Importance of Customer Service

A subject that I find very important in marketing and business in general is customer service. It is a factor that many companies leave on the back burner and simply hope will work it out itself rather than putting a great deal of focus on it. This week I found a great blog article socialmouths.com dealing with the negative effects of bad customer service. Many businesses don't realize just how costly bad customer service can be. More than 85% of customers will stop doing business with a company because of bad customer service and of the customers who have a bad experience, only 4% will let the company know. Businesses need to be very aware of how their service is and should make a consistent effort to ask customers what they think instead of waiting for them to speak up.

Another side of bad customer service is word of mouth. It is shown that a happy customer will tell 9 people about a good encounter with a business, while an unhappy customer will tell 16. This means that the company not only loses out on the business of the first unhappy customer, but also all the people that they will tell about the event. Companies need to understand that now more than ever they must really focus on strong customer service.

One great thing about social media is that is can play a great role in helping a company create a relationship with customers. Social media allows customer service to be obvious to the customer and makes all service public instead of behind the scenes. Businesses need to take advantage of this chance to get good customer service examples in front of customers and potential customers. Understanding the importance of good customer service is only half the battle. Having a competent and friendly staff and really caring about the customer will ultimately lead to greater profit and a more prominent business.

Women of Social Media

Something that may or may not come as a surprise is that women rule social media. Over 75% of women use social media networks compared to 63% of men. This is interesting to companies as they set up their social media strategy as they should be sure to connect with both men and women, maybe even more focus on women depending on the company and product. Another interesting fact that companies need to keep in mind is that women are more emotionally attached to their social network profiles, making it easier to turn them away with a poor message. Women enjoy spending time on social networks as much as hanging out with friends and dating. Marketers should really focus on creating a relationship with women on social media rather than just promoting their brand. Using the high percentage of women and their high emotional attachment, there is a great potential to reach a high number of influential women. Women on social media are also extremely influential and if you are able to build a strong relationship they can become important brand advocates for your company.

Women of social media are involved on many platforms, from Facebook to Pinterest to Twitter to Instagram and many more. They are also active on other media platforms, including radio, tv, and newspapers, both online and in print. Because of this, companies should focus on connecting with these women on many different platforms, not only through one or two social media sites. Companies also have to think about the different demographics of different platforms and how they need to change their strategy from platform to platform based on the women that are most active on each. Overall, this information is not only interesting but also very useful to businesses that are trying to reach out to women and thinking about how to set up a more effective social media strategy.

Content Marketing

Social Media Strategy is dominated by content marketing. If you aren't giving your customers a reason to follow you online with useful and interesting content, you aren't creating the best online strategy possible. In order to get your brand out there as well as give your customers and followers what they want, you have to really focus on your content. On SocialMouths blog I found an great post about the top types of content marketing. The list held a lot of the standard forms of content marketing such as blogs, photos, and videos, but it had a lot of other things too that many companies probably don't think about when they are creating their content. The list also included infographics and illustrations. Both of these things are more interesting than just a long post about information only using words but they can convey the same messages. Infographics may take time to create but I know that I would be more willing to read information in a more exciting and presentable format any day. Testimonials was also on the list. That is something that many companies may have, but don't necessarily use them in their content. Adding that would definitely help to create a stronger brand image without talking yourself up. An item on the list that I thought was interesting was memes. I have never considered memes to be necessarily good content, but I guess if you can turn it into something relevant it is just as entertaining and useful as anything else you could post.

WikiDo

This week I learned about a new resource for social media on a social media blog. I read a post about a platform called WikiDo. What it does is allows you to create an event and people can search for local events they may want to attend. This type of platform can be used by almost any business, creating events such as sales that customers can "attend," or actual events that can be used to grow your customer base. This type of platform works well with word-of-mouth marketing as many people would hopefully speak to others about events they were attending or maybe ask others to attend with them.

