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Social media platforms are not only changing the way we communicate and do business, they’re also changing our level of influence as customers and citizens.
Recent events in Egypt, Iran, and Yemen show just how quickly messages can go viral and how much these viral messages can impact world affairs. Social media has given the common citizen a louder voice and more power of influence than ever before. Political leaders who fail to hear the voices screaming through social media do so at their own peril—as evidenced this past week in the Middle East.
But the same warning applies to business leaders. Mantras like “the customer is king” have never been truer than today. Customers no longer need to take out advertisements in newspapers to voice their displeasure with your service or product—a method of complaint with limited impact. Now, one negative posting about your business on a site like Yelp can go viral in a matter of hours, much too quickly for business leaders to counter…and the consequences can be severe.
So what can businesses do to equalize the shifting level of influence? Learn to maximize social media in the same way your customers are.
Employ social media as you would a highly paid PR executive. Recognize that social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and others create their own value. Their sphere of influence is your sphere of influence. Shift your customer relations position from defense to offense. Find out which social media sites your customers are using and take the fight to them. In Super Bowl parlance, Blitz! Blitz! Blitz!
Social media provides vast opportunities to market to your customers, but also to EARN their trust and business. Share with them why you do what you do. Show them why they are important to your success. Reward them for their loyalty. Respond quickly when you miss the mark. And most of all…show that you care.
There have never been more opportunities for positive customer interaction than now. Recognize the value of social media and your business will not only survive, it will thrive! You will avoid viral “days of rage” where customers call for your head on a platter. Instead, you’ll rise above your competitors, create customer loyalty, and build a brand to be proud of.
I am not completely sure it’s right to give so much power to everyone all the time. Freedom of speech and freedom of thought are of course fundamental rights, but the wrong message at the right time can be potentially very dangerous because the recipient of such message doesn’t always have the capability of reacting to it in a proper way. Crowd inciters know this very well, the flaming word said at the right time is more powerful than a bomb.
To go back to business matters, a single customer care incident can cause a brand to face an angry crowd with millions in potential losses. While from a user point of view this can be good news, a single incident – sometimes objectively trivial – can ruin a company. Is it the right thing? How much punishment is too much punishment?
It’s a great comment and point from you Gabriele. I too believe that giving too much power to a single voice can be VERY dangerous…as we are seeing in Egypt (collective voice). But that danger is inherent in business as well. A well promoted “brand” has the power to influence our opinions to the point that the brand’s opinion becomes the opinion we adopt. It’s very dangerous. But that is the nature of sales…and we are ALL selling something…whether promoting our ideals or promoting a brand.
I like the bomb analogy used. But let’s turn it a little. There comes a point where the development of an ideal or product exceeds our ability to use it responsibly. In other words, it takes on its own power to corrupt, as well as save. Using the bomb analogy, we could say that the nuclear bomb was both a saving and corrupting development. In order to save, it has to kill. We saw it in WWII. We won’t know how many American lives were saved by using the “bomb,” but we know how many it killed. We have to assume, for now, in that case that the number of lives saved were more than the number lost…but time may eventually tell us otherwise.
Thus, it all comes down to human element once again. No matter where technology leads us, we will always have a responsibility to each other to act responsibly. Realizing the TRUE power of a thing is the only thing that will aid us in living up to that responsibility. ~April Gregory
It’s a great comment and point from you Gabriele. I too believe that giving too much power to a single voice can be VERY dangerous…as we are seeing in Egypt (collective voice). But that danger is inherent in business as well. A well promoted “brand” has the power to influence our opinions to the point that the brand’s opinion becomes the opinion we adopt. It’s very dangerous. But that is the nature of sales…and we are ALL selling something…whether promoting our ideals or promoting a brand.
I like the bomb analogy used. But let’s turn it a little. There comes a point where the development of an ideal or product exceeds our ability to use it responsibly. In other words, it takes on its own power to corrupt, as well as save. Using the bomb analogy, we could say that the nuclear bomb was both a saving and corrupting development. In order to save, it has to kill. We saw it in WWII. We won’t know how many American lives were saved by using the “bomb,” but we know how many it killed. We have to assume, for now, in that case that the number of lives saved were more than the number lost…but time may eventually tell us otherwise.
Thus, it all comes down to human element once again. No matter where technology leads us, we will always have a responsibility to each other to act responsibly. Realizing the TRUE power of a thing is the only thing that will aid us in living up to that responsibility. ~April Gregory
I must agree with you, sadly though, personal experience based on what I see around me and overall around the world tells me that in most situations this responsibility is utterly ignored or greatly underestimated.
It’s a lot easier to comment on something which went wrong and analyze it throughly than to actually prevent it in first place.
Gabriele you’re right….and then it becomes a blame game. It’s sometimes hard to sell a preventative.
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you are right for what you have shared with us! social media is the fastest way to influence people !
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Thanks @FAISSAL
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