Category: Social

Ever had one of those days where your time and attention was taken up by meaningless things?

We know what it’s like, for every email that matters, you get ten that don’t. And finally, to cap it all off we receive contacts like this.

This LinkedIn connection request prompted this post – to help us sharpen the mind and give you three tips to improve your social media communications. After all, I’d prefer to be at the  receiving end of good quality communications and connections.

Learning 1: Get Real in Your Social Media Connections

So, this is why this LinkedIn approach is initially amusing. First question: who is ‘Better Link Advertising’ and is Link his/her middle name, or is it a double-barrelled surname? That photo doesn’t look like a real person either and, worst of all, they have given me absolutely no reason to connect with them.

However, it’s not just for amusement. It needs to be treated more seriously than that, you need to do two further things:

1. Consider why they are trying to connect with you: this approach, in my opinion, has much more value to them than to me. I am not connecting to anyone in particular but they are getting ‘endorsement’ from me and access to my contacts.
2. Place a value your identity above just gaining contacts: you need to connect with people you know personally, ideally business contacts, but more than that people who you have an ‘even’ relationship with. Be very careful about connecting with those who’s interest is merely in your contacts (for example recruitment consultants and competitors)

If you’re not sure, then ask. Challenge them on why they want to connect with you.

Learning 2: Don’t Be Boring With What You Share in Your Feed

Just because you can post, if you don’t have anything interesting to say, then it’s best to be quiet.

This post highlights just how bad it can get. I don’t mind your narcissism, but your post is painfully dull.

Why should I follow you when all I might get is rubbish like this? And hashtags don’t work in LinkedIn anyway so clearly this is just a tweet.

We like the quote:

“Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet,
give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.”

We prefer to have connections where quality is valued above quantity. Our feed would be less busy and more interesting and, ultimately, make our Social Media experience stronger.

Learning 3: Don’t Go On About ‘You’

Of course it’s easy to do so, but don’t just go on about your business, your skills, your awards and your successes.

Mix up what you share, how you share it. Make it engaging, opinionated, informing and friendly.

Remember that incredibly dull person you met at a dinner party who kept on talking about themselves?

That could be you. Don’t fall into the same trap.

Ultimately there is no perfect formula for Social Media Marketing. It’s frustrating, it’s funny, it’s time-consuming and it has to be ‘you’.

In the first part of this article, we covered the first four rules of social media engagement: be brand-centric, listen, the rule of thirds and talk naturally. So, here are the remaining five rules.

5. Be easy to find (and to follow)

Want to increase your reach and influence? Then you’ll need to increase your number of followers. And the first thing you need to be thinking about is to make it as easy as possible for your potential audience to find you and then, provided you can prove to be of use, of interest and sometimes of amusement, to follow you.

Sometimes it’s better to get a deep twitter following (think quality over quantity) than a wide following. So you need to be thinking about relevance with consistency. You need to be following persons relevant to your business objectives, and try to engaging them.

Slow and steady wins the race so consistency is a must – which is important anyway. How do you engage your target audience once you’ve found them?

6.Ask questions, start conversations, engage

Well, the easiest way of engaging anyone, be it on the street, bus etc, is to ask questions. Everyone likes to talk about themselves, so give them an audience – use good open questions to get the conversation started and continue the dialogue with more questions and answers just like in the real world.

But what if the conversation doesn’t go according to plan or, possibly worse still, there is some very direct criticism aimed at you?

7. Criticism can be an opportunity

One approach is to use this as an opportunity to learn from your customers, and possibly to attend to the criticism in question so well that reputational damage is neutral or even enhanced by the incident.

But so many people find this aspect of being online difficult – why? Because people are inclined to take things personally and see any criticism as an attack on themselves. So the first thing that one should do is to look at the criticism carefully and dispassionately. Does the person making the criticism have a point? The first objective of any response to criticism is to draw the heat and emotion which is in the complaint. So, you need to show empathy and consider apologising.

Next, you need to address the source of the complaint (assuming that they have a legitimate complaint – sometimes social media can be driven a little too much by trolls so don’t get taken in here), by making amends if the complainant does have a point. Then state what you intend to do to make amends and check with the person that this addresses the issue. Go to Google and have a look at some of the examples from Dominos of how they address things when the screw up – 100% of us will do this at some time or other.

And try and address this tactic as quickly as it appears. Don’t let it fester.

8. Sharing is caring (and creates communities)

Sharing is caring, and will position you as a person of authority and influence. So put yourself in the shoes of your customers and think ‘what would they find really useful for me to share’.

Then do it – don’t be a hoarder of information – start to use the share button, the like button, retweet and repost and start to build a community of followers which are within your target audience (assuming you are playing to your strengths and sharing stuff which is within your brand or service ecosystem. And over time, this ecosystem will come to sustain you and help to grow your business.  And the wider you share, the wider your spheres of influence.

And finally… 9.!

If I do have a summary it’s this – be true to your brand and make sure the personality you create is as you meant it to be. Be as natural as possible, engage person to person. And don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

So what are you waiting for? Jump in – the water’s lovely!

