Your customers are not using Social Media-Case Study

Posted by Marc Meyer on June 23, 2010

2 comments | 1375 reads

I was talking to an SMB owner the other day who is doing everything that he is supposed to do in regards to social media usage for his company, and doing it seemingly correctly. By correctly I mean he has a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account which he updates semi-regularly. He is transparent, authentic, and he shares content and advice liberally when he can. He reads and comments on other blogs when he has time and he is thinking of starting his own blog. He loves what social media can do and is a champion of it. There’s one problem tho.

His customers are not on Twitter and Facebook.

Or are they? The back story: It has not been a year of engagement for either platform that he’s on and thus the growth of fans and followers has not been consistent or completely measureable. He still loves it, but his perception that social media could be a game changer for his business is waning.

My thought? He may be echoing a larger sentiment of SMB’s far and wide. More and more businesses are walking away from social media because they are not seeing “the immediate results”. Perhaps the first mistake is coupling the term “immediate results” with social media-Social is not a quick fix.

If we look under the hood of the SMB owner, we would see that though he is on multiple platforms, there is minimal engagement. His usage of both is scattershot and not very consistent. The effort that he puts into both is casual at best and he measures nothing. If we add a dose of unrealistic expectations coupled with zero strategy, then he is ripe to walk away and say that social media did not work for his business.

So are his customers using social media or not? He doesn’t think so. What do you think?

Republished with author's permission from original post by Marc Meyer.

Marc Meyer

As a Digital and Social Media strategist for Ernst & Young, Marc Meyer has been able to take technology, marketing and social media and meld it and simplify it in a way that makes sense not only for the SMB owner, but also the discerning C-suite executive of a Fortune 500 company.

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2 comments »

Axel Schultze

June 23, 2010

Rule#1 find your clients

Great case Marc. If feel however that this company did *not* do everything right in the social web. The Rule #1 is to identify your clients in the social web. If you can't, stop right there.

There is absolutely no need to tweet into an empty room, have a fan page for nobody and a community if there is no community.

*But* most people don't really look. Most people assume "my clients are there" OR "my clients are not there".

Here is a little case study of a tire dealer and a car dealer. It illustrates that both didn't have any of the social media fanciness but a successful social engagement.
http://www.socialbusinessone.com/blog/my_tire_dealers_social_crm

All in all after Rule#1 is:
Rule #2 assess what your market needs and wants, is excited about and frustrated about...
Rule #3 involve your existing customer in your social media engagement - if you do you will make less mistakes and actually be part of THEIR engagement.

Only then you start your social engagement. And it is by default successful because you do it with your customers what your customers need. It's much harder to make mistakes. ;)

Maybe something you may share with that company.

Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS

Deb Kolaras

June 23, 2010

Homework First

When I read things aren't working as planned for an SMB's current social media efforts, the first thing I think about is what kind of plan was laid out to begin with. Was an audit done before starting, so the client would know where their audience might be, so they would be engaging in the right spaces? Was there a clear plan of attack (number of touches a day, for example) and a measurement mechanism in place to gauge on a daily basis the impact of the efforts? Without these, it's like ANY marketing efforts - set it and forget it does not work.

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