What Should Your Customers Expect from Your Social Media Channels?
As eMarketer recently reported, when it comes to online retail sites, “usability” is a customer’s most important concern. Yes, your customers enjoy “bells & whistles” like online customer service or access to social networks, but if they can’t figure out what your product costs —…
Sometimes Your Customers Are Your Best Fact-Checkers
A few years ago, we helped our client, Bigelow Tea, produce a video showing viewers how to naturally decaffeinate an ordinary teabag. (Why would someone do this? Because sometimes a cafe doesn’t have your favorite flavor in a decaf version, so wouldn’t it be great…
Erase the Guilt Barrier Between You and Your Customers
Advertising Age recently posted a solid analysis on How to Get the Social Media Generation Behind Your Cause. Even if you’re not a non-profit, there’s still at least one core value in Ad Age’s article that applies to your business: Make sure your program has…
Business Relationships: Momentary Relevance or Long-Term Meaning?
In theory, every person you interact with is a potential customer. It’s just that some customers are more obvious — or more immediate — than others. If you sell house paint, then homeowners are more likely to be interested in your products than gardeners would…
5 Ways to Reward Your Customers as Brand Evangelists
One goal most companies have while growing their social media presence is to empower “brand evangelists,” who freely sing the praises of the company’s products & services. Thinking outside the box (as usual), Mack Collier asks a valid question: if your brand wants an evangelist,…
How to Improvise Your Company’s Videos
On the web, video works wonders. It’s fast-paced, personable, entertaining and informative. And since production time is always a factor, it helps to have a solid plan in place to make sure you stay on track and under budget. But if there’s one thing we’ve…
4 Ways to Make Social Media Easier
We’ll admit it: social media can be overwhelming. Posting blog entries, updating Facebook, tagging photos, streaming videos, digging, stumbling, tweeting… and we haven’t even mentioned tracking feedback, gauging sentiment, following fans and solving problems. Who has time for all this? Well, we do, but that’s…
Is Your Brand a Good Friend?
It may be time to re-evaluate your brand’s attitude. See, now that businesses and consumers can use social media to interact publicly, it’s changed the way people judge the brands they’ve spoken with. Customers notice how often they’re being listened to, and what kind of…
A Case Study: What Happens When Business and Politics Mix?
Politics — and political correctness — are tricky things. Everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs, but when a business becomes associated with a political sound bite, those beliefs can create a PR problem. (See our previous post about what PR can’t help you do in…
Is Your Company Afraid to Matter?
Dan Zarrella spends more time crunching the numbers on social media than anyone else we know. He recently proposed something he calls Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness, which breaks down thusly: First, someone must be able to receive your message Then, they must be interested in…