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What kind of benefits could companies achieve from using social media?

A dissatisfied customer does not necessarily contact the company in question, it is more common that he/she talks with his friends. Companies that uses social media knows this and could meet the customer at an early stage at customer’s home ground, in example Facebook, and hopefully turn the dissatisfaction to a advantage. Not just have the company a chance to compensate the customer so that he/she change opinion of them but also may others se this, because the discussion is public, and think that this is a good and nice company that care about their customers.

Companies that thinks that every dissatisfied customer contacts them are in trouble. If companies instead find and contact these customers it may reduces the outrage and turn it into increased brand reputation. A relation between the customer and the company creates and this is important. These kinds of relations often leads to returning customers, despite massive marketing campaigns from competitors.

How to measure social media benefits?

Social media is difficult to measure, especially if it the ROI that should be measured, because it is not possible to measure the benefits of communication. The benefits should be measured with qualitative approach by simply ask the customers that have had a relation to the company.

Possible questions could be how the customers experienced the conversation, if it lead to changes of attitudes about the brand orif it lead to a purchase and so on.

How to coordinate the use of social media in business?

The key is to be located where current and potential customers are and there must be an explicit strategy for how to and why you use a certain service. There is no given service that the company must use, it depends on the target. If you use more than one service, you should still put more effort where most of your customers are. The strength of social media is the possibility to maintain the relation to current customers, which in turn we help you find new customers.

A company has the opportunity to form the usage of social media as they want. They have the chance to act informal and “talk to customers with their own language”, but the “company should never be so informal that they can not stand for their actions formally”.

There are some companies that uses social media to get more transparent and increase the dialogues with their customers. But as long as you use it as a regular one-way marketing channels it is of no use, you have to listen to what the customers are talking about. In Sweden, Facebook is preferable to use because there is where the masses are. Twitter is not that common in Sweden, but if your targets are communicators, informants, web peoples and marketers it is a perfect channel.

They can even use several accounts for different purposes at one service, as long as there are no doubts of who the sender is. A company should not act as a regular private person with no connection to the company, or in other words: lying about who they are. Generally, even if there are more than one sender, the company should only use one account (but the senders could use their own signature).

Once again, social media is not necessarily something for every company. The main key is always: Make sure to be present at the same place as where your customers are. Is it online? If so, great! Is it in the local grocery store? Do something their instead.

How to spread social media usage through an organization?

There are no rules of who within the company that should be the sender, it depends on which kind of message you want to send out. Generally, everybody that have something to tell the customers could be the sender and everybody that needs to know the customers opinion should be able to take part of the discussions.

Social media is all about common sense. You should even keep in mind that:

• Everything that are written on the web are likely to stay there forever, so think twice of what you write.
• A company’s guidelines for social media usage should be in line with the regular communication guidelines.
• You should not act as a salesman but as a brand builder.
• You should be as helpful as possible, but do not do anything that contrary to your own brand.

How has social media changed the relationship between customers and companies?

Humans has always been social, it is in our nature to commend, recommend and alert each other. Social media is not something new, ever since Internet become quite common we have been able to communicate with each other, but the introduction of web 2.0 revolved the way we communicate. The dialogue became more public.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when communities grew and engaged the young people, the private discussions became public. When Facebook become common it was easier than ever before to spread messages and organize both dissatisfaction and satisfaction.

Companies has always known that it does not matter if they loose some dissatisfied customers as long as they find new customers. Companies has been able to control their brand and reputation with their own information, and customers had to abide by it. With social media, the brand’s reputation is controlled equal from the input of companies and customers.