“I have learned, based on my experience, that everything is dominated by the market. So whenever we are struck with any obstacles or difficulties, I always say to myself: “Listen to the market, listen to the voice of the consumer.” That’s the fundamental essence of marketing. Always, we have to come back to the market, back to the
customer. That is the Toyota way.

So, whenever we’re stuck, we always go back to the basics. Because branding, image, or Lovemarks are determined by the customers, not us. We really cannot determine anything. The customer does that. That is the essence.”
- Yoshio Ishizaka, Toyota

‘The best brands consistently win two crucial moments of truth. The first moment occurs at the store shelf when a consumer decides whether to buy one brand or another. The second occurs at home, when she uses the brand again – and is delighted, or isn’t. Brands that win these moments of truth again and again earn a special place in consumer’s hearts and minds; the strongest of these establish a lifelong bond with consumers.”

- A.G. Lafley, Chairman, President, & CEO of Proctor & Gamble, forward in the book “Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands“

Here is a great article by David Dalka explaining how to take your organization’s listening to an entirely new level.

7 Ways To Use Social Media Listening For Marketing Research

The opportunity to listen to social media as a new method of marketing research presents large future business opportunity. Creating best in class customer service has been discussed, but not yet fully appreciated and not yet widely implemented by management teams in terms of integrating this aspect of social media into the organization.

This next frontier, wide spread use of social media for listening, might come quickly as it has the potential to reduce expenditures from other legacy business processes with large budget allocations. Presented properly, your Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer(CFO) will like the sounds of this argument.

Listening to the conversations that are both directly and indirectly relevant to your community can create the foundation of enterprise innovation process:

1. Develop a listening process – There are many social media posts that discuss how to develop a listening process. This is step one. This is mandatory.

2. Listen to your customers…beyond social media channels – To be clear this means more than just Twitter and Facebook – email, phone calls and suggestions from customers in person must all be collected and equally considered. The customer relations process from decades ago can still be your friend.

3. Create a social media process for acknowledging listening – Want to get social media innovation taken seriously in your organization? Integrate it into a larger existing process. Be prepared that this might mean that you need to create a process for all channels to create the appropriate customer communication.

4. Engage the entire organization in this listening – Seek ways to create real time collaboration and distribute your findings internally using the outside customer feedback as validation for the concepts. This also is a great opportunity to share social media information and allow others to learn what it is and why it is important.

5. Treat criticism as an innovation opportunity – Whether it’s a simple tweet, a ranting blog post or a formal user generated content process or contest, use every opportunity to utilize suggestions from outside the corporation that you feel will improve your product or service. You will earn respect from any detractors and build competitive advantage in your organization.

6. Acknowledge innovation fully and completely – Acknowledge those who contribute ideas to your success publicly. Former Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett acknowledged a tweet that led to a microphone jack in a new model that had a large impact on making it a top seller.

7. Consistently innovate the social media listening process itself – Changing this process as a collaborative process both internally and externally is critical to success across the organization. It is not static, it is a living and evolving creature.

Utilizing the above process would be a great first step for people to jump start innovation using social media. Be sure to suggest that social media augments rather than replaces an existing process. This will seem more palatable to uncertain audiences.

Also be sure to explain the risks and how you will mitigate them. This includes such items as how you will filter out API spam and create a process for constructive idea screening and incorporation. If you follow these steps consistently, you will eventually build a robust process. Why don’t you start right now with sharing this with five people that you’d like to build innovation utilizing social media.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

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Now I want to hear from you – How do you “listen”?  What do you listen for?  What do you do with what you learn?

One of the most common problems I see my clients having to deal with is jumping into the social media real without a solid plan in place. By not crafting your social media strategy in a thorough and holistic manner, they often miss key components that, even if they seem minor, can spell the difference between success or failure of your campaign.  To help you understand what should be included in your social media plan, I have included a list from John Rodgers, a social media expert at Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, from SocialFresh.com

The 5 Core Principles Of Any Social Media Plan

Wherever you are in the execution of your social efforts, I think it’s important to take a step back and examine how you’re measuring up to some basic principals and goals you may (or may not) have laid out when launching your Facebook page, Twitter account, blog, etc.

Plan, What Plan?

If you didn’t lay out an official Social Media Plan before diving into using social tools for your business, you’re not alone. A recent report from Digital Brand Expressions indicates that up to 50% of companies are diving in to social media without a plan.

Regardless of what industry/market/segment you’re in, there are some basic principles that will help you identify key strategies for engaging with your customers in the social space. The list below isn’t meant to be an end all be all, but rather my personal take on key elements that I think are essential to any social media plan.

1. Find the Right People

As with everything else your business does, your employees are the key differentiator between you and the next guy. Before launching any social media plan, I think it’s important to identify who’s going to be managing these efforts.

