Social media and networks, even after all the positive spin given over the last 5 years, has a dark side. We have seen this in its everyday personal use (many mediums are a predatory gateway), but now the dark side is casting shadows on the business world as well. In their recent article, Defeating the Dark SIde of Social Networking, Joseph Hughes and Chris Boudreaux write how businesses are being victimized by social media and their slow response to the attacks.
Hughes and Boudreax 6 recommended actions useful when engaging your community about your brand:
>> Develop a “social customer management” strategy that includes technical and business process components designed to engage customers in conversations.
>> Automate as much interaction with customers as possible, so call-center workers can put the best approaches to work repeatedly.
>> Reduce the time it takes to respond to Web postings from weeks to hours, or even minutes.
>> Connect marketers with product development staff to build a bridge from the conversations happening on the Web to the goods and services your company produces.
>> Balance your resources between fielding customer phone calls and responding to what’s happening on the Web.
>> Prioritize which customers demand the most immediate attention, and come up with a plan to ensure a timely response based on how valuable they are.
These are all excellent actions, but there are a couple of additional ones that should be considered as well:
— Develop a Social Media Value Chain so that you can coordinate your branding activity throughout the entire business and partnerships
— Have quantitative brand amplification metrics in place so that actions can be measured and rationally assessed (vs. empirically discussed in an emotional manner).
— Align business strategies with operations in a manner that recognizes the necessity of transparency in business activities.
Nobody in their right business mind would ignore customers in their lobby complaining about their products and services. Ignoring your customers in the social media/networking lobby, just a virtual extension of your business, is a action that will only bring shadows of the dark side to your doorway.
Practical Aspects of Social Media: Art, Science, and Humanity 