Let’s start with your current stage in the social media monitoring journey.

• If you’re already monitoring your brand for social mentions, that’s an excellent start to a social strategy
• If you’ve stepped out into monitoring your industry as well and are comfortably understanding your competition on the social web, then I’ll say “good job” once more
• If you’ve begun to pinpoint social conversations with a tighter focus to gain deeper knowledge with your prospective customers, then please be sure and share your comments below as this post is about exactly that

Where do you fit in?

Blindfolds are not your Friend

We know that people take trips, book vacations and fly all over the world. Understanding the motivation of your next guest or passenger could be a ticket to gaining more people looking for the same service. Rather than assuming that there will always be people taking a flight with you or booking your honeymoon suite, it’s best to never assume that you will continue to have the greatest idea for the bulk of the people you are targeting. If you worked in a clothing store, you wouldn’t wear a blindfold while making a recommendation. Being able to see the shopper, judge their style, their shape and size help you make a quick suggestive sell.

But how can you ‘see’ your future guest via social media? You don’t need to look in the eyes of your potential guests to learn what is best to suggest. But you do need to watch for key conversations.

Why Do Travelers Travel?

In this social age, people are increasingly happy to share information. Not only are they putting their itineraries out there for friends and family to view, but they’re offering it without prompting. Many social sharers are just as happy to answer a question about their motivations. While asking is an obvious option, try listening in on the conversation first.

Are friends discussing the need to escape a cold, snowy winter? Are colleagues talking about how they will spend their one free evening while out of town together on business? Travelers have different reasons for traveling and as a result, their needs will vary. Although that 2 for 1 special to Cancun flooding my Twitter feed is a great deal in theory, it may not fulfill my needs. Listen for the need and mix it up a little.

Targeted Listening

Your competitor is happy to know that a family of four wants to take a cruise. They are proud that they found this first-time cruising family via social conversations. However, there are a plethora of keywords to listen for to really outdo your competitor.

Noticing a conversation about wishing to one day see glaciers and breathing in the crisp air of the north is your key to engage in conversation about Alaska. You probably have a cruise that suits the needs of a daydreamer-turned-traveler. Or listening to two friends talk about their amazement with scuba diving may lead you to offer your knowledge on great places for first timers, adding of course the services your hotel offers in conjunction with the local dive school.

Travelers don’t always have a plan to take on the world one passport stamp at a time. Like every other consumer-led industry, even a traveler needs a gentle nudge or inspiration. Why let someone else do the nudging when you know the best kept secrets of a little known beach closest to your most tucked away resort?

No one ever liked a Pushy Salesman

Social media is not an excuse to flood fans and followers with ‘look what I can do!’ Even when listening thoughtfully for a unique way you can help a tourist, remember that they’ll love you more if you just be their friend. Smile at them, laugh with them and take a moment for two-way story sharing if you have the bandwidth. They’ll remember you longer and regard you higher – and be more likely to appreciate your offer for a discount on tickets to that cool new show in your Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Proving that you’re listening and especially that you value the uniqueness of each prospective guest to your services will earn you the attention of planners.

Taking it a step further still, you can ask:

• Is your customer a do-it-yourselfer?
• Do they prefer to have an agent make all of the arrangements?
•  Would they like to plan it with the planner?
•  How active is your customer?
• Are they good with a map?
• Or are they directionally challenged like me?

Understanding the motivations, the needs and the unique desires of potential travelers will help you stand out and hopefully earn the business of the people you engage with when they are ready to book that next adventure.

Travel business: How are you using targeted listening to interact with your guests and reward them with a unique experience?

Traveler: How have you been wowed via social media by a travel company who heard your needs and delivered something that felt especially targeted to you?

Jenn Seeley is a Community Engagement Specialist who uses social media for recommendations on sights to see while traveling with Radian6. Tell her why you love social media for travel insight (or what she should see in Vegas next week) @Jenn_Seeley.

The social media world is no different. Many utilities companies recognize that their customers, thought leaders, colleagues and prospects are sharing and conversing via social media. But are utility companies listening and engaging back? Do they know how their customers think and feel about their brand? If not, where do they begin?