Don’t try to outsource execution as these team members are the heart & soul of your brand’s voice. By first identifying the right people to lead these efforts, they can help drive key decisions moving forward.

Check out Olivier Blanchard’s (The Brand Builder) post on the different roles required for a successful Social Media Plan: Best Practices for Social Media: The basics of program planning

2. Listen First

No one likes the annoying guy from work that talks about himself all day long; don’t be that guy.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tools to monitor what’s being said about your company or brand.

This can be as simple as setting up Google Alerts for keywords related to your brand/company or even using search.twitter.com (or searching from the site/various twitter apps.)

Both of these methods are can become quite tedious, so I recommend outsourcing some of this to a social media monitoring company.  More on that in a minute.

3. Engage Early & Often

There’s a reason Brian Solis recently published his book entitled Engage!  It’s the bread and butter of any successful social media effort.  And it takes dedicated, passionate people to achieve engagement with any community.  If you’re going to simply push out one way messaging, there’s plenty of traditional media channels for that…take your pick.

4. Measure Everything

Unlike people, I think this is an area that you should certainly look to outsource (unless you’re a whiz with tracking, analyzing, and reporting on every online conversation about your brand.)

I’m a big fan of Radian 6 myself, but Jeremiah Owyang (Web Strategy) shares a snapshot of the larger social monitoring industry: Brand Monitoring, Social Analytics, Social Insights

5. Learn & Adjust

While traditional brand communication models might have delivered similar results year in and year out, social tactics involve conversations with real people. Dialogue changes everything. You must be willing to learn and adjust your tactics based on your community.

Of course, it never hurts to have a plan in place at the beginning of the fiscal year but I’d include a big asterisk on the front when sharing with leadership: *Subject to change!

Your Turn

What do you think?  Are there basic principles that guide social media efforts at your company?  If so, I’d love to hear what key elements you have found essential to your success.  Leave a comment below and let us know.

Matthew Latkiewicz works at Zendesk.com, customer support software. He writes for and edits Zengage, Zendesk’s blog about customer engagement.  This is one of my favorite posts of his, originally featured on Mashable.

What’s your customer engagement style? It’s a question reminiscent of those light-hearted quizzes that proliferate magazines: Are you strong or sassy? Independent or group-focused? When someone @-replies you on Twitter (), do you respond immediately or wait a couple days?

These questions are actually important to consider. Why? Because customer engagement encompasses your company’s customer service, support, and marketing. It also deals with your company’s forums, Twitter accounts, blogs and meetups. How various companies use Twitter, YouTube (), Facebook (), and its ilk, goes a long way to define the long-term relationship consumers have with that brand.

There are some amazing success stories. Old Spice, using both Twitter and YouTube, recently ran a customer engagement masterclass that created a much-needed mania around the brand. Yet, for every success story, there are plenty of flops. When a Domino’s Pizza employee uploaded a disastrous video about the company’s hygiene standards to YouTube, a widespread negative viral campaign ensued.

The lesson: Ensure that your engagement style matches your company’s brand, goals, and general attitude. We took a look at the top five engagement styles that currently dominate the social web. Which are you?

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1. The Game Show Host

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Your message: Winning is sometimes the only thing. We’ve all seen things like this before: “RT – FREE STUFF OVER HERE LINK #welovefreestuff.” This social media personality knows that contests and special offers generate a lot of activity and set up a very clear (if slightly old-fashioned) relationship with the consumer. The consumer follows whatever steps you’ve laid out: Retweeting something, sending in a picture of yourself with company swag, or signing up for a newsletter. Then they are rewarded for taking these steps. Dialogue or community isn’t as important as having consumers hanging around hoping they’ll win something or get a special deal.

How you say it: Giving stuff away or offering deals works well only if you’ve got some trust built up. There are a lot of scams out there and acting like a wacko Twitter user doesn’t instill much confidence that this offer is trustworthy and/or legit.

Who’s it good for? Big companies with big pockets wanting to speak from the perspective of the corporation.

Example: Virgin America. Nearly all of Virgin’s Twitter stream is devoted to special deals and contests.

The bottom line: They keep the voice friendly and light, but also faceless. The brand itself is speaking here.

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2. Your Friendly Neighborhood Service Rep

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Your message: Like a good neighbor, you listen to your customers and engage them on an individual level, mostly to solve customer support issues or to capitalize on sales opportunities. You monitor social network channels because “that’s where the customers are,” and if conversations are happening about your brand, you want to be there to participate.

In this engagement style, Twitter is an extension of your customer service reps (albeit in a limited, loose way). Businesses following this style don’t so much start the conversation as they react to the ones that have already started – whether that’s a customer complaining about your brand or a consumer asking a question that your business is well-equipped to answer. You live by co-tweet, the @-reply and direct message.

