How To Achieve Transparency For Your Business
“must be talking to an angel…“
If Ireland’s Digital Marketing Institute and recruitment agency Prosperity are really going to spend €2.3m educating digital marketers, the first lesson will have to be about honesty – and that, some might say, goes against what a lot of marketers are extremely good at, namely lying.
Let’s face it, advertising and marketing are dirty words because we’ve all experienced a product or service that was no where near as good as it claimed to be. This is an especially acute problem when it comes to online goods and services.
Trust and confidence is a mantra I’ve always repeated endlessly. Now it appears that business transparency is the new marketing buzzword.
The great thing about this is that you can’t fake it. I mean obviously you can try but you will almost inevitably fail and when you do it will be s p e c t a c u l a r . For example, Sony’s games division knows a thing or two about fake blogs and game trailers that are wholly unrepresentative of the in-game footage. There are countless other examples of social media FAIL over on sites like Mashable.com and Adage.com
It must be hard to market a mediocre product or service in 2009 when the twittersphere can pass judgement on the latest trend within a few hours. Providing you can filter through to the information you want, it’s a lot easier to avoid marketing and advertising and get to the products and services that our peers recommend due to their own experiences.
Very quickly I’ll dissect the main points of the Mashable article.
1. Talk about what you know: Or as I would put it, preferably don’t talk at all unless you’ve got something useful to contribute. And please don’t post a walk-through guide of anything unless you’ve actually tested it. There are too many tech guides online with holes in them large enough to drive a double decker bus through. That grinds my gears!
2. Stay Open To Other Views: Many companies will find this quite difficult because they’ll often see a threat to their business where there isn’t one. If Steve Ballmer can’t embrace one employee owning an iPhone, don’t expect SMEs who lack the recession cushion of billions to be any more sympathetic. It’s tempting to delete criticism, especially in a social media environment but it’s futile. There will always be one idiot who complains about something and if I don’t see that person in a companies feedback section, I wonder what else they’re removing.
3. Be Truthful: As Dr. House would say, “everybody lies”. Thing is, it’s much more likely that in this age of desiring transparency that a business would simply choose not to tell the customer certain information. In the same way that guys don’t lie to their girlfriends but will happily omit certain details if it helps maintain an easier life. Companies often have that mindset towards customers. Polls, crowdsourcing and other ways of gauging customer or client reaction can save you from headaches further down the road.
4. Be Timely and Responsive: You don’t need to have unlimited resources to provide professional support. SMEs will achieve more with having at least one person answering the phone who has enough life experience at 40+ to know how to handle disgruntled customers. Very few twenty-somethings will be as patient with customers because their entire life outlook is still wrapped up in ‘me’ culture – an outlook which changes immediately as soon as you have a family. Unselfish people make better customer support agents.
Email autoresponders can provide FAQs and other support links to fill the gap between your actual response time and the minute the email is sent. In terms of social media, you’re either on the ball or you’re not. Thankfully, mobile texting can keep you up-to-speed with Twitter and Facebook campaigns without losing too much time, sleep or resources. Knowing that someone is looking into an issue or problem will instill more confidence that a solution will be found than no answer at all.
5. Think Community: Not every business needs a social media strategy, let alone a community but it is worth considering. Ideally, your business website should have content that attracts like-minded individuals. If adding community functionality such as ‘Facebook Connect’, feedback sections or a community wiki enhances the overall experience – go for it. If people enjoy spending time on your site they may even spend some money!