Enter Isaac Pigott, Alabama Power‘s communications strategist. (He was also an Emmy-winning TV reporter, which explains today’s video format). With experience in crisis management, social media, and no fear of the camera lens, we thought he’d be the perfect person to pin down for some video Q&A on how social media and utility companies work together.

Hi Ike. Can you tell us how the utility industry benefits from social media?

What are some of the challenges of social media?

So now we understand some of the challenges and benefits, but as a utility company, how do you get started?

For utility companies, how important is listening?

With your crisis communications expertise, how do you incorporate social media into your crisis strategy?

In your opinion, what does the future hold for utility companies and social media?

Thank you so much for your time today, Ike. Great videos!

How would you have answered some of these questions? Do you think listening takes precedence over engagement or are they equally important? Share your thoughts and questions. Ike may join in!

What does a ripple effect in connections mean? Ever have your mom tell you a story about how so-and-so’s cousin married your brother’s nephew which meant you were now related to your best friend Joe? Just like that! Social connections can often cause you to be connected to people you may never met face to face, but you have a way of reaching them if need be. These are important because they help to increase your reach which can ultimately end in more buzz, leads and coverage for you and your brand.

So what are some ways you can start making your own splashes? Here’s a few to think about:

Start small
Even making a single connection could lead to hundreds more, so don’t feel that you need to talk to everyone all at once.

Think ahead
No one wants to plan out every interaction they are going to have, but if there is someone you really would like to connect with, then be a little strategic in your path to knowing them. Have a look at your mutual friends list or who can introduce you on LinkedIn.

Keep making connections
Nurturing you new connections is just as important as nurturing your existing ones. Stay on top of opportunities for meeting new people but keep relationships strong with your existing connections at the same time.

What ways have you built out your social connections? What advice do you have for people just starting out?

Ever wonder about the faces on the Radian6 materials and website? Who are they? Are they modeled after real people? Do they bear a striking resemblance to someone you know? Well, pretty soon you will get to know them. We’re starting a series that looks into their lives, experiences and challenges on the social web. They will share their personal insights on what works (and doesn’t work) when it comes to the social world. So without further adieu, we introduce Karen.

Hi, I’m Karen, I’m a mother, wife and heavy duty multi-tasker. While my family does come first, I’m incredibly passionate about my work. I’m a Communication Manager by day and at night, I spend time with my family. In the late hours, I catch up on some of my favourite blogs. I love reading posts from other moms and hearing how they tackle sticky parenting situations. When I have any free time, I go for a run to clear my mind and get refreshed.

Right now, I work at a company called Yummy Yummy Treats which sells 72 varieties of chocolates at 30 individual stores. I love working here because I love chocolate and the people are pretty great too. While the stores span the country, each one has its own unique feel and has become a part of their local communities.

As Community Manager, I recently decided we needed to start working on social media engagement. We have decided to create a company blog where our various bakers can provide tips, share recipe ideas, discuss nutritional information and engage with our communities. We decided to start with a blog because the work can be easily shared by all the locations. I am able to spend the time responding to comments and getting the posts up and it is a platform that our employees feel most comfortable engaging in. We will hopefully roll our engagement out to other social media platforms as we go.

We want to come up with a way to measure and track the success of the blog based not only on what we think our goals should be, but in a way that will allow us to compare to our competitors and other similar industry blogs.

I started with the accepted metrics used when doing analysis on a blog.

• Post views
• Post comments
• Post shares
• Subscribers
• Relationships

Before we even dive into all the measurement we want to do on our own blog, we want to set a benchmark for comparison.  We’ve selected 5 blogs that are similar to the one we would like to create. The big thing we want to tackle is how to set that benchmark. Here are metrics to gauge when looking at these other blogs.

• Review the number of follower and see how that number grows.
• Track the number of comments.
• Try to determine how much is shared on various social outlets either through a monitoring platform or by looking for a trackback count on the blog itself.
• Look back to the first two months of posts to determine potential comments and engagement at the outset.

Anything we could add? What else should we look at? Is this information enough for us to set goals for our blog? Do you think what we have here will cover everything? I’m excited to share ideas and get feedback. Until next time!

Note: Characters are in fact fictional; any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental. Yummy Yummy Chocolates, unfortunately, does not exist.

