YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com

Social Customer Service is Now a 2-Headed Monster

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Social Media Controversies Addressed, Fresh Each Week

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In this edition of The Baer Facts, I talk with Kyle Lacy of ExactTarget about customers using Facebook more and more as a customer service channel.

Interesting new research from Social Bakers uncovers an important finding:

The volume of questions posted on Facebook has increased 26% in 6 months. (tweet this)

Historically, brands have put more customer service eggs in the Twitter basket, and many noteworthy companies have Twitter programs that are managed (or partially so) by customer care teams, while Facebook and other channels are more often overseen by marketing and communications personnel. This must change.

As Facebook becomes (due to its much larger user base vs. Twitter) a more and more convenient customer service outlet for consumers, brands must break down internal, channel-oriented silos. Customers don’t care about your social silos and internal turf wars.

You must unify your social customer service processes and personnel to provide a consistent experience, regardless of channel. Not doing so is disrespectful of customers, and dramatically increases risk of social missteps resulting in crises. Let’s remember that as you wrestle with these questions of governance and staffing, customer expectations for social customer service continue to escalate. As we uncovered in The Social Habit research:

42% of consumers who have complained in social expect a response within 60 minutes (more details) (tweet this)

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About Jay Baer

Jay Baer is a hype-free social media and content strategist & speaker, and author of Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.

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  • http://scottmonty.com scottmonty

    I’d argue that it’s more than two-headed; it’s a Hydra. A study just released yesterday by Digital Roots and Execs In the Know (at the Customer Response Summit) indicated that in addition to Facebook and Twitter, companies are splitting their time between forums, blogs, YouTube(!), LinkedIn, Q&A sites and Google+. Boards and forums are the most overlooked area, yet contain some of the richest information and questions.

    • http://www.convinceandconvert.com/ jaybaer

      Customer service via YouTube comments? Heaven help us all. Thanks for the comment Scott, and for stopping by. Always appreciated.

  • Graciousstore

    It is essential to unify the social media, otherwise one can be over stretching oneself in attempt to attend to all the demands of each social media