As 2009 comes to a close we have seen that brands and marketers have become more than willing to start conversations in social media, but that’s only the beginning of truly leveraging the social channel for customer and marketing interactions.

A MarketingSherpa survey of social media marketers revealed how brands are leveraging social media and the effectiveness of their practices today. The study revealed that a large majority rated social media marketing effective at influencing brand reputation, increasing awareness and improving search rankings and site traffic.

My question is where is customer service in this study.  I think one of the most effective use cases for leveraging the social channel is responding and acknowledging customer issues - both good and bad to improve customer experience. A happy and loyal customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one - right? But, since this study was conducted with social media marketers perhaps the customer service topic was overlooked.

Some of the specific tactics that marketers favored for achieving results in the social channel were user reviews, relationships with bloggers and discussion groups. But many continued to be challenged with best practices for measuring effectiveness of the investments —only around 10% of respondents thought they were “very accurately measured.”

Can you measure the effectiveness though when many companies still don’t have a formal or even informal strategy in place for leveraging and interacting with consumers in the social channel?  Many of the best ways to measure social success is to ensure that it is connected with other programs, existing initiatives and is simply an extension of what marketers, customer service, research teams, or public relations are already doing.  While one-third of larger businesses had a written policy to manage brand communications, only 13% of smaller business did. Having a “formal policy” is great but more important is setting up cross-functional groups, collaboration, and resources across an organization (big or small) to be fully invested in interacting and learning from your customers.

Developing “policies” or a best practices for your company can be particularly valuable when it comes to responding to consumer feedback. Social media marketing is a conversation, and brands must be ready to respond to consumers whether its for promotion or service related issues. Interestingly enough, around  one-quarter of businesses of all sizes reported that participated in the study are still not monitoring social media commentary at all. While, nearly one-half of large businesses are keeping an eye on discussions without responding publicly. The amount of brands that are engaging when a negative comment is made is around 25%.

Business should at a minimum be investing in:

• Listening to what their customers or potential customers are saying
• Developing best practices across support, marketing and public relations for monitoring and interacting with customers that are having favorable or unfavorable interactions
• Integrating the social channel into the mix of existing channels that are being used for marketing and customer interaction

As we head into 2010, brands and marketers must take the next steps to fully exploit the social channel and the power of positive and negative feedback about their brands.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies