Why Customer Experience is the Ultimate Marketing Tool

Want to ensure long, loyal relationships with your customers? Make sure your customer experience prioritizes ease, speed, and accuracy.
4 Strategies for Improving Social Engagement

Use these four tips to improve your social engagement and strengthen the symbiotic relationship between your brand and your fans.
4 Steps to Boost Your Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement demands a symbiotic relationship between brands and fans. Here are four tips for strengthening those relationships.
4 Customer Service Lessons from the Biggest Brands on Twitter

As we learned a few months ago in a recent release of The Social Habit (a social media research project that Jay is working on with Tom Webster, Mark Schaefer, and Jason Falls), customers have high expectations of brands using social to address customer service issue. In fact, 42% of customers expect a response time of […]
42 Percent of Consumers Complaining in Social Media Expect 60 Minute Response Time

In just a couple of weeks, I’ll be launching (along with Jason Falls, Mark Schaefer, Tom Webster, and our partners at Edison Research) the newest edition of The Social Habit. Landmark, legitimate research into how social media is used, and by whom. I’ve seen the raw data, and it’s a mind-blower. There’s still time to subscribe to […]
Moving From Back Pats to Business, Social CRM Is For Real

As marketers try to determine appropriate resourcing, one of the big measurement and accountability challenges faced by social media is the anonymity inherent in most social data. Indeed, smart companies track social media’s impact on desirable behaviors such as lead generation, repeat website visits, and even corollation-derived ROI. But in almost every case, the evidence […]
Permission is the Enemy of Speed

This week I’ve been writing about speed and response expectations for business on the social Web. Ultimately, speed wins. The companies that engage customers on Twitter and Facebook within minutes are making a none-too-subtle statement about their embrace of the social telephone and the primacy of the customer. In comparison, slow response or no response […]
It’s About Response, Not Engagement
Guest post by Jeff Molander, Author of the new book, Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You and adjunct professor, Loyola University Business School. He blogs at http://www.makesocialsell.com/blog/. We’re all listening, engaging, sharing, posting, updating. But with what business outcome in mind? When we say engagement, might we really […]
70% of Companies Ignore Customer Complaints on Twitter
Do you have your copy of Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype? Visit Amazon or Barnes & Noble to get your copy now! Despite increasing numbers of customers using Twitter to publicly complain about brands, the vast majority of companies respond in the exact same way….with the quiet of contempt. New research […]
Why Critics of Klout Are Missing the Big Picture
Other than signing book deals, the favorite sport of the social media punditry these days seems to be bashing Klout. The pugilists are plentiful, and appear to be trying to win a merit badge for dismissiveness. The most recent example was from B2B social media thinker Paul Gillin who wrote a post unveiling the flaws […]
Nobody Said Social Media Should Be Simple

Simple isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Social media is unique in that it is the only medium yet conceived where companies are playing in the exact same sandbox as we’re playing personally. Your employees and customers aren’t making TV ads on the weekend. Nor are they making their own magazine ads for fun […]
The Fallacy of Round the Clock Social Media

Guest post by Chris Hall an interactive content specialist at Off Madison Ave who specializes in writing for humans, not robots. It’s 11PM and the world around you is getting ready for bed. As a mobile obsessive, you instinctually check your Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of your social media accounts while you brush […]
4 Keys to Turning Negative Commenters Into Brand Advocates

Guest post by Chris Book, CEO and co-founder of ChatterPlug, a live customer engagement and analytics platform. Nobody likes being told something negative about themselves. It stings, and as a business owner or manager, you immediately start kicking yourself for the missed opportunity. The key to surviving, however, is to embrace these negative comments for […]
Speak No Evil – Why Trust Isn’t a 4 Letter Word in Social Media

Now is the summer of our discontent. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For social media, one hand giveth (instant spread of the Bin Laden news) while the other hand taketh away (seemingly daily stories about a company or person doing it “wrong”). The most egregious occurrence of late […]
Customer Stalking – When Is Your Twitter Response Too Fast?

Guest post by Neicole Crepeau, an Online Strategist at Coherent Interactive. She blogs at Coherent Social Media. The other week, I was participating in Jay’s hashtagsocialmedia.com chat on social media. (It takes place every Tuesday at noon EST.) The exchange is below: @jaybaer #sm107 BONUS Q4. How important is speed of response on Twitter? And […]
Why Social Success is No Accident

If you read Convince & Convert on even an occasional basis, you know that I’m firmly in the social integration camp. You need to focus on how to “be” social as a company, and worry less about how to “do” social. This is because social touches do not occur in isolation. I’ve seen a LOT […]