Benefits of Social Media for Business ; SEO and Social Media Marketing Integration ; Should Facebook Have a Dislike Button? ; Using Social Media for CRM ; SEO Specialist’s Website

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Should Facebook Have a Dislike Button?

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

There has been a lot of fuss about whether or not Facebook will, or should, implement a Dislike button. There are plenty of supporters on each side of the debate. People who favour Facebook not having a dislike button claim that having it would promote negativity or online bullying.

I tend to agree with the people who support not having it, but only to interpersonal or between-the-friends level. Having a dislike button, on the other hand, becomes extremely important when it comes to using Facebook at business or brand level. When people interact with brands they want to see both sides of the picture before making buying or other decisions. That is why brands like Amazon, eBay and TripAdvisior etc. has been extremely successful because they show both positive and negative reviews and ratings.

A classic example may be the case of YouTube which has been doing a great job by providing with the option to dislike videos. 500 likes (thumbs up) against 10 dislike (thumbs down) can tell much better story as compared to 1000 likes with no dislike option given at all. In fact, if dislike option is given, consumers will see more reasons to like stories! If we look at YouTube, it is not difficult to notice that more negativity can be spread through comments and not through the dislike button!!

One may say that adding dislike option will make Facebook  less appealing for brands and, hence, they are hesitant to add it to their sites. But this is just another excuse because brands, especially those who deliver quality, frequently use YouTube videos on their websites! From an SEO prospective, if Facebook has a dislike button too, then search engines can use like/dislike as a ranking factor.

In an interview with ABC News last year, CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that they would definitely think about it . There is a strong group of 3.3 million users promoting the idea of having a dislike button on Facebook too, but what a pity one may only like that page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dislike-Button/102038567018).

One of the latest news from Facebook is that it is going to crowd-source buttons, that is, consumers will be able to develop their own buttons. Let’s see if developers are able to create a ‘dislike’ button now or not. The odds are less as having good relationships with brands is in favour of Facebook to generate revenue!

What are your thoughts regarding Facebook Dislike button?

See also: Top 10 Benefits of Social Media for Business ; SEO and Social Media Marketing Integration ; Using Social Media for CRM ; Top 10 Benefits of SEO for Businesses ; SEO Specialist’s Website

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SEO and Social Media Marketing Integration

Friday, October 7th, 2011

Since Social Media advent, SEO specialists have used social media for various different tasks for example conducting keyword research,  incorporate it into  website for updates, getting links and improving rankings, direct traffic to the website and distributing the contents.

Clients often ask me ‘what is the best integration of SEO and social media marketing?’ In reply, I quote Google, “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” According to a recent research on social media done by myself, in which some of the world leading social media experts participated, it was found out that customer experience was in the heart of social media interactions from a business point of view. Customer experience results in enhanced loyalty and customer satisfaction. This enhanced customer experience is very helpful in building communities and engaging them in conversations about the brand. Even though word of mouth is often not under the direct control of companies, they may still impact it by improving customer experience and using communities.

How can customer experience be managed from SEO point of view:

 

While real-time problem solving and customer service are of prime importance for enhancing customer experience from Social Media point of view, the following are the main elements from SEO point of view:

  • Targeting only relevant keywords
  • User friendly website design (Clear navigation and contents layout, lighter page size, FAQs, Clear and smooth check-out process, cross-browser compatibility etc.)
  • Creating well-optimized quality contents frequently

This will, in turn, result into more traffic and more time on site with less bounce rate while giving valuable backlinks to the site.

Online reputation management

Sometimes unwanted things may happen for various reasons, which can badly hurt online reputation of the firms. It is, therefore, important to have a risk management plan ready to deal with such an unwanted situation. This is where integration of SEO and social media becomes so important.

A good reputation is extremely necessary for increasing sales, making joint ventures, improving customer experience and helping with the recruitment and retention of talent. So companies should have a risk management plan regarding that.

SEO, Social Media and Online Reputation

When companies ignore customer experience and make them upset by not providing them with what they have been promised, they may express their anger by writing negative reviews over social media channels about the firms which ultimately are shown on top of search results for the brand related keywords. In such cases it becomes increasingly important to repair the reputation.

Consumers trust Google organic results and they know that Google ranks the trusted and well-reputed websites on top of search results. Hence, a positive presences on the first page of Google greatly increases the positive perception and reputation of a brand.