These sorts of questions, and many more about how our personal information is being used by businesses, float through the heads of people regularly as they wander about on the web. With the induction of social media into our daily lives, those questions have exponentially increased in number, and it doesn’t take much to find someone doubting whether they should share their latest online purchase with their Facebook friends or sign up for another e-newsletter.

The increased levels of general consumer awareness and wariness about information sharing make it imperative that you, as a business, stay aware of rules and regulations surrounding customer data use and are open about your data gathering policies and any changes you make to them.

So, what do you need to make sure you’re doing to avoid breaking the rules and alienating your customers?

Know the Rules

This seems obvious, but with new social networks popping up so fast and new information becoming readily available on the web on a daily basis, the rules change quickly. Keep up to date with all regulations from your government’s consumer affairs arm regarding data gathering and sharing and consumer privacy.

Of course, it can be hard to stay updated or even understand what you should and shouldn’t be doing when you have to wade through pages of legalese. If possible, have your legal team create an easily understandable “CliffsNotes” version of those federal policies to be shared in your internal community. If that isn’t possible, work with legal team to identify the regulations most relevant to your communications and update and share that information regularly with your Marketing and PR/Communications departments and executives.

Don’t take chances with any vague clauses or statements in these policies; seek out clarification and always err on the side of caution. When it comes to federal privacy regulations, the last thing you want to be doing is skirting the line between solid and questionable data use.

Air Your Clean Laundry

It’s likely you’ve already got a privacy policy included on your website to ensure you’re covering all your bases. But when was that policy last updated to include your social media activity?

Are you collecting user information from Facebook and/or Twitter to create targeted ad and marketing campaigns? If so, have you included clauses in your privacy policy that account for that information collection and use? If your business is directed toward kids or is a financial institution, have you accounted for the additional rules and regulations created specifically for your industry?

And lest you think burying your privacy policy is a tack you can get away with, the United States Federal Trade Commission recently cracked down on a well-known brand for not clearly disclosing their data tracking and collection practices around certain branded communities and specific member involvement (disclosures were put at the bottom of a lengthy end-user license agreement).

Make your privacy policy easy to find and alert your customers when you’ve made changes to your policy. We’ve made our privacy policy easily accessible within our website homepage’s navigation and update it regularly, as needed.

Give Them a Way Out

Opting in and opting out of something is not just relegated to newsletters these days; you can give your customers opportunities to opt in or out of sharing certain pieces of information about themselves when they choose to share details about your products via social networks. Even if they choose to share quite openly, provide an opt-out option at all times. Make it easy for them to change their information sharing preferences at any time, and be honest with them about what they’ll be putting out into the world if they choose to interact with and promote your brand via social networks.

This is a quick look at what companies should be doing at a basic level to protect their customers and stay in good standing with them, as well. How are you ensuring your social media marketing efforts don’t alienate your customers and prospects? Where do you draw the line between using social media data and leaving it in the confines of your secure customer information databases? Share your tips and stories with us in the comments!

“Publication is a self-invasion of privacy.” -Marshall McLuhan

As if foreshadowing the birth of social media and the hue and cry around online privacy and security issues, Marshall McLuhan summed it up in one succinct sentence: Publication is a self-invasion of privacy. And in a day and age when everyone and their mother (literally) is a publisher, whether via Twitter or LinkedIn, through a blog or on a Facebook page, it begs the question: If you are putting yourself out there, then where does online privacy and security even fit in? What if, when it comes to social media and its many platforms, privacy and security have gone the way of the Dodo bird?

Let’s face it, before social media crashed the online party, security and privacy tended to be more of an ‘in versus out’ issue. Corporations needed security to make sure nothing came ‘into’ their online corporate bubble, to make sure their online properties were secured so information wasn’t easily accessible by outside individuals. ‘Hack’ was the new four-letter dirty word. Corporations used firewalls for security lest employees ventured somewhere unsavoury. They also made things secure for their consumer with encrypted payment pages for online buying, that sort of thing.

As for the general public, they had to be careful of what they were putting ‘out’ onto the Internet, that their blog privacy settings were set and secure, that they didn’t use their birthdays or their kids names as passwords, and maybe, most importantly, that they didn’t reveal too much sensitive or private personal information — birth dates, where they live, where they were born, job info — you know, the stuff identity thieves use.

