Social media is not just a new channel to push your marketing message, but a way to interact, provide customer service, get feedback and innovate with customers. Make your customers happy and they’ll do the promotion work for you. This holistic approach of managing customers interactions through social media is called social media customer relationship management (social CRM).
Most companies now agree using social media is something that they can’t avoid. However most of them just think marketing, ie pushing their message onto users and customers. Very few understand social media is about interactions and that listening is part of the conversation.
In the process they put huge amount of money and efforts to push their message to reach new customers and pay little attention to existing customers. Yet existing customers are also using social media, promoting their favorite products and brands when happy, but are even more likely to speak up when unhappy.
In today’s interconnected world a message from a customer can reach the entire web and ruin a company marketing message in no time. On the other hand wise companies are now using social media to provide customer service, get feedback about products and services, and even innovate using customers feedback. This approach not only reduce bad word of mouth, but encourage positive word of mouth from happy customers which is the best possible marketing.
Here’s a good infographic about social customer service:
To find out more about Social CRM concept and latest trends, check out the Social CRM google group, led by renowned Web strategist Jeremy Owyang from Altimeter Group with lots of fine folks exploring the topic.