Many marketers are still ignoring dissatisfied customers on social media (fundraisers are worse).
Here is a great post on emarketer that talks about the importance of responding to complaints. Marketers are well aware that social media is a double-edged sword when it comes to word of mouth. Not only does social media give rave reviews and glowing recommendations a chance to be seen by millions, but it also does the same for negative feedback. How to best deal with negative buzz online is a perennial question.
Complaint response mixed
Some companies are confident that their customers use sites like Facebook and Twitter to complain about them, according to a September 2011 survey by feedback management software provider MarketTools. But nearly half of companies surveyed think their customers don’t comment or complain about their products and services online, and almost a quarter did not know whether their customers did so or not. The study also found that, while a sizeable number of marketers respond to customer complaints on Facebook or Twitter at least some of the time, the majority leave questions and negative feedback completely unanswered.
Research tends to show that social media users want businesses to answer them, and that an interaction with a company representative online can defuse negative feedback sometimes simply by offering attention.
Social media is a good platform for building donor relationships
How is this relevant for fundraisers? I think trust is a key driver of donor loyalty, and there is no better opportunity to build a trusting relationship than when you can speak with a donor about a problem, complaint or bad experience. Forget about “research” and just do what’s right to show how much you value and appreciate those who support you.
Tags: client response, donor relationships, emarketing, social meda
January 9th, 2012 at 4:04 pm
I touched on this in a 2011 article on my blog (http://wp.me/p1Ph5u-8S).
Excerpt: Douglas Karr of the Marketing Tech Blog wrote an excellent piece on why Social Media Marketing is Failing (http://www.marketingtechblog.com/social-media-fail). As Karr points out, organizations must already be social before entering social network marketing. Inviting a conversation can do more harm than good if it does not respond, hides, or tries to spin.
For example, too many tech companies have social forums (Skype, QNAP, Roxio, Apple, Microsoft, etc.), but have pretty much abandoned them to users and with no corporate input, or (ouch!) they just delete threads they don’t like. Users even point this out, as in “does the company even read this stuff??” when a major problem is discussed.
If a nonprofit or company decides to dive into social media, then it must be truly social, with all the good and bad that comes along with it.