Then along came social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites are fundamentally non-private and by extension not secure. Their value, for business, and their fun, for everyone else, lies in the sharing and publishing of personal information. And it’s a level of online sharing that even those of us at a *ahem* reasonably young age still find astonishing. Yet these networks seem to be at the root of more privacy/security concerns than anything else online. Huh?

We mentioned the business value of social networking sites up there, and we talk about it here daily. It’s no secret that corporations make money using customer information and statistics. The sudden tsunami of personal data available online — published voluntarily, however, via social networking sites — raised that bar, and blurred the lines between what companies should have access to and what they shouldn’t.

For the sake of argument only, let’s use Facebook as an example. Google ‘Facebook’ and ‘privacy’. What you’ll see is article after article describing one or another attempt by Facebook to tweak its privacy settings, and the inevitable backlash by its members who rabidly protest these changes as an attack on personal privacy. And here’s why: With the latest software, everything from our age range, what neighbourhood we live in, our average salary, what car we drive and whether Black Swan or Inception might tickle our fancy can be determined from a few clicks of a mouse or select keywords. The Wall Street Journal wrote a great article on data sharing, which is extremely lucrative, and one of the fastest growing businesses on the web.

There’s no denying that Facebook is a business, and a mighty successful one at that. And in 2007 it got its hand slapped for exactly this type of data sharing. For members who thought it was more of a benevolent sorority club that anyone could join, the idea that their personal information might be ‘used’ was a bit of a shock. And they freaked out. Online petitions were circulated. Pundits wondered if this might be the tipping point, if people were going to be scared away from Facebook and social media in droves because of risks of privacy invasion. But, a bit like Chicken Little, that didn’t happen. And it’s still not happening. Just last April, the company was called on the carpet for the same type of data sharing. Yet, today, Facebook has 500 million active users. Think about that. For all the teeth gnashing around its privacy hiccups, people still joined — and are still joining — in droves. Here’s why: What Mark Zuckerberg does in response to the rallying cries of ‘off with their heads’ is a little bit of crafty and a whole lot of smart. He gives people the tools to opt out, the opportunity to change their settings. Which makes them feel more secure. Are they completely private? No. Is their information completely secure? No. But as long as they can control, within reason, their page settings, they feel better.

The bottom line is, social media changed the Internet landscape. It’s always seemed a bit hypocritical to get up in arms about online privacy and security in between posting to Twitter, sharing on Facebook, detailing your job history on LinkedIn and becoming mayor of your local Starbucks on Foursquare. (And we haven’t even touched on sites like Blippy, where you share your credit card purchases with friends.) In researching the online privacy/security issue, and asking relevant questions regarding where and how it fit into this new world of social networking, we concluded it didn’t. It couldn’t. Privacy and security are virtually the antithesis of the transparency and immediacy of social media. There has been an evolution, though. What you can have — indeed should insist you do have — is CONTROL.

Below are some tips that will give you a bit more control, both personally and professionally, while adapting to and adopting social media.

Personal Control

Tighten your privacy settings: Remember that Facebook, MySpace, and other social sharing sites want your information to be shared. That’s why the default privacy settings are usually as loose as they can be. But Facebook, and many other similar sites, offer customizable privacy settings that allow you to limit who can see what. Limit sensitive data, like email addresses and phone numbers, to only your friends, to better protect your privacy.

Share less: If there’s something about you — information or a picture — that you don’t want the world to potentially see, then don’t share it online. Pictures showing you out drinking or at a party, for example, might be something you want to keep to yourself and out of the hands of possible employers or even from family. The easiest way to keep info private is to not share it at all.

Use dedicated e-mail accounts: Thinking of signing up for a new social network or starting a blog? Worried that you’ll be flooded with spam and phishing emails if you do? Then take the steps to protect your e-mail and set up dedicated email addresses, something like “myspamaccount@gmail.com”, for example. Use this account for your social networking sites and other online activities. That way, if you do become a victim of spam or other unwanted emails, your primary email is still safe and protected.

