Posts
The 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study in the US, has found that 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its customers via social media.
With 60 percent of Americans now reportedly using online social networks, this means that more than 50 percent of the US population believes that the organisations they engage with require a social media presence.
Extrapolating this to Australia, which generally runs a few years behind the US, there's strong reasons to look seriously at engaging via social media channels.
It is estimated that almost half of all Australians use online social media (Neilsen). As such I'd expect that at least a third of Australians would similarly want to find Australian organisations represented at social media sites and around a quarter expect to engage them online.
As Australian Anthill's Brad Howarth suggests in the article, Not just for kids - social networks just grew up, If social networking isn’t part of your marketing strategy, the only person’s time you’re wasting is your own.
Here's a couple of other interesting findings from Cone's report on how organisations are expected by their customers to engage,
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Do your customers expect you to be online? | Tweet |
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
50 ideas on using Twitter for organisations | Tweet |
Following from my post this morning on Telstra's use of Twitter, Chris Brogan wrote an excellent piece last month on how organisations can use Twitter to better engage their customers titled, 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business.
For me (as it was for Chris) the number one reason or idea for using this type of tool is for listening to your constituency. Hearing what real people are saying about your organisation, services and topic area provides an ongoing temperature of public opinion.
Another key reason in my view is for building an organisation's online reputation.
Most communicators understand that their organisation's public reputation shapes how people engage with them, thereby influencing their capacity to send messages out to their customers as well as their capacity to provide effective customer service.
However in my view few Australian organisations (particularly in the public sector) have as yet grasped how important it is to establish a sound online reputation. Assuming that their past reputation will carry over only goes so far, and it can rapidly be damaged through inept online engagement (or no online engagement at all!)
Laurel Papworth explains this well in her article, Twitter: Reputation Management in Social Networks.
She uses the diagram (illustrated below) to explain the stages in development from creating an online profile (not simply a 'corporate' website!!) to building reputation and trust-based relationships.
Incidentally, the power of Twitter to allow customers to self-organise rapidly is demonstrated in one of the most recent posts in Laurel's blog, Twitter Agency - crowd sourced consultancy.
Telstra does Twitter | Tweet |
Telstra recently took up 'tweeting' as a channel for providing customer service.
Discussed via their Nowwearetalking site, there's been a lot of initial feedback on the approach taken.
Telstra has also linked to some of the broader online commentary in their post.
This step helps legitimise Twitter and microblogging as a customer service option for Australian organisations.
It also provides insights for other organisations so they can learn from both Telstra's missteps and successes.
I'm watching carefully to see how Telstra's foray into microblogging goes. The channel has been used successfully in the US.
When executed well I believe it has customer service and marketing/PR benefits in some, but not all, service delivery areas.
Look for me at the Sydney conference, Advancing Intranet Management in the Public Sector | Tweet |
I am co-presenting the first presentation on Wednesday at the Ark Group's Advancing Intranet Management in the Public Sector conference in Sydney.
My colleague and I will be discussing how our agency's intranet was used to support staff through the recent major reform of the Australian Child Support Scheme and the cultural shifts through the Building a Better CSA program.
If you're attending the conference, please come and say hello at some point.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Storytelling as a blogging style | Tweet |
There are many different approaches to writing a blog post.
The Lost Art of Blogging provides an example of one of the more effective in The Homeric way of blogging : storytelling.
Humans respond strongly to stories and there is no reason why this technique should be less useful in official communications than in personal ones.
After all, the most effective business cases tell a story, as do many excellent advertisements.
