How to Combat a Social Media Crisis

Are you prepared for a social media crisis?

In the event of one, Jay Baer and Amber Naslund, in The Now Revolution, recommend these eight steps:

Acknowledge the crisis. Right at the onset, let customers and social media onlookers know you’re not asleep at the wheel.

Fight fire with fire. It’s imperative to communicate through the vehicle where the crisis started.  If it broke out on Twitter, respond first on Twitter.

Apologize. If you made a mistake and want the healing process to begin quickly, start with “We’re sorry.”

Create an FAQ. List the prominent inquiries about the crisis and provide your responses, even if you don’t have complete answers to every question. Update the document in real time.

Build a pressure-relief valve. Open your blog to comments and your Facebook page to discussions. Consider creating a dedicated discussion forum.

Know when to take it off line. Engage people who are extremely upset off line. You can usually reduce the toxicity.

Arm your army. Provide your team with the same information you provide the public. Often, communication professionals are so busy during a crisis they fail to keep employees in the loop.

Learn your lessons. Once the crisis has abated, document it, so you reconstruct and learn from your response.

When Customers Don't Care

Are you struggling to get new customers and keep old ones?

In his book The New Experts, adman Robert Bloom offers seven ways to build customer preference in a pitiless world where "buyers no longer care who they buy from."

Benefit.  First and foremost, you must offer your customer an immediate, personal advantage that's different from the ones offered by competitors.  It must be real and "cannot be something that the customer considers trivial."

Website.  No matter your business, besides a benefit, an easy-to-use Website is today's single most powerful buying influence.

Likability.  As salespeople know, customer preference is also about likability.  Customers seldom buy from someone they can't stand.

Trust.  One of the most powerful buying influences, trust (unlike likability) takes time and sincerity to build.

Guarantee.  Warranties provide a form of trust, but the key to them is simplicity.  Complex guarantees backfire.

Best option.  Customer preference can stem from a tiny detail that makes your business the best choice.  You're always on time.  You're always courteous.  Your'e always neat.  You're always cheerful.

Brand.  Preference can boil down to what your brand says about your customer.  "I feel respected as a client."  "I feel good when I buy green."  "I feel elegant when I shop there."

Now for the best news: it isn't easy, but any organization, of any size, "can create customer preference with big ideas and small ones."

Forever Young

I'm always frustrated by marketers who say they need new tactics, but reject every recommendation with the expression, "We tried that—it doesn't work."

Marketers like these are "old men," no matter their age or gender.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote in his journal, "For the 'old man,' everything is old: he has seen everything or thinks he has.  He has lost hope in anything new.  What pleases him is the 'old' he clings to, fearing to lose it, but he is certainly not happy with it.  And so he keeps himself 'old' and cannot change: he is not open to any newness."

In the words of Bob Dylan, "May you stay forever young."

Love and Marriage

Remember the old song?

Well, lead generation and lead cultivation go together like a horse and carriage, too.  Or at least they should.

Eight of 10 marketers plan to ramp up social media spending this year, in the relentless pursuit of leads.

But unless they marry lead cultivation to lead generation, all the social media in the world won't boost the bottom line.

In her blog, B2B e-marketing guru Ardath Albee explains why.  "Without the nurturing, generating leads is merely an exercise in trying to scrape the 10% who may be ready to buy and then dumping the rest into an afterthought category."

To succeed, you have to engage people who opt to follow you.  (Social media marketing is a lot like marriage, isn't it?)

And engagement requires consistently useful content.  "The perceived value of the content is what you're being judged on every time," Albee writes.  "In all cases, just showing up is not going to work."

Don't believe it?  Look at the divorce rates:

• 49% of prospects have unsubcribed to an email series
• 43% have unliked a company on Facebook
• 52% have unfollowed a brand on Twitter

The figures suggest that marketers should rethink the role of social media, putting lead cultivation first. 

"Perhaps the ramp-up strategy for social media should actually be customer nurturing instead of new lead generation," Albee says.

Reviews Rule, Blogs Boogie

A new study by GroupM confirms marketers' sense that customers are behaving differently than they did a few years ago:

• 86% of customers say search engines are important to their buying decisions.
• 58% begin their "buying journey" with online search.
• 45% continue to use search throughout the journey.
• 40% who use search go to social media as the next step in the journey.
• 30% use social media to create a buying "short-list."
• 28% believe social media builds brand awareness.

And what do customers most value?  Reviews and blogs.

"The data suggests the two most important subsets in social are user reviews and category blogs, rather than sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube,” says Chris Copeland, CEO.