Social Savvy: Avoiding Costly Mistakes

This morning I was reading a great article at PCWorld that detailed the growing use of social media management tools in large corporations in order to monitor their brands and their customers. While many of you reading this are probably saying to yourself, “it’s about time!” still others may be questioning it’s relevance in an overall marketing strategy.

Ignoring social media can present far greater costs than learning to use it wisely.

Many small businesses simply shrug this off as being too much of a hassle, or too expensive to implement. The truth is, they’re wrong on both counts. While there are a number of third-party solutions that cost some serious coin, there are a handful of free and low-cost alternatives that are available. You just need to know where to look.

Spredfast – (From their website) Spredfast offers secure and scalable social media solution that streamlines the social media listening, communicating, and measuring processes. Their free plan offers analytics, up to 5 social streams, as well as charts and reporting.

HowSociable – is a search tool that enables users to track brand mentions across the social web.

BackType – enables you to track your monthly engagement for free. Offers graphs of the summary, audience, and a list of the conversations/retweets. You can also get a Twitter Reach Report for a one-time fee of $20.

BlogPulse – searches the blogosphere for mentions of your URL , keyword or topic. An excellent tool for use in tracking competition, niche news, etc.

TweetBeep – Works like Google Alerts and enables you to keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly updates. Offers a premium version for $20/month.

Sendible – enables you to engage with your audience across multiple formats with ease. Analytic tools track the success of email and marketing campaigns, and they also offer a tool to track brand mentions. They offer an ad-supported version, as well as several affordable monthly and pay-as-you-go plans.

Twitalyzer 2.0 – one of the web’s most popular tools for tracking Twitter influence and reach. There is a free version, as well as several paid options.

TweetStats – tracks your tweets per hour, tweets per month, and replies. Free to use.

This is just a small sampling of what is available — there are many excellent SaaS options for those who are interested in more extensive reporting tools.

Why Should You Be Interested in Reputation Management?

The short answer is you can’t afford not to be. Social media allows consumers to provide immediate feedback on brands and products, as well as customer service issues and complaints. You have precious little time to get out in front of any negative mentions, and respond. I’ve previously mentioned that Comcast® is a model that others could do well to follow — their Senior Director of National Customer Service Frank Eliason (@comcastcares on Twitter) is perhaps the most well-known customer service representative in the country.

A Bitter Pill to Swallow

Social media can also be used as a valuable market research tool — and can prevent unnecessary missteps.

In November of 2008, the makers of Motrin pain reliever were given a bitter pill to swallow after launching what they thought would be a very successful online ad campaign.

The ad, which initially began its run over a weekend in September, stated that while toting a baby around in a sling can cause back and neck pain, it “seems to be in fashion” and “totally makes [me] look like an official mom.” Outraged mothers took to the Twitterverse to share their comments, popularly noted with the use of the #MotrinMoms hashtag. By the following Monday morning, the ad was gone, and an official apology was issued by  McNeil Consumer Healthcare.

Had McNeil conducted an online market research study to test that campaign among their target audience (in this case, mothers), they could have leveraged the immediate feedback afforded by social media, and avoided a very pricey and embarrassing mistake. It’s one you can bet they won’t make again.

Social media should be a vital part of any marketing strategy — be it on or offline. When employed properly, the results can be significant — and that’s a fact you can take to the bank.

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