Social Marketing Approach

building on VF instant trust for ubiquitous trust

Everyone knows that trust is key to winning business, building confidence and converting prospects into customers. This is even more important online when you can’t see the whites of people’s eyes.

I’d like to share some thoughts and insights into a few key ways successful organizations I’ve helped over the years go about engendering trust through social media.

Politeness costs nothing

If money is the route of all evil, then rudeness is the expressway to social media failure.

By now marketers and business owners should really know something about Social Media, maybe not everything but enough to know it can no longer be ignored. Understanding the power that Social Media now has to reach your target market is paramount for developing a truly integrated marketing strategy that delivers commercial success.

This may show my age, but remember the days of writing letters – there were accepted conventions, etiquette and perhaps most importantly consideration of the words and phrases used.

How ever did we cope?

May be it was simply taking a little time to think about what you want to say, how you wish to be perceived and who you are communicating with.

This got me thinking, why is it that some of those old habits surrounding communication have apparently disappeared?

Is it that we don’t have time anymore to be respectful when communicating? Surely this cannot be a justified excuse when personal and business productivity tools are commonplace.

Even if we send a message on Facebook, Tweet or simply fire out an email – why are we forgetting our manners?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating a return parchment and quill, simply using these tools in a way that shows respect and understanding for the person, group or organization receiving it.

I cannot be the only business person to get a one-liner from (sadly often a customer service agent) that says something like:

“you must upgrade your account to use the service”

Is that really a way to win me over to pay more or continue using a service?

Another poor example came recently from BA. Following a trip where many things let the airline’s service standards down, I wrote a polite and factual complaint to customer service. As a frequent traveler and on a supposed raised tier service level, I thought I would hear something constructive back.

Well, after about 15 days, I received what was evidently a hobbled together miss-mash of ‘standard paragraphs’ that basically made the communication look stupid and left me feeling the organization actually didn’t care to hear from a customer let alone work to improve their service. Not everyone in the World’s favorite airline.

A simple, “we’re sorry we let you down on this occasion – we see you have used us before and we’ll work hard to improve on the points you raise.” would have been so much better.

Digital personality and digital literacy

Everyone is a Social Actor in one way or another, but understanding the rules of engagement is becoming more and more important in this digital era of Social Media. 

Patterns are emerging and these are something we should take time out to understand.

I mentioned earlier that we need to realize that most brand and organization personality traits should be identical in the social media world as they are in ‘real’ life. Otherwise your brand comes across at best naive or at worse incompetent.

Ok, I you’re probably thinking ‘what is he talking about’, well let’s see…

VF selection

When you build your social networking world, remember to create the right “VF” (Virtual Friends) database or contacts that you believe share a pattern with you and or your company, i.e. making sure all link well together. This may be a single common factor, area of interest or more sophisticated segmentation based on your objectives.

Indulge me a moment – I love Rodeos, the Western lifestyle and cowboys. So, in my personal social network, when I get a request to join a group or when someone wants to be my VF I almost instinctively say yes simply because someone is wearing a cowboy hat. Can I really be that shallow?

Before any of my VF respond, the answer is no. My common link for initially accepting a personal VF is that we share this common interest.

Now this can equate to all sorts of business attributes when going out to build a brand or organizations VF.

How many of you joined Starbucks’ Facebook just because you like their coffee? Well 6,873,677 of you have. Starbucks value the power of social media and through it their ability to talk to the very people that buy their coffee. This VF network means not only can Starbucks market offers to people quickly and easily, they can also do the most important thing that marketers long for – ask for and receive market intelligence. Fear not, I’ll be covering the topic of SMR (Social Media Research) soon.

Building on instant trust

Something interesting happens after I have said an instant yes to a VF request…

I take a moment to read that person’s or company’s profile and discover there may be some other interests that make me pause. The cowboy I just linked with loves Sci Fi. This is of no interest to me and he writes a lot about Flashforward and Fringe – for a split second (in the subconscious mind) I’m re-thinking my association with this VF but then I go back to the very reason I first linked up – Rodeos. My new VF then invites me to become a fan of Firefly – I accept because I trust his or her recommendation.

This is known as “iTrust”.

It is an amazing concept – Social Media allows you to build trust very quickly based one or two common factors. Hang on, we’ve been doing this for years, just face to face. A friend introduces to one of their friends, who then recommends something outside of the initial thing you may have had in common.

Beware breaking iTrust

In the good old days – misuse a friend’s trust and you don’t talk anymore. Maybe you also tell some of your close friends about the fight you had with that person or how that organization treated you badly. Word of mouth spreads fast and ten times as far as good news.

In our Social Media environment, misuse iTrust and now that news is spread to ALL their VFs and their VFs VFs and so on, all at the click of a button and within the blink of an eye. Now bad news spreads at the speed of light and 10 million times as far.

Right now, I’m trying to book my flights back to USA from the UK. I got a email reminding me that ‘as a valued customer’ I can use my BA miles to upgrade. Sounds perfect, I go online to book and find there’s no availability for any return flight for 3 months. Unlucky, I hear you say, well there’s no available flights to upgrade in the whole month of June, July or August. How is that possible, I stop searching the BA site and call them 3 times, each time I get a different reason

it’s a glitch with the system
it’s because of the World Cup (in South Africa – really?)
it’s because the flights are full as it’s summer holidays (but it’s over 110 – low season and not a tourist destination airport)

Even when I explain I have upgraded during this same time last year and the year before, I get a rude response that said “if you think about it you must have been very lucky to get these upgrades before” – Why am I very lucky, it’s their system not mine, now I am really annoyed. Over 3 hours of time wasted on the phone and I either book and pay for them of find another flight.

Get another flight I hear you say, well I travel a lot and use BA because of the Air Miles system, being lucky, school holidays, world cup and so on is not an excuse, the customer service was bad, showing a lack of care and respect.

So what do I do? I tell my friends around me about this, as any good “Story Teller” would but with one difference.

BA has now dented “iTrust” so I tell my VFs on Facebook and add a comment on Twitter – now over 1000 people know about it within seconds and it spreads.

Let’s bring this down to earth a little and picture this happening to your organization, the impact can be massive?

Managing this is not as hard as you may think, a golden rule I have always used when sending messages to an audience that has said yes to me or my organization:

“would I really say this in this way if they are standing in front of me”

Just because it may be a VF connection does not give anyone the excuse to be impolite. Treat a VF as if you are talking face-to-face. When sending a targeted message, start and finish the email with a hello and goodbye, does it really cost you more time?

If someone doesn’t reply to my email its just rude. It doesn’t have to an instant reply, after all not everyone is 24×7 – but be mindful of the fact that there is a time period after which iTrust is lost.

Ultimately, it’s your choice “Build Trust or Burn Bridges”. How you choose to present yourself, electronically or in person – remember your brand will be judged and in Social Media that happens fast.