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…
Speaking Out: Sharing Our Bigelow Tea Case Studies with The Conference Board
We’re often asked to showcase our client, Bigelow Tea, as a social media case study. Last Friday, I told the tale of Bigelow Tea’s blogging beginnings (and their present day story) at the Corporate Communication and Web 2.0 conference for The Conference Board. Some stories that caught the…
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…
What the People Who Tweet About Your Business Are Actually Paying Attention To
A few weeks ago, we noticed that someone was live-tweeting during her hair appointment at Ouidad, a New York-based salon that caters to curly hair. (Ouidad is also our client.) The tweeter in question was glowyjoeybunny, AKA Joey Alycia, who had answered Ouidad’s open call…
Find New Ways to Use the Same Old Social Media Tools
Is social media a sales driver and a marketing aid? Absolutely. But we also encourage our clients to think outside the box, and find innovative ways to surprise and delight their customers by using these tools in unconventional ways. One way we do this is…
How to Benefit from Customer Complaints
A recent article about a social media-savvy Domino’s Pizza franchise in Chicago proves that even a bad customer experience can lead to positive opportunities. In this case, it revolutionized the way this particular pizza shop interfaces with its customers and manages their expectations. It also…
How to Find the Right (and Wrong) Employees to Represent Your Brand
One of the hardest lessons for businesses to learn about social media is this: Social media is a multi-way conversation. This differs from more traditional messaging. Ads are a one-way street. PR is top-down spin. And customer service is a function, not an opportunity. But…
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…
Stop Selling Spin: Why Facebook Won’t Save You in a PR Crisis
This week, the mainstream media has been blanketed by news coverage of BP’s oil spill off the US gulf coast. With ecological, economic and political repercussions being hotly debated, Erik Sass at MediaPost capitalized on the zeitgeist by turning it into a social media case…
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…