4 pro tips for online reputation management and social media

Another great post on the importance of Social media and on line reputation management. This has been brought into sharp focus for many of our clients this year by the sorry tale of KFC South Africa and the inept way ity deals with the massive quality control issues which bedevil this particular fast-food operation across the country.
Check out these tips forsuccessful brand management and if you're going to outsource your social media,make sure you use a specialist business or consultancy. Many folks do digital, but not many do just social media.

Nomsindo - We Create Conversations

4 pro tips for online reputation management and social media | memeburn

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Social Media Integration - Maximise Your Online Business Potential

You have a website, and you get leads and information from this,perhaps even some data, and you might be thinking    "why do I need social media?"  and that's a good question. After all, what else can integrating social media into your business online presence do for your organisation? How about this...

• Customer service. You can interact with your customers in real time on social media, answering any enquiries or complaints and building on line communities. This gets people engaged with your business.
• Invite people you've searched for to connect with you.Offer them incentives, coupons and discounts. It's a great way to seek out new business. 
• Generate new sales leads by looking for users who tweet or post about your business area or product.
• Add your social media 'handles' to your brochures and website and ask people to connect with you. Position yourself as *the* expert in your field of business
• Recruit new staff by using social media to advertise. You can even use social media sites like LinkedIn for the application and CV submission process. It's also a great way to head-hunt the right people as you can search through on line profiles.
• Monitor your competitors.You can watch to see what they're up to and engage with their customers. Do it better than they do!
• Promote new products across all your on line sites. Increase the reach of your campaign.
• Use stats and analytics tools to direct your marketing and tell you where your business is coming from. Big data can give you loads of useful information you perhaps didn't know about your business area.

If you use a bit of blue sky thinking you could probably think of many more reasons to integrate social media into your business, but whatever you do,get some good advice from a specialist social media consultant and make sure you maximise the potential of social media.

It is really great when you start to see folks using the social media 'buttons' on your website to tweet you and post to Facebook. Or connect with you via LinkedIn or leave a tip about you on FourSquare. But make sure you set up your website to tweet and Facebook and Google+1  automatically whenever you make any changes.

 Maximise your business potential with fully integrated social media. Let Nomsindo become your social media partners. We Create Conversations...

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How *Not* to use Social Media

KFC is a big brand. Its known all over the world for fried chicken done to perfection using the Colonel's secret recipe of eleven spices and herbs. Except in South Africa, where they appear to have a problem with the concept of ..cooking... the chicken. Raw chicken is not good, even when coated in eleven herbs and spices. This is a photo of a recent purchase we made... Not at all appetising and more to the point, dangerous to health. Their facebook page is inundated with pics of substandard products and tales of poor service.

The problem with KFC South Africa is that they appear to have contracted out their complaints handling operation to the most cack-handed and inept operation we've ever come across (and there are lots of them in the world of digital media management, believe me! ). This company is called DSG but they don't handle the actual social media itself  - this is done 'in house' so there is an immediate disconnect in their customer service operation there. very poor!

Now, To recap the story so far. KFC South Africa are struggling with customer service and quality of their food. They have subcontracted their complaints operation to a so-called specialist in this field, DSG.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS SUPPOSED TO BE SOCIAL STUPID

We started posting comments and pictures on their Facebook page two days ago. We also started engaging in conversation with other disgruntled customers on both Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogging about the standard of food and service we've received from KFC over the years. But instead of heading us off at the pass by answering our comments and getting in touch with us by private message or Twitter DM, they simply posted their standard reply over and over again. From what we can see, they have three responses which they cut and paste onto Facebook in answer to complaints and comments. Apart from this, their entire Social Media strategy (if you can call it that) is to 'broadcast' KFC news. There is no real meaningful engagement with their customers. In fact, its not a social media strategy at all, its simply a digital media advertising strategy.

KFC South Africa (and DSG) have missed the point entirely. Its not called *social* media for nothing guys!
A real missed opportunity to build brand loyalty by true engagement with consumers, and to deal with complaints effectively, turning them around into satisfied customers. Just standard replies and broadcasting. Boring and ineffective.

BLOCKED FROM THEIR FACEBOOK

But there's worse... When we continued to engage with Facebook users who had made complaints, they blocked us from their facebook !! How stupid is that? Not only do they have a complete lack of understanding of how social media is supposed to work, but they send out the message (which we continue to spread on Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger, Google+, Trip Advisor, FourSquare etc etc) that if you complain too much about their food or service, they'll try to silence you by blocking you from their page. Problem with this folks is that there are simply too many other social media channels on which to create the conversation about their poor quality food and indifferent customer service.

DSG DOES NOT UNDERSTAND SOCIAL MEDIA USE

They must be worried because no less than the Executive Director (restaurants) from KFC South Africa, Peter Horne, phoned me up to ask what it would take for us to stop attacking their brand! They just don't get it do they? Its their abusive use of social media both themselves and via DSG which is the problem. DSG just don't get how to use it properly, and thats whats attacking their brand, not us...Daryl Shapiro from DSG who also called me yesterday needs to take a long hard look at his company social media operation because he's letting his clients down - big time. They advertise social media management on their website but they just don't deliver (see the last blog post on here about using a specialist social media consultant).

And so to prove the point, we made up our own facebook page, Finger Lickin Gross which has