 I really like learning about all the different types of social media and different platforms available. Most people only know about the really big ones like Twitter and Facebook, but its more interesting to branch out and use all resources. One of the best parts about WikiDo is that it is free to use and is ad free so people can use it easily and it will continue to grow. The platform is pretty new, and has only been around for around 4 months so it still has a lot of room for potential growth.

I like this platform specifically for the small training camps business I work for because you can create an event that is a camp that people that aren't in your direct target can find if they are searching for something like it. Its a great new and free way to reach out to a greater audience in a way that is useful to them.

Creating Happy Customers

A new post that I really found interesting on Duct Tape Marketing dealt with the best tool for generating referrals. This tool is a happy customer. It may sound simple and obvious at first but when you think about it but I have never actually thought about that being a main goal of my social media planning. Now that I am going to make that a priority, I can use many of the ideas given on the post. One of my favorites is the idea of a fun surprise. The idea of giving customers something that they weren't expecting is great for making customers happy and at the same time they are much more likely to talk about it rather than just being satisfied with the product. Another idea I really liked was to teach your customers. Make sure that they are in the know about your service or product and that they know exactly what is going on with what they are receiving from your company. That way they feel more involved and are much more likely to refer you to others.

Another idea that I actually feel like I do well already in my social media planning is to appreciate customers. After people attend our camps I always send out thank you notes and make sure they understand that we appreciate them and their business as well as their opinion of our service. One idea that I could definitely improve on is measuring. I don't keep very good track of what customers are saying or thinking about our service and I could probably do this easily by creating a survey of some sort to find out what our customers are thinking. Overall, creating a happy customer has now become the main goal of my social media planning efforts.

Referrals

I used the Duct Tape Marketing Blog again this week to understand more about referrals and word of mouth advertising used in small businesses. It is extremely resourceful for companies that aren't looking to spend great deals of money on advertising but actually using happy customers to refer their friends and family. This method kills two birds with one stone as it expands your business at the same time as making sure that customers are extremely happy with our service.

Another post on Duct Tape Marketing that I found interesting was http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2013/01/24/referral-action-plan/. This post was all about all the ways that you can use your company's website in order to create more referrals from your customers. It was really interesting to think about all the different ways that you can interact with a customer through your website and how many different strategies you can use to make them happy. The best way to really start out making a potential customer happy on the website is by offering something from the very beginning. Although that's not necessarily easy in my industry (soccer training camps), it was interesting to think about and at least consider how I could use that. I think the most important thing I learned from this post was how simply interacting with your customers is so useful and common. While interacting, the best way to get a referral is to simply state that in your goal and make them realize that its important to you as well as to put it in their mind. Overall I hope to create more interactive ways to get to our customers and to help them help us find reach more people as well to make sure they are enjoying their experience with our company.

Social Media for the Small Business

Social Media is topic in marketing that is completely relevant and easy to apply almost instantly. For that reason I am really enjoying learning more about it and how I can apply it to my internship. I found a blog today called Duct Tape Marketing and its all about little things that small businesses can do to use social media more productively. The blog has already given me several ideas for what I can do with the company I work with. The post I read today was about 17 tactics to inspire customer love. One of the main ways our company hopes to become successful and more popular is through great word-of-mouth, so this article was very relevant. Some of the tactics that were on the post were pretty straight forward and self explanatory when it comes to making customers happy such as making sure to apologize for any mistakes and trying to fix these mistakes quickly. There were also some interesting points that I hadn't thought about yet on the post. I had never really considered the idea of using Linked In because of the type of business (soccer camps,) however this could be a great opportunity to talk to others in the industry and see how they connect with their customers. I also really liked all the ideas of gifts and word-of-mouth tools on your pages. I am not quite sure how to do that yet but I think it would be worth it to learn and make it easy for our customers to share us and for them to receive a benefit from it as well. Overall I hope to continue to read this Duct Tape Marketing Blog for more tips and tricks on how to really boost the social media of the company I am working for right now!