Social media experiment starts with a fizzle
Jeff ToisterMy social media experiment is off and walking. Not for any lack of trying on my part. Just a lack of social on the part of the companies I'm trying to interact with. (Read more about the experiment here.)
What happened in round 1?
I kicked things off by posting a question on the Facebook fan page of 5 of the 11 participants. I'll get to the other 6 later, but I want to keep it natural and I only had a legitimate reason to contact 5 of these companies so far.
One day later, I've received a response from only one company. A fellow 'fan' answered the question I posted to another company's page, so I suppose that's fair too. The other three companies are radio silent so far.
Demographics
My colleague, Grace Judson, offered a theory on how this will play out:
I suspect the level of engagement will depend heavily on the size of the company - which isn't something you've listed in the demographics. My guess is that the smaller the company, the more interactive they'll be.
I think Grace's theory is a good one, but the one company that's responded to me so far had over a million Facebook fans. Here's a snapshot of the fans and followers for my test subjects:
More predictions...
Angela Hill is one of my social media gurus. She offered an interesting perspective on what will determine whether a company succeeds or not in this arena:
The gaping chasm between followers and true engagement will grow deeper as we move towards a fully integrated online branding experience. Companies who do not quickly evolve and adapt will struggle with measuring and controlling the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. Whereas companies who do embrace this new Marketing 3.0 methodology will develop stronger, more transparent, interactive relationships with their client base, which will in turn generate revenue, allow for predictable metrics and build brand loyalty.
Yeah - Angela can get a little deep, but I think her theory is essentially that companies interested in engagement (the 'social' aspect) will do well while companies following a more 'media' strategy may get left behind. You can hear more of what Angela has to say about branding and social media by following her on Twitter: @incitrio.
Reader Comments (3)
I would be interested to know how many companies have formulated a target Social Media Service Level Agreement (SLA)
between them and visitors to their sites? Just as a non-response to an email sent to Customer Service (or other department) often exacerbates a situation, taking a day (or more) to respond to a Facebook/Twitter post by a consumer almost seems tantamount to neglect.
I remember last year when some attendees at the SXSW conference were experiencing difficulties with their departing flights, Southwest Airlines earned street cred by tweeting directly to these consumers, offering information and flight options that were NOT being provided by the gate personnel and call center staff from OTHER airlines.
Aha! No mistake that it was the company with the most fans that provided a response - and that the response came from one of the fans, not the company itself.
I'd say your experiment actually is off and RUNNING, not just walking. No response is itself a response, after all.
In my own interactions with businesses, whether on their blogs, via email, via Twitter, or through various forms of Contact pages on their websites, I find that my opinion of them drops precipitously if they don't get back to me within 24 to 48 hours. This is even more the case if they've had a history of being responsive and then their responsiveness degrades. There's at least one microbusiness I can cite (but won't to protect the guilty) that used to be highly responsive, and has recently blatantly reneged on several publicly-made promises. They are no longer on my list of companies I recommend.
Likewise, I've been doing research on several different technical tools, some for me, and some for my clients. And I'm astonished at how companies simply DO NOT RESPOND to pre-sales questions. If that's what they're like in the pre-sales process, the mind boggles at what their technical support would be!
On the other hand, one company has not only answered all my questions very quickly, but even sent a follow-up email a week later.
These things mean so much - especially in this era of you-can-find-anything-on-the-Internet!
I'm fascinated by your experiment, Jeff. Very cool.
Thanks for your comments, John & Grace. I really appreciate you chiming in! That's a great suggestion to investigate -- whether or not any of these companies have published standards for communicating with their customers via social media. I'll look into it an include it in my next update next week.