BulletProofBlog the blog on crisis communications

The top six social media tips to know before you leave the office.

Social media is changing the way we market products and communicate during crises. Consumers trust traditional corporate spokesmen less and less, and in their place, are turning to ever more readily available user reviews that are posted to blogs and social networking platforms.

This week’s Six @ Six discusses best practices for ensuring that your company’s primary online presence evolves alongside changing consumer behavior in the age of social media:

1. Facebook/Twitter Connect

There are more than 300 million users of Facebook and millions more on Twitter sharing their contact information, interests, and latest thoughts with their network of friends and followers. Using tools such as Facebook Connect and Twitter Connect in place of the usual comment form fields that permeate corporate websites will enable your customers to more easily share their views and allow you to more easily track who’s engaging the conversation and what’s being said. The popular blog Gawker.com saw a 45 percent week-over-week increase in registrations after implementing Facebook Connect. Other examples of different implementations of these tools include Huffington Post, the video sharing site Vimeo, and CBS Entertainment Insider. Remember, Facebook isn’t a college hangout any more. The average user is over the age of 30 and spends more than half an hour within the platform every day. This is Business 101 – be where you consumers already are. 

2. Take the blogosphere seriously

It seems every company has a blog, but not every company is blogging. Blogs aren’t just another avenue for pushing out press releases or spam email; they’re conversational venues. To that end, bring the online community into the fold by featuring a blogroll (a listing of other blogs you monitor) prominently on your blog, reaching out to other bloggers with offers to host guest posts and interviews, and monitoring comment sections closely for opportunities to follow up on reader questions. Host a blogger conference call with key online thought leaders in your industry – before your next crisis occurs – to build goodwill. Invite bloggers to review your products and visit with your executives. Remember, these newest members of the Fourth Estate are driving the news cycle like never before.

3. Social Bookmarking tools

One quarter of Facebook users spend more time social networking than they do watching television. Many have abandoned e-mail altogether, choosing instead to message only with their friends on Facebook. The same trend is occurring on other social media platforms and provides an opportunity to further highlight your content, brand, and messages in the social media space – which is what social bookmarking is all about. The most popular social media sites have their own social bookmarking tools such as Facebook Share, Tweetmeme, Digg, and Yahoo! Buzz. In addition, there are several different tools available online – such as Bookmarkify and AddThis – which enable you to add sharing widgets for numerous individual sites through an easy to use management tool. Using these tools will encourage once casual visitors to your site to become brand ambassadors, broadcasting your good news to their friends with only a couple clicks.

4. Product Reviews

Amazon, iTunes, and Yelp.com have popularized features allowing anyone to leave their feedback on a product or service. GM recently abandoned a new car concept based on feedback received from the online community. Consumers increasingly state that they place more faith in these accumulated reviews than even the recommendations of friends. Your company should be offering similar capabilities on your corporate site to enable third parties to recommend your products. Importantly, you can’t just build the tools, you have to tell people you have built them. Just because you built it, they won’t necessarily come. You have to tell them, nudge them, and encourage them to participate in your brand dialogue and to see first-hand your credible commitment to embracing the online space. In addition to building the option internally, you can engage in the conversation on sites like Yelp.com, Angie’s List, and LinkedIn in only minutes.

5. Don’t recreate the wheel

The power and popularity of today’s most successful social media platforms comes from their ability to integrate with outside sites. One great example of this integration is YouTube, which has from the beginning allowed its video content to appear in blog posts and on websites through easy to use code snippets. An effective corporate website will use the capabilities of other sites to host rich content and customer-driven features. For instance, post promotional videos to YouTube, product photos to Flickr, and manage event organization through Loopt. In addition, all of these tools allow you to engage customers and encourage them to share pictures and video related to your product or service. In some cases, as with the rapping Southwest flight attendant, a consumer generated video will lead to a surge in positive online and traditional media placements about the company and its culture. These tools allow you to build on an existing community, offload significant development and hosting costs, and showcase just how Web savvy your company is.

6. Go local

No longer can your company rely on presenting the same face to a national audience. Online consumers are accustomed to sites that serve up information specific to their interests and location. Leveraging tools like the aforementioned Facebook and Twitter Connect along with the built-in GPS functionality offered in more and more devices can enable your company to present a tailored website to every single consumer. You can also extend these features onto your company’s Facebook Fan page, delivering customized content to different users based on their location, age, and interests. These tools enable your company to showcase the products that best fit your consumers’ interests and direct these consumers to the location nearest them where these products can be purchased.

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