The mantra of the social media freight train and all of it's experts and consultants is: The customers are talking about you, shouldn't you listen and engage?
This question has sent businesses of all sizes scurrying to blog, to get a Facebook page, to get on Twitter, and to add staff and overhead to 'monitor the conversations and engage the customer'. We're all concerned about the power of one. That one angry customer with a big social media megaphone.
So to keep on top of this, everyone is working hard to create an open dialogue with their customers in order to 'hear' what the customer has to say. This is all well and good. Really, it is. Creating an engaged customer is the primary directive and when done properly, the relationship creates value for the customer and for the brand.
"The Internet is a true one-to-one direct marketing platform where you have to give the customer what they are looking for first, and then and only then can you try to get the customer to do what you want." I put that in quotes because I have used this statement to describe the Internet as a marketing tool literally hundreds of times over the past 15 years. It's a simple truth
Today, I was going through some 2010 social media strategy research from the folks at the Online Community Report and Forum One and something jumped out at me. In the 2010 Social Media Strategy and Monitoring Survey, participants were asked about business goals they set for their social media initiatives.
Over 70% listed 'Driving traffic to the website' as the most important goal, the second most important was branding. Customer service was 7th on the list.
Sounds like companies are still struggling to successfully execute their side of the basic engagement equation: put the customer's needs first, then ask for what you want.