Does social media work for businesses? It’s the question of many businesses ask themselves. Sometimes they find out the hard way. I have been doing some research into social media and business and to me it is evident that your overall business performance will dictate how well your business is perceived in social media. What should you do When Social Media turns on you?
Social media came to prominence with Facebook. Primarily a social network, Facebook is little more than an electronic version of writing letters to “Penpals” in the 50s and 60s.
Not sure this is what Australia Post expected
It’s an easy way to catch up with friends and to see what is going on in their lives – from what they had for dinner last night right through to the obligatory new baby photograph!
Facebook’s has turned into “The world’s craziest videos” with your friends rarely resisting the opportunity to post their latest video of the guy who tried to land a B-17 Strata fortress in the back of a 1969 Holden Ute or the latest cat surfing video.
So where does this leave social media for business? Often it is an outlet for the dissatisfied and disenchanted. It’s very easy for them to get on to your company page and give your business an unsubstantiated dressing down – often with other people posting to backup the first person.
What do you do? Well it is my view is that you must respond. Professionally. It would be very easy to return the fire but that only going to pour more petrol on the fire. If you don’t feel comfortable responding yourself, get paid media professional to assist you.
Think about what you were going to post, write it down and come back to an hour later. Reread what you said and then think again.
If you don’t respond it may show that you do not care about the customer grievance, unsubstantiated or not.
The underlying issue that the customer may be vocalising on your social media page may very well be true, consider that most people would not take the time to give you a hard time unless you really had delivered poorly.
Some people use social media to get what they want and they think the public humiliation of a company will make their company cave in to the requests. They may very well have purchased a product and not received satisfaction in their mind, even though as a company you have fulfilled your obligation and more. There will be some people who have an unrealistic expectation as to your service and products.
Win a prize or cop a bagging?
Consider your company policy and if it is in the interests of your company to provide assistance to the customer then make sure that you post on social media the outcome and how the customer was helped. The final word on those types of issues should always be yours.
Larger organisations like the ones we provided examples of here, have an uphill battle to satisfy all of their customers;, some would say it’s impossible. Larger organisations have millions of customers and there is no doubt that some of those will vocalise their concerns on those companies social media pages, often unrelated to the original post.
Be wary about using social media to promote a special product or price as disenchanted customers will use that as a tool against you. Especially if they purchased recently and the product is now being advertised as cheaper.
Use social media to make broad announcements that indicate that you are delivering better customer service or that your business has achieved some milestone. You are more likely to get posters to agree with you rather than being negative.
A message like “today we were proud to serve our 100,000th customer” is a far better message to send than having to reply to customer complaints about service that are unrelated to your original post.
Overall, remember the word ‘social” in social media. Consider what you say and use the post to be positive. Respond to complaints personally making sure that you post the outcome publicly and always have the last word. Effective use of social media is in your keyboard, just make sure you press the right keys!
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