SEO and Social Media marketing integration

As it is almost impossible to delete negative press, firms can push any negative press deeper in the ranking by having well-optimized contents on variety of social media and other online platforms which best represent the business. It is also important to respond proactively to any negative press using all the social media channels. SEO is not just about optimizing the main website, it is about optimizing all digital assets. By knowing the customers and their keywords, by SEOing website, blogs and other social presences for those keywords by frequently generating quality contents, companies can secure many top positions over search engines which can push negative comments down in the ranking and can help with online reputation and hence building trust. Thus, a proactive self-defence by developing social and other web presences in a search engine friendly manner through SEO is another top way of integrating SEO and Social Media marketing.

Long-term SEO and Social Media marketing Integration

The long term integration requires the use of social media carefully in a well-optimized manner to stay on top in ‘semantic web’. I will write a separate blogpost about it later on.

See also: Top 10 Benefits of SEO for Businesses ; Top 10 Benefits of Social Media for Business ; SEO Specialist’s Website ; What are SEO and SEO Specialist? ; Should Facebook Have a Dislike Button?

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Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Business

Saturday, August 13th, 2011

What started as a simple way of communication between group members, social media has evolved into a global phenomenon and has totally changed the way we communicate, collaborate and do business. For any business, marketing is a strong backbone which determines the success of business. Social media, in combination with search engines, is changing traditional marketing in many ways and it has become increasingly important for the businesses to engage with customers using social media and listen to them and then react accordingly before starting promotions and sales. Social Media help businesses with marketing directly and indirectly in a number of ways e.g. by improving contents distributions, organic rankings, traffic to websites, customer services and satisfaction, brand communities, humanization of brands and most importantly managing online reputation. Here is the list of top ten benefits which organizations may avail through the use of social media:

  1. Online Reputation Management (ORM)
  2. Viral Marketing – Word of Mouth (WOM)
  3. Website Traffic and Ranking (SEO)– Lead Generation
  4. Market and Consumer Research-Monitoring, Trends and Needs – Deep Customer Insights
  5. Content Marketing – Information Marketing
  6. Real-Time Customer Engagement – Customer Retention
  7. Online PR- Building Leadership and Influence
  8. Humanizing Brand – Brand Awareness and Perception
  9. Loyalty Marketing – Improved Customer Service
  10. Risk Monitoring and Management – Mitigating the Risk

For full version of the article, please visit:  Benefits of Social Media – SEO Consultant Specialist

See also: Top 10 Benefits of SEO for Businesses ;  SEO and Social Media Marketing Integration ; What is an SEO Specialist ; Should Facebook Have a Dislike Button?

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Why a Business Needs Social CRM? Using Social Media for Customer Relationship Management

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management through Social Media, aka sCRM) is technological extension of traditional CRM  which enables businesses to interact with customers in real time using variety of social  media platforms in a cost effective way. In the world of conversation-centric and community-oriented Social Media, customers are gaining more importance and their voices are being heard more seriously by businesses now a days, resulting in enhanced and improved customer experience. Increased customer control has ultimately changed the existing traditional CRM model. Traditionally CRM plans are developed in an “inside-out” direction whereas Social CRM is considered best “outside-in” direction. Thus information democracy is more and more prevalent.

Social media has given liberty to customers to interact with each other using blogs, social networks and customer reviews sites, regardless of whether businesses are taking part in the conversation or not. To lessen the power of social customer; businesses should adopt Social CRM as a business approach. Social CRM is the business’s response to customer’s ownership of the conversation.  Businesses should strategically engage in the conversations with their target audience while filtering the noise. It is great opportunity for providing customer service, managing online reputation, finding customers needs and satisfying those in timely manner, getting real-time feedback and ultimately having increased brand awareness and loyalty, and most importantly, increased sales.

Paying attention to feedback and bringing improvements accordingly is pre-requisite for success in any business however Social CRM has changed the way of doing business and getting feedback. Earlier, it was possible for businesses to ignore their unhappy customers. This is now impossible for any business. Social CRM now forces businesses to pay close attention towards how customers think and perceive any business. Any business that ignores this precious customer feedback cannot survive the competition.

Unfortunately, few businesses may devise ethically and morally disapproved strategies to survive and sustain e.g. by writing excessive fake reviews that can build their reputation or harm the reputation of competitors. However such strategies must be avoided as few countries have already formulated rules and regulations for the wrong use of Social media to protect its consumers.

Social CRM can be helpful for business in many other ways too; particularly to create positive Word of Mouth (WOM), provide memorable service and to get deeper insight into their customer’s behaviour by real-time listening and monitoring. I’ll focus on these positive perspectives of Social CRM in future posts.

See also: Top 10 Benefits of Social Media for Business ; SEO and Social Media Marketing Integration ;  SEO Specialist’s Website ;  Should Facebook Have a Dislike Button? ; Using Social Media for Business Success

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