The Social Media Revolution & Customer Interaction

     It was not too long ago that companies found it very difficult to interact with their customers. It was a dramatic change from the 90's to where we are today. In the 90's people would call and write letters to give their customer feedback. In the early 00's customers could write emails, complain through the companies website interfaces,  find them on  web chats, and send text messages. That's not saying that they'd get any kind of response or even some type of compensation if they were complaining about a bad experience.

    With the rise of Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube, customers now have the power to give live feedback to businesses they buy from. By doing so they have the potential to cause a chain reaction in the social media community they're on. However, this interactivity can go both positive and negative. Meaning if a business has a great product or what can be seen as an awesome promotion it can go viral in a very good way, where if a businesses has done something terrible, or been known for doing something bad it can go viral as well.

    Negative customer interaction. With the way social media works today every time someone posts on someone else's wall including businesses, about 20% of their friends and network see their post. Since the average amount of friends an active Facebook user has on Facebook is around 500 friends, the average post that they put on Facebook would reach about 100 people through the news feed alone with just one interaction. One can see how "Virality" can play such a huge role when it comes to customer interaction with businesses when you see how the customers interact among themselves on one of Facebooks blogs:

 http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=72975227130

This concept alone creates a huge impact on businesses and how they present themselves to their customers.

Another great example is the BP scandal where they were responsible for an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Although many people may have heard about this on the news, it was actually through social media that many of the people in the new generation found out. One of the memes that was generated for BP was this one:

  
At the same time BP made the mistake of trying to combat their negative image with a Public Relations technique that was a gigantic mistake, creating a youtube account to try to increase a positive image through "promoted videos" on YouTube. Although they've since reset the "likes" and view count, at one point these videos had millions of views and hundreds of thousands of video
"thumbs downs"  Here are two print screens of their activity: 

Now that it's clear on how a negative thing can go viral through social media, it's time to get to the good stuff... how can this "virality" can benefit a business through customer interaction.

Lets take a look a business who's done it right, lets pick.... Toms.

By creating simple campaigns on Facebook where people can take pictures of their Toms and possibly have them featured on the Toms Facebook page they have enabled the activity to promote their contribution to the world, which is what the company is primarily about. Cause Marketing plays a major role in how Toms sell their shoes, for every pair of shoes you buy they donate a pair to someone less fortunate around the world. They are able to push their product by showing the good they're doing and simultaneously advertise what you can be contributing to if you buy a pair of Toms. (It's a Win-Win-Win - Buy Toms, Save The World)  You  may notice that nothing about the Toms campaign involves the consumer getting any discounts, coupons, or special offers. That's because they're being successful through their charitable campaign in reaching a great amount of consumers. (1,428,251 likes · 24,284 talking about this)


If we take a look at another business who's got things right we can clearly see how you can use these new platforms to interact with your customers in a more promotional yet equally viral manner. Lets take a look at Chilis:

By using a new meme that's going viral (e-cards that they usually change the text to to say ridiculous funny things that you would probably never see outside of the internet except for in a store like Spencer's) They have created a viral meme that is both funny yet promoting their $5 margarita deal.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, the social media revolution has completely changed the way businesses operate their customer interactions and its definitely a cause for businesses to try to keep their publicity as clean and benevolent as possible. It has become so key in developing and maintaining certain marketing strategies and it's definitely one of the most important things businesses should invest in.


Bennett Bonta
Social Media Consultant
Be Noticed Media







References and videos print screned:
Facebook - Sheryl Sandberg


"Social Media Customer Engagement" - Frost & Sullivan
http://www.sitel.com/downloads/frost_sullivan_social_media_customer_engagement_white_paper.pdf


Sandberg, Sheryl (2009), "How Many Friends Can You Have?"
< http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=72975227130 >


"Video of LMRP Cap Installation Process"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGFi-W6IdVs&feature=plcp&context=C4138583VDvjVQa1PpcFNlz8ZacL7aqlAP6OyPJy6Pk0HcyVQKbYc=


"Kevin Costner's Oil Spill Centrifuge Technology Deployed"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9-e0TfwrIc&feature=plcp&context=C465d8ccVDvjVQa1PpcFNlz8ZacL7aqu2QsaDrdZCvKI50lo2hRTg=