Are you really being transparent with your on-line relationships?
A recent article in the Huffington Post caught my eye.
Honesty and integrity, Transparency , to those active in social media marketing stands at the center piece of all on-line and off-line interactions. Without transparency (honesty and integrity), brands, your expertise, and on-line evangelists or detractors wouldn’t exist. In addition, the success of the new free media could fail…
The ideas of honesty and integrity may be dwindling in American business and American civility. How would one maintain honesty and integrity within social media networks and venues? Does honesty and integrity have the abilities to exist or re-emerge through social media interactions?
The above questions need to be pondered at the start of a social media campaign. Right after the creation of your social media goals, a business needs to be planning their “personality” of their campaign around the virtues of transparency, honesty, and integrity. Your personality will dictate how on-line participants and communities will engage with your on-line personality. Keep in mind your new on-line personality will need to be vertically aligned throughout your organization as a whole.
6 ways to maintain transparency with on-line audiences!
Are you telling customers what you are doing and are you following up with your customers? If you are engaging on-line using customer service or brand awareness activities, you need to follow through and take an extra effort to make sure your customers understand what you are doing and how you are helping them. Often, businesses do not update customers in on-line environments of their social actions. Also, businesses do not contact customers after the completion of an on-line complaint to see if the issue was properly solved! Consider implementing the previous sentence…many businesses miss this opportunity.
Is the rest of your organization conducting follow through after your initial contact with an on-line participant. Many companies run their social media operations under one department. Often, different duties between members can become hazy that members often lose touch talking to each other internally. To guarantee that members of your social media endeavor are talking to each other schedule a meeting once a week , or place all members engaging in social media in one office. Your social media staff need to engage with each other during their on-line communications. This action will provide faster coordinated attack to resolve brand issues or answer on-line questions in real-time.
What does the on-line buzz say about our transparency dealings? Depending on your business size, people will be talking about your customer service, products, prices, executives, employees,and past and present engagement activities. Look for keywords based around the previous subject matter. Get to know and use social media or keyword buzz sights like Twitter search , Google Trends , and social news site search engines like Collecta .
Are their any organizations or brand detractors saying differently? Many companies do keep a weather eye on what their competitors are doing, but not on the many communities within the social web. They are very unaware of who their brand detractors are outside of their competition. Brand detractors will not often be active on major social media networking sites or your community-owned social network. Consider creating and implementing a social media monitoring program to watch the social web.
Ask your employees,customers, friends, followers, or prospects, if they would recommend your on-line personality as a template for other businesses. Often the truth can hurt with asking people about your present social media operations. Your business feels its a success in the social media while others say differently. Because you have high transactional and engagement goal success, doesn’t mean you are exercising honesty and integrity in your social communications. Note the negatives and see how they can be improved within your social media activities. Think about it: If your on-line audiences are willing to share what you are doing wrong in social media communications, then they are still interested in your on-line personality!
Create and deploy simple polls or surveys using your top three social network profiles, website, blog, etc. Use these polls to determine how well your social media interactions are being conducted. Ask a total of 5 questions. The final question should be a fill-in box asking what is missing from your business-based social media interactions. Polldaddy , Surveymonkey , and LinkedIn polls offer great tools to poll your customers and prospects.
How do you establish and maintain honesty and integrity with on-line audiences? Do share….