Corporate Control

Increase employee awareness: People can change the way they behave in social networks only if they are aware of the security risks. Therefore, organizations should inform their employees about the risks present in the social media and raise their awareness of the fact that even seemingly harmless information can reveal too much about the company or people’s private lives. Providing continuous information about new threats and maintaining rules of conduct can further help with employee awareness. It is helpful to appoint a social media expert within the company who acts as a permanent contact for employees with questions and concerns.

Establish firm processes: Administrators need to remain up-to-date about the most recent risks on the web. It is therefore advisable to establish firm processes that are systematically linked to daily workflows. For example, administrators should make sure to download the latest security updates. These seemingly mundane mechanisms enable IT administrators to identify network attacks quickly or to avoid them altogether.

Maintain a strong set of rules: With in-house guidelines, network administrators can define the network areas and applications that can be accessed by specific people at specific times. This makes it possible to control and monitor access to critical data, and to track such access at any time, which reduces the risk of information falling into wrong hands through unauthorized channels. Companies should also take compliance requirements into account. The important thing is to keep the policies up to date and adapt them to changing circumstances.

So, what do you think? Has social media nullified the principles of online privacy, and by extension security? Do you agree with our theory that privacy and security, when it comes to social networks, have gone the way of the Dodo bird? And if not, why not?

“Relationships and trust. This is the bedrock of life.” – Mukesh Ambani

So, you have a social media policy, right? We have covered why you need to have a policy in place, the anatomy of such a policy, and the need to collaborate with your legal team to draft the policy. This policy is a living document that grows alongside your organization’s overall social strategy. But don’t think it is the only document you will have to have in place. Remember the privacy policy your organization drafted that is buried on your website? Perhaps it is time to dust it off and take a second look.

Social search will force your business to recalibrate and “refine your social intelligence structure” as David Armano predicts, but what is required of your organization goes much deeper than a superficial content scan. As social data becomes more available in search, the more people will become aware of the data they are placing on the Internet. Your organization is banking on listening to its community and gleaning insights from its members to help personalize its story. There is a wealth of data that will assist you in knowing your community better that is available on your website and various social media outposts you and your community participate in. What data are you accessing? Why are you accessing this data? And, does your community know how you are using this data?

Social media thrives on transparency. Nothing can be hidden…or at least, not for long. We have learned it is best to be honest with our communities and not breach any trust and credibility that has been built in past and present online and offline interactions. This is why we have encouraged organizations to embrace a social media policy, not just for their own protection, but also for the well-being of the community on which they each depend.

So, what should your privacy policy include?

Your privacy policy should not be limited to just your company website, but should be updated to include any other online locations your organization has created and participates on (e.g., Facebook, forums, exclusive user communities). The policy should specify what information you collect from people while they are active on these locations and how you intend to use that information. In addition to the collection of data, it is vital you explain how this data is stored, protected, and if you intend to share this information with any other person/affiliates/partners.

The shock and awe of social media is about shedding light on relationships previously separated by geography, class, and various other factors. Taking a second look at your current privacy policy or redrafting it is not about putting the straight jacket on your social media and integrated communications efforts but about embracing the trust factor that is online currency, setting your company free to create long-lasting relationships with your community, and protecting all sides.

How are you integrating your organization’s privacy policy with your social media policy? Do you think social data in search will affect how people view their privacy?

We were lucky enough to be able to participate in a couple of fantastic panels for Social Media Week 2011, which ended last Friday, and thought we’d wrap up our involvement with a bit of post-event buzz analysis.

Before we get started, you should know that we limited our monitoring to a few different media types including micromedia (Twitter), video sites, image sites, blogs, public Facebook pages and mainstream news. This was to make sure that the data we were pulling really was Social Media Week-focused. Also, this is a quick, fairly high-level look at the SMW11 buzz — to get the most value out of this data requires comparing it to previous years and placing it against a set of established goals. Since we don’t know the goals and objectives of the Social Media Week team, we’re just giving an overview and some of our initial thoughts around the event.

Now, with those couple caveats out of the way, let’s dive in.

Global Is Right

What stands out about the Social Media Week buzz is the level of participation from all the host cities. Over the last 14 days, more than 40% of the online chatter surrounding Social Media Week has been in languages other than English, with the most prominent being Portuguese. São Paulo was one of the host cities of Social Media Week, and its residents and visitors came out in full force to chat and learn about new social media trends.

