Fine Print

Are you a hierophant? Specifically, the third definition.

Anyone who likes to blog, or comment on other people’s blogs, can be considered a hierophant. People who tweet can be added to that category too. Ahhh, social media. Making money from it yet? (Friday Fun Fact #46: “A Social Dime” is an anagram.)

Companies are still striving to monetize their Return On Engagement and work out how listening to their customers can impact their bottom line. It seems that everyone is talking about listening. Time to jump in and talk too! There’s no point in sitting on the sidelines and monitoring what is being said, if you don’t have the autonomy to make a comment yourself. Upper management needs to loosen the reigns a little, trust their staff and let them get in there and chat to those commentators.

Guess what? Those gripes and moans posted by “del_boy65″ and “lucy_in_ohio” are not just tags. They are people about to start adding to Google’s billions of lines of code stored on servers, searchable forever, with commentary such as “Waited on the phone for an hour! Their customer service sux!” or “Fifth time it’s crashed — anyone know where I can get the correct graphics driver?” etc.

Instant solution: “Hi, I’m Tim from customer support. Sorry to hear you’re not happy / need help / have a question. I will try and help you now, or get back to you within 24 hours if need be.” For anyone new to this, use your own name and not Tim’s. [That’s a joke BTW.]

So, then the customer is surprised that corporation X has actually — gasp! — taken the time to personally address them, almost immediately, with an offer to help [read: keep them as a customer and future advocate and word of mouth specialist to all their friends and family.]

That’s where Social Media can be turned into A Social Dime.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada