Engaging in the conversation
This blog starts with Twitter and ends with Facebook. Call me one wired dude.
Starting with Twitter, I saw this blog post "Tweet"-ed ("Tweet" is the word for a "what'cha doin?" post on Twitter for those that haven't yet joined the fad) by Jeff Henderson today and thought it was a really good read. Check it out...
It interested me because it has been very en-vogue now for businesses, artists, and even churches to open up and engage with people on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. A lot of us young people (or people like me that like to think "young") are engaged with social networking and of course marketers like myself are interested in leveraging these tools to get the word out, discover the voice of our audience, and create buzz. Some great brands l have had good success with social networking and it's starting to get a little crowded on the bandwagon.
Of course, social networking is a double-edged sword. When you engage with your customers, church members (Buckhead Church, where I attend and serve, puts a lot of thought into using these tools to reach out in our church and especially the singles ministry), or networking contacts... you must be aware that your followers aren't obliged to say glowing things about you; especially (in the case of the movie Bruno... read the blog in the link) if your promises aren't aligning with expectations. The voice of the customer is what it is, and we as marketers must be prepared to listen to it, accept it, and react to it.
I do agree with the blogger that the benefits of engaging in these forums far outweighs the risks. It of course helps when your organization is on target and your customers love you to death :-). Regardless, you must be prepared to have a dialogue with your customers and engage them with authenticity. The fact is that if there is unfavorable scuttlebutt out there --> it's being said whether you have a Twitter set up or not. It really is better to know what's being said and engage them to improve rather than to dismiss or ignore such valuable feedback.
With the value of relationship being so critically important today; organizations that engage in the conversation with their customers and demonstrate active listening are well positioned to succeed. Whether you are talking about a consumer brand like Chick-Fil-A or a B2B technology brand like Salesforce.com; the results demonstrate the success of those that listen to the voice of the customer and deliver.
On the plus side, (going back to the blog link above) if the worship at your church and the message was engaging and God-led, people will tweet about that as well. If your movie kicked butt, the tweeting traffic may give your indie film better buzz than Bruno's enormous ad and PR budget. And if you're getting people to talk about their love of "Eat Mor Chickin" and they love it, you'll see pictures of kids in cow costumes on a fan page near you and smiley faces on the posts.
That's keeping it real and doing it with excellence.
Perhaps if Bruno read the tweets they'd have sent their movie straight to video so we could get the Harry Potter release on more screens ;-)
Yeah - I heard a few people on Facebook say that Harry Potter was good. I'm definitely going to see it now.
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