Following Portuguese were Italian, German and French. A global event in the truest sense, this data shows just how diligent the Social Media Week planning team has been in bringing multiple cities around the world into the fold and getting them deeply involved in It’s also a clear demonstration of the traction social media has gained over the past year.

A Deeper Look

If we click into the actual posts that people published during Social Media Week, we see that most of them were shares of blog posts advertising or recapping individual panels, 4square check-ins, photo sharing, general mentions of attendance, and quite a few positive comments and thank-yous. What is most interesting is that, although the majority of the mentions came through via Twitter, they were often sharing blog posts and longer discussions surrounding specific Social Media Week panels and topics.

This kind of behavior — the extensive sharing of one conversation medium through another — shows the supportiveness and enthusiasm of the overall Social Media Week community. This is also proved by the fact that most of the shares came from individual attendees rather than the main Social Media Week organization accounts.

What’s it All Mean?

As we mentioned above, this is a very high-level look at the chatter surrounding Social Media Week 2011, but there are a couple takeaways we can glean even from this quick glance. Most significantly, Social Media Week has an engaged and enthusiastic audience. The people who attend the panels are interested and supportive, most likely because of the vast array of panel topics and organizations involved, as well as the extended timeframe and various host locations of the overall event.

This type of set-up is ideal for many folks because it is very much an opt-in, come-as-you-please endeavor — people can explore the facets of social media that most interest them and stay for as much or as little as they like. Social Media Week invites the truly interested to engage, thus garnering some pretty strong support.

The caliber of speakers and hosting organizations this year shows just how much Social Media Week has grown, and it will be exciting to watch this event continue to evolve and expand over time. Did you attend any Social Media Week events? If so, which ones, and which did you most enjoy and learn from? Share your experiences with us in the comments!

For the rest of this month Radian6 is going to take an in-depth look at a few facets of online privacy. Privacy, by dictionary definition, is the freedom from unauthorized intrusion. And we all know what unauthorised intrusion feels like, both personally and professionally. We’ve all experienced the crawly’ness of a close-talker at a cocktail party. And companies big and small go to great lengths to keep strategy, sales figures, financial statistics and R&D information from their competitors. When leaks happen, heads usually roll. Yet, as a community, we more or less live our lives on the Internet nowadays. In fact, smart phones — which are outselling desktop computers — have made ‘online’ so ubiquitous that the only time it truly registers is when we can’t get there. Throw in retina scans and full body X-rays, GPS and Google Earth, and one might wonder why the issue of online privacy is still, well, an issue.

WWMD?

When it comes to best practices around online privacy, it turns out Mom was right after all — common sense will keep us fairly insulated. Things like trading online databases or not providing for safe online transactions are generally bad. But should we ensure that every bit of online information remains private?

Cyber-footprinting was a fairly new and 1984’ish concern years ago, but it’s now common knowledge that you can’t swing a cat online without leaving bits and pieces of personal evidence behind. Offline companies ask for postal codes or phone numbers for those same bits of personal evidence. One postal code can reveal approximately 14,000 things about a consumer. And they use them for market research. Why should it be any different online? Call it the 21st century’s customer survey or census report.

You Told What To Whom..?

Speaking of marketing, social media opens a unique kettle of fish. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites are inherently non-private, their very conceit is the sharing and publishing of personal information. Yet they seem to be the root of more privacy concerns than anything else online. Companies are hammering out policies around social media engagement and networking in the workplace. What will you allow and not allow your company’s social networking ‘voice’ to do and say on your behalf? Do you understand the privacy concerns your customers have regarding social media?

Who was that masked man?

There’s another angle to the issue of online privacy: That what is really wanted is not privacy at all. It’s security. Businesses need to provide secure online shopping avenues and never give out a phone number or address. Customers don’t want to be cyber-tracked. Are the lines between privacy and security blurred? People who track online fraud and cyber crime suggest that too much privacy might not be a good thing, that online anonymity is a dangerous game.

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt made this prediction about the future of information: “True transparency, and no anonymity.”