We are more connected than ever, yet actually reaching people has never been harder!

Certainly that’s what we see from both ours and our clients’ perspective and it was brought into sharp focus preparing for leading a session on how technology can help growth with the Worldwide Association of Girl Guides and Scouts (WAGGGS) last week.

In the session one of the main subject areas was the diversification of digital communications channels – phone, email, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, Pinterest, Viber, Twitter, Instagram and QR codes were a handful of the 20+ methods mentioned by the audience.

I suspect if we had more time we could have looked at regional differences and also teased out the differences between what is used, and what is of use – which are, of course, completely different things.

Yet, there is little doubt in our mind that when we look at the current digital landscape, this developing complexity is a continuing trend resulting in more fragmented and complex communications.

So, given this, any business or organisation need to consider an appropriate response; we have identified three possible reactions to these developments:

1. Ignore: keep on keeping on

The first response is to keep doing what you are doing. Let’s say your preference is email – you can simply say: ‘no email means no email’. It’s the recipients’ fault for not having an email address, so be it. Clearly it is they who need to change.

Yet, this approach ignores two really important considerations. Firstly, these are not just anonymous users, they are your stakeholders – the life-blood of your organisation. Even if the win is short term, and the blame is passed on, you are distancing yourself from them. And, the medium-term result is that many will drift away and become less engaged or participatory. Hardly ‘inclusive’?

Secondly, your reach through your stakeholders to others is increasingly reliant on digital. Email tends to be the most user-friendly method, but not being a ‘social’ tool, has little ripple-effect opportunity for others to like, share or post.

2. Adjust: start pedalling…

So, the next response is to adapt to suit the range of channels – don’t just email, but also text, call, post and tweet. Make sure everyone is reached, ideally through at least one channel. Setup accounts in different social media, manage all the responses.

The problems start mounting, though. Firstly, this is reliant on the individual having the capacity to manage all these channels and, if they have other work to do, it isn’t reasonable to expect them to be spending all their waking hours managing this diversification of dialogue.

Secondly, the increasing range of channels makes this approach self-defeating. Just as they master the ten channels in front of them, another three get added. Then one changes. Then five of their recipients move from one to another.

In the context of the meeting with WAGGGS, most of the frontline staff are volunteers, and many have ‘day jobs’ and  need to focus most of their attention on preparing and managing the actual events (not just the communication of what is happening). They deal with small groups, with sometimes as few as ten recipients. Catering for all options equally and doing it all manually is not going to happen.

3. Optimise: use the modern method

So, if we know that we cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach, but we also realise that managing all these channels is going to be too onerous on those using the systems, what can we do about it? We need help, the right kind of help. Selecting the right solution is crucial to delivering the right stakeholder experience.

The answer is ‘software’ as it can not only help manage the sends, lists and channels, but should be able to make it faster to send in the first place. It could even make this ‘multi-sending’ more efficient than sending one email. However giving the answer ‘software’ is not very helpful for the purposes of meeting this specific need.

So, let’s look at the constituent parts to help identify the right solution:

• Cloud based: the software needs to be in the Internet so that it doesn’t limit the user to a single machine or location to be managed
• Global: the software needs to be available wherever it is needed. The company office doesn’t need to be global, but the software needs to function across boundaries without license issues
• Versatile: the software needs to be a multi-channel communication solution. Most just do email. Some offer chat and SMS. But you need more options than that.
• Intuitive: the interface needs to be easy to use and easy to understand. With simple e-learning the user can get to know the system and be able to start sending without the need for great technical knowledge
• Programmable: the system should involve some kind of decision-making system where users can either programme in specific logic for sending, for escalations (i.e. if no response to email, send text) and even receiving responses. This is more than just automation – it is smart, flexible logic

Summary: the future, realised

The truth with most customer software is that it was built at a time when most businesses wanted solely to move from spreadsheets or paper notes to something that stored information digitally. When we were running our WAGGGS session, the name of a very well-known CRM software platform was mentioned. Although this particular business is very successful and ideal for operating business follow up, it doesn’t have the capabilities needed to truly deliver.

What is needed is something where the emotive is not replaced by the mechanical, but is facilitated by it. So that the recipients don’t think that they’re being managed by a robot, but they are being reached by their point of contact.

That’s what we did when we created Omny.Link – we wanted to develop a modern software, built with stakeholders in mind, that didn’t claim to do everything in a ever-expanding box of tricks.

It helps organisations build from the ground upwards. Connect up what you want to connect, deliver what you want to deliver and uses a decision engine to run everything as seamlessly as possible. So why not use your preferred email solutions, your preferred website CMS, your preferred reporting tools – but using APIs and our open-source solution, it all gets connected up: your way!

Which means there’s a much greater likelihood of reaching your stakeholders in the ways they want to be reached. So you see, you don’t have to sacrifice connectivity in your bid to reach people, you just need the right technology.

Omny.Link – do more with your stakeholder communications.