Marketing Technology Blog

No Comment has been the protective blanket that companies and individuals have used as shields whenever bad news or public scrutiny arises. In the old world where media took press releases as gospel and where companies were able to control the message No Comment worked to buy the company some time.

Today, No Comment doesn’t work. Ask Tiger Woods. Online social media tools allow everyone to comment. It means that if you or your business is not meeting potentially damaging news head on, people on Twitter, blogs, 24-Hour “news” shows are creating the comments for you. They are dictating the message and usually making things more difficult to manage and wrangle back in.

The problem with No Comment is that you usually end up doing a public Mea Culpa anyway, that is usually overshadowed by the speculation, rumor and innuendo, created by people without all the facts.

So as a business think about this next time you are faced with a crisis management situation, you can No Comment but remember, other people will be commenting…and you may lose any ability to get the real story out when you are ready.

We once had someone tell us that we, or rather our form building application, wasn’t “sexy”. In some respects I guess that person was right. Forms, by themselves are not sexy, but to the people who use them and depend on them to gather data, they are, if not sexy, pretty damn important.

So how do you, a business owner, marketer, etc, that has a product or service that isn’t “sexy” make it “sexy”? Here are a few ways.

Tell Your Customer’s Story: Chances are that you have some interesting companies using your service or product. Create case studies. Let customers guest post on your blog, do video interviews with them and post them on your social networks. Reach out to bloggers in your space with their story, their successes. By focusing on cool and innovative uses of your product you make it infinitely more exciting and open new avenues for people to talk and or write about you.

Open Up The Hood: Have a really interesting technology driving your business? Have you created a unique system to help operate your business? Chances are that your business has something unique that drives it (or you wouldn’t be successful). Highlight unique aspects of your business and give people a peek behind the curtain. Most likely this will be something that potential customers or members of the press will find interesting.

Let Your Customers Do Your Bidding: This is a little different than the first one. The beauty of social networks is that it allows your customers to talk about you. At FormSpring we monitor what people say about us on Twitter.  Instead of just keeping all those nice things to ourselves we created a “Twall of Fame” We printed and framed those positive tweets and put them in the hallway of our office. We  retweeted them and posted some of the tweets from the wall on our Facebook page and our blog. This got people talking about us again and enticed some of the people who wrote the original comments to re-post our tweets. It creates excitement about your brand and your product because it is coming from real users of your service. It gets your customers talking about you, telling their friends how “sexy” you are and why they like you.

Just because you don’t have the shiniest gadget or most popular social networking application on the internet does not mean your business isn’t exciting. Dig a little deeper than the surface and see what will get people talking. Chances are you won’t have to dig too deep.

Last week I found a great example of a really unobtrusive way to use email marketing as a way to drive traffic to social media. The email came from Dick’s Sporting Goods.

It was a simple, well-designed email that had a very simple call to action: Follow us on Twitter and receive an exclusive discount code:

Why it’s good

Dick’s did a good job of using a traditional tool – email marketing – to drive traffic to one of those shiny new social media tools – twitter.  What a lot of marketers overlook is that having a good social media presence isn’t just setting up post at each outlet and waiting for people to find you. You actually have to drive traffic to get people to start engaging with you! Simple concept, I know, but often an overlooked one when defining your social strategy.

Why it works:

1. Not only is there an incentive to follow Dick’s Sporting Goods on Twitter, but the offer, an exclusive (at least to their twitter followers) offer makes you feel like you are getting something no one else has. You are in the Dick’s Sporting Goods Twitter circle and you benefit from it.
2. It’s a soft sell, it’s not intrusive, and it doesn’t require a lot of action. That’s more than one – but you see what I am getting at.

The Result

Many of the traditional barriers have been removed for me to participate with or buy from Dick’s using this strategy. It was easy to follow the link, hit follow and get a discount code…and now that I have a discount code, my next step is probably to their website to see if there is something I didn’t know I needed until I had that excuse to go shopping – brilliant!

And now they have two permission-based mediums to market to me at… email and Twitter!

Every now and again I come across posts talking about how people don’t want to “engage” with brands on social media and that your brand shouldn’t be there, it should be people, etc., etc.

The latest was a post from Mike Seidle, a local blogger and business person who runs Professional Blog Service. I want to preface that I don’t know Mike and I have nothing against him. I  follow him on Twitter and I think he generally has some good thoughts about business blogging and social media, however I still disagree with Mike on this point.

It is OK for your brand to be on Twitter – to be on Facebook – to be active in social media. It really is, and for a couple of reasons.

1. It gives your customers one point to gather news and information about your company.
2. It allows you to monitor the conversation.
3. It allows you to connect with other brands and possibly forge relationships and parterneships based on their interactions in social media.

Mike points out that people want to engage with other people. Yes, this is true, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t carve out a space for your brand as well. Here are some effective ways to do this:

1. Acknowledge who tweets/updates Facebook etc. on your company’s behalf: By providing some real faces it helps humanize your brand. FreshBooks does a good job of this on their Twitter page.
2. Allow your employees to interact on social media on a personal level AND on behalf of your company: I manage our twitter account as well as our Facebook page but I also have my own personal accounts. Many of FormSpring’s customers don’t want to follow me, because well, sometimes I like to talk about sports, or my kids or whatever else is going on.So, much of what I have to say is not great for them. But I also am an advocate and an evangelist for FormSpring, and when it makes sense, I talk about the cool stuff we are doing on my personal accounts. It gives insight to people who follow me on what I do for a living and helps expose them to FormSpring.  Empower your brand and employees and it will pay off.
3. Have personality. If you are going to engage as your brand on social media show a bit of personality. We know that brands are not humans, but the more “life” you are able to give your brand on social media the more value you will derive from interacting through the multiple mediums.

Agree? Disagree? Have other ideas on how to use your brand across social media, let me know in the comments!