What do you think? Can too much privacy be a bad thing? Or is the opposite the real problem? Are corporations responsible for protecting consumers’ online privacy, or should personal responsibility come into play? How can you build trust with your online consumers so they’re willing to share themselves with you? How do privacy issues affect your organization, big or small? Or do they?

We’ll be discussing all these aspects of online privacy and more throughout the rest of February and offering up tips and suggestions for making sure your business and customers are as protected as they want and/or need to be. Have any specific online privacy subtopics you’d like us to tackle? Let us know in the comments!

As businesses implementing social media strategies, we’re reaching past that point of overzealousness and blundering. Not everyone, mind you — the adoption curve is still steep – but those that jumped into the fray early on are finally finding their footing, and their customers are adjusting to that. This means consumers are becoming even savvier. We, as buyers, now have even higher expectations for being able to reach companies and get problems resolved, we are more scrutinizing and critical, and we have few if any qualms about publishing our criticisms on the Internet for the world to see. Because we know you’re listening.

So what does this mean for you, businesses? It means that you can’t just appear to have it all together on the social web. You might’ve been able to do that a couple years ago, but that’s no longer the case. You can’t just appease us by saying, “Yep, we heard you!” Great, you heard us, now do something about it.

Rather than go on in this vein and put the fear even deeper in you, let’s look at some ways you can adjust the inner workings of your business to make sure that what you’re hearing on the social web is being sent to the right people within your company and that there’s a process in place to either act on that information, log it for future review, or respond back with proper reasoning as to why it’s not possible.

Creating Your Internal Spokes

We’ve found that for ourselves and many other brands the hub-and-spoke model of internal structuring for social media adoption is one of the most effective ways for listening, acting on, and processing social media-based information. The hub of your social media efforts not only acts as an internal resource for social media adoption, they act as liaisons between your community and the various departments that make up your business.

While focusing on creating a strong and efficient social media hub is important, you can’t ignore the importance of selecting a strong lineup of spokes (e.g., department liaisons who act as points of contact for your social media team) to connect that hub to the rest of your organization. That selection process is almost more crucial than creating your hub, because those spokes will be the ones overseeing the information absorption process.

Some traits to look for in potential spokes include:

• The ability to communicate clearly and concisely and simplify concepts
• A strong understanding of social media and how people build relationships with each other and brands through these communication channels
• The ability to easily build relationships within your organization
• The willingness and confidence to go to whoever necessary within your organization to get answers
• A record of following through with requests in a timely manner
• An understanding of the customer’s perspective

If you can’t find all of those traits right from the get-go, identifying people who are enthusiastic about social media communication and are able to convey the needs of customers is a good start.

Mapping Your Processes

The information and opinions about your brands and products that come through the social media pipeline can be tagged with multiple labels. Some of that data is customer service oriented, some is product related, some relates to sales opportunities, and some might be more business development focused.

The mass amount of valuable feedback and qualified inquiries a company can receive via the social web makes it imperative you devise a well-mapped system that allows your hub and spokes to sort, organize, route, respond to, and track all of that in a timely fashion.

When creating this system, you’ll need to consider:

• The types/focus of comments and questions you receive
• The comments and questions that aren’t necessarily directed at you but are relevant to you
• Your organization’s current processes for resolving issues and receiving feedback through more traditional means of communication
• Setting external expectations with customers about your problem resolution timelines
• Setting internal expectations with departments about your problem resolution timelines
• Clearly identifying the people within your organization who are responsible for getting customer service issues resolved and feedback processed
• How you want to respond to different types of social media posts and brand-related topics
• In which social networks you want to be most responsive
• Which current information absorption processes can be streamlined to create a more efficient workflow
• How you want to track and log what comes through social media and how it’s handled internally

When you’ve considered these factors and more, go through the physical exercise of creating mapped social media processes. Developing a visual decision map can be extremely helpful in taking away any guessing as to who is responsible for what and speeding up the information absorption workflow.

There’s so much more to the picture, but these are starting points for you to think over. As mentioned above, consumer expectations are changing and you must adapt and amend your social media programs and processes to accommodate that change. What else would you add to these lists or to the bigger picture? How do companies need to adapt their internal structure, communication, and workflows to accommodate the influx of social media-based feedback and questions? Share your thoughts in the comments!