Social Media Customer Service Blunders

Well, once again I am confounded by the lack of customer service we get from the almighty Facebook site.

Once upon a time I was enthralled with social media as a great way to have two-way communication with my customers and my clients' customers. Now I am thoroughly disgusted with some social sites, simply because they seem not to care about the customers (YES, CUSTOMERS) who use them.

There is no way to contact Facebook, other than through the site's help section, which doesn't seem to help with most of the problems we experience when trying to post or advertise for our clients. The latest problem has to do with a promotion that Facebook set up for small businesses called "Small Business Boost." We were emailed that one of our client pages had qualified for $50 in free advertising. When we tried to take advantage of the offer, we had problems registering the client page. There was nothing on the help pages that helped, and when we said that the stuff didn't help, there was no way to tell them why it hadn't helped... just "OK. We're sorry."

We finally moved through the problems and posted an ad for our client today, but there was no place to log that the advertising was to take advantage of the free offer for "Small Business Boost", just an email telling us that our credit card would be charged for the advertising. Here's the notification we got from Facebook:

Hi Patricia Y. Hartman,

Thanks for creating a Facebook Ad or Sponsored Story! Your confirmation is below. Please note that you will only be charged for the impressions or clicks your ad receives. The total charge will not exceed the daily campaign budget you have set. Remember to create multiple versions of your Facebook Ads. Successful advertisers recommend starting off with 5 to 10 versions of your ads to test which combinations of images and text are most effective. If you have any questions about your Facebook Ads or Sponsored Stories, please visit our Help Center.

You will be sent an email receipt for any charges from Facebook, and the information about the charge is also available in the billing tab of your Ads Manager.

Sincerely,
The Facebook Ads Team

Notice there is no mention of the "free" advertising promotion. Also notice that there is no way to get hold of these people via email or phone to complain! And there is also no way to cancel the advertising. At least when we deal with the traditional media, we can pick up the phone and talk to our account executive. Not so with social media.

I've read rants on Facebook about the new "timeline" format. Have the techies at the social site listened to the rants from their users? Obviously not. We're getting it whether we want it or not.

Mark Zuckerberg and his minions need to go back to school to learn a few lessons in customer service. After all, the users of Facebook and advertisers on are Facebook's customers.

Business and Social Media

While everyone is getting on the bandwagon with social media for their company, there are things your company should consider. What Bill in accounting thinks is an innocent tweet could be a PR disaster for Frank, the CEO. Follow these simple rules for establishing a social media policy for your company to eliminate the chances of problems:

1. What goals are you trying to reach by using social media?
2. What specific audience are you trying to reach?
3. Make sure you hold to what your company believes and what the values are.
4. Who is the spokesperson for your company and what role do the other employees play in your social media experience? Who is going to monitor and maintain your sites?
5. Make sure there are specific guidelines for each social networking site, as each are different.
6. Separate personal from business, you don’t want your personal insights to be misconstrued as a representation of your company.

Make sure you put a working policy in place today for your company’s protection. If you haven’t started using social media as a way to market and promote your business, you should! Contact me for all your social marketing needs.

Sarah

Social Media: The Next Wave of Marketing

Does you have a website, a Facebook page or MySpace presence for your business? If so, who updates the information and how often? If the answers are "Me" and "When I can get to it", we need to get together. I can help you to fully understand your marketing and business objectives before launching off into this apparently vast space.

Sarah Greer here, the new Social Media Queen Bee of Imagery Marketing. Social media first showed up on my computer screen MySpace hit the scene. While in college, Facebook became my connection with other classmates. With the invention of smart phones, social media usage has become even more popular and necessary. Never did I imagine that social media would have evolved as much as it has. Connecting with friends in Europe? No problem! No long distance calls and no high fees, thanks to those "electronic leashes". Everything that can be done with a desktop or laptop computer, I can accomplish the same (and more with the "apps") with my phone.

With the instant ability to deliver information using social networking sites like Facebook (400 million +), Twitter (95 million) and LinkedIn (50 million members worldwide), your business must consider social media in your marketing mix.

A recent Small Business Trends article shared some pretty surprising statistics about how small business owners view social media. In the article, it cited a report that said 47% of small business owners don’t think their customers use social media and 24% didn’t think their customers research online before finding them.

Based on these numbers, it’s pretty clear that many small businesses are in denial about the power of social media and mobile marketing, despite how mainstream it has become. And, even if small business owners are willing to admit that social media is a viable marketing channel, they are still reluctant to dive in.


Here are 10 compelling reasons for you to use social media to help grow your business:
1. Own your brand’s social presence
2. You look like you “get it”
3. Brand recognition
4. Take your message directly to consumers
5. Brand monitoring
6. Generate site traffic
7. Find new customers through your friends.
8. Find new customers through your company profile
9. Niche marketing
10. Sarah Greer, Social Media Queen Bee

Using social media to its maximum advantage, you can market your products or build your brand. As a business owner, if you have not jumped on the social media wave, you are missing out on so many opportunities. So what are you waiting for? Contact me.

Guest Blogger: What is Web 2.0? Interactivity and Social Networking are taking over!

Our Guest "Phlogger" this week is Deborah Geiger, APR, of Content Fresh LLC

Are you running Web 2.0? A dramatic shift has occurred worldwide on the Internet that will impact your business whether you follow it or not.

Web sites of the last century were diverse, and one common characteristic was that content was driven by the corporation. Polished and informative brochure-style sites contained loads of information on company history, products, purchase information, and other static business information and resources. Researchers from institutions, marketing and sales divisions of corporations and information sources loaded the Internet with information and valuable content.

The new Internet, or Web 2.0, is driven by individuals.

A Wikipedia definition: "Web 2.0" refers to what is perceived as a second generation of web development and web design. It is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications. Examples include social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies.
[Citation: Web 2.0. (2009, July 10). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:14, July 10, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Web_2.0&oldid=301344373]

While companies are still posting and adding content in scores, the change is in the fact that the majority of what people say online is no longer managed by corporations or their staff. Millions of people share information daily on social networking sites, such as Facebook (over 5 million members) and Twitter. In fact research shows that searches for social networking has FINALLY surpassed porn!

“According to Bill Tancer, Hitwise's general manager of global research, Web searches for social networking sites have finally surpassed searches for pornography.” [Source: Gina Hughes: The Techie Diva, blog, Yahoo Tech!, Tue Sep 16, 2008 7:39PM EDT]

By enabling and allowing information sharing and collaboration, the Web has become a shared “application” where the content begins with PEOPLE, not business or companies. Smart companies are joining in the conversation by adding corporate blogs, joining Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more.

Leading edge are letting their customers post actual messages and receive feedback in real-time on their sites. It takes guts to allow your customers to post their true feelings about your products on your Web site, but the companies that do this are seen as sincere, honest and businesses where you will want to spend your money! Are you ready to give it a try?

–Deborah York Geiger, APR, owner of Content Fresh LLC, maintains a blog at www.geigerpoint.wordpress.com. With 20 years experience in marketing, public relations and business, Deborah writes about technology for business professionals. For more information, visit www.myfreshcontent.com.

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SPRF (Southern Public Relations Federation) is conducting a survey about use of social networks. If you are an SPRF member and have not taken the survey, please use the link below and take part. And if you do not belong to SPRF, please take the survey anyway. Here's a link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6V1DTiyALEIcBDa6IIdTbA_3d_3d
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