How you say it: With one friendly “individual” voice. This engagement style calls for a business to officially anoint someone or selected people from within the company to be the official Tweet-voice. Their personality is allowed to come through on some level within company boundaries. Customers need to feel as if they are being handled by an actual human being who is personable, but not too edgy.

Who’s it good for? Larger, consumer-centric businesses, especially service and retail outlets, that have the resources to monitor multiple channels of customer feedback.

Example: Staples. Staples’ Twitter stream is full of @-replies asking for DMs. And they even use little illustrations of the actual people who are sending out those tweets as the background of their Twitter page.

The bottom line: Staples chooses to engage customers on a somewhat personal level; each tweet is “signed” by the person who tweeted.

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3.The Beehive

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The message: We’re all in this together people. Everyone who works for you can be your social network identity. Instead of having an official company account, you encourage all employees to participate in social media networks. Work identities collapse into personal social identities.

In this engagement style, the focus is not so much the direct relationship between consumer and business. Instead, it’s a distributed relationship whereby the business benefits by all the small relationships between its employees and the wider world. This is a radical way of thinking about customer engagement because it’s about cultivating a culture of engagement throughout your entire company.

How you say it: In a wacky, edgy, at times out-of-control voice. Often a company in this style will have a social media policy setting some ground rules and expectations; but the real thing holding this strategy together is a philosophy of engagement.

Who’s it good for? Idea-based companies, large or small. If your business is based on innovation, networking and generating buzz, this is the style for you.

Example: Any number of small software companies, but IBM is one of the most interesting examples of this style. They have an extensive and thoughtful approach to social networking (and computing). They encourage each of their employees to identify themselves on social networks as IBMers.

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4. The Community Builder

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Your message: Always an acquaintance but never a friend. You think of your customers as like-minded folks, and so you build spaces on the social web for them to hang out and share in their like-mindedness. You use Twitter to share non-business related links and quotes that you think your customers will like, but you also keep a slight distance from them in an attempt to let them drive the conversation. You probably use the word ‘movement’ in your Twitter bio.

Oftentimes, a business who follows this style will integrate their Twitter use within other social technologies – blogs (but for strictly non-business news), forums, and even entire websites devoted to the things your community cares about.

The community builder’s goal is to create conversation around things the company cares about and then link that conversation to the brand.

How you say it: With a balanced combination of passion and detachment. You want to encourage your customers to join your movement but you don’t want to either dominate the conversation or make the whole thing feel like it was cooked up by your marketing department. You are going for what people actually care about and so a little humility — making the brand ride shotgun or even in the back — works best.

Who’s it Good For? Businesses whose products and services already target a community with a definable set of values. If your customers and you would have a lot to talk about at a dinner party, this is a good bet for you.

Example: Timberland (). They run a community effort called Earthkeepers, a set of initiatives (including social media) devoted to environmental action. As described on its site:

“When you’re an Earthkeeper, you’re part of a community of like-minded people from all over the world intent on doing the little things and doing bigger things, like replanting eroded areas and retrofitting their engines to run on bio fuel. Earthkeepers learn from and support one another through original and inspiring ideas of making the world a more sustainable and livable place. And the more of us there are, the better.”

Note that while the Timberland logo is on the top of the page, it’s not mentioned here. In their tweets they take a more anonymous tone and almost always include a link to something the community might care about (often linking back to the Earthkeeper blog).

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5. The Friend

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Your message: Every customer interaction is like one amazing high-five. You are the business owner who knows all your customers by name and hangs out with them on the weekends. Your business Twitter account is way more important to you than your personal account (in fact you may not even have a separate personal account – it’s all the same to you).

Businesses in this style will share relevant info like menu updates, new products and event information but will also mix in personal thoughts, jokes and pictures of themselves at work. They tweet about things that have nothing to do with the business per se. These businesses want to their relationship with their customer base to be fluid and up-to-date.

How you say it: Just as you would say something to a pal. Pretty much anything goes, though the more personal the voice the better. Because your engagement with your customer is based on the friendliness of the relationship, the more natural and true to the voice of the person communicating, the better.

Who’s it good For? Smaller, local businesses. This is best when your social media presence mostly extends your face-to-face relationship.

Example: Choose any local restaurant and look at their Twitter account. There are a lot of food carts here in San Francisco like The Creme Brulee Cart which use Twitter to update their customer base as to where they’ll be that day, but you’ll also see messages to customers, friends, and other business owners.

The bottom line: They engage with their customers as friends.

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What’s Your Style?

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It is important that you think through how you want to engage your customers on Twitter and elsewhere on the social web. It’s important to stay true to your brand but also to make clear the ways in which your customer engagement style furthers the type of relationship you want with your customers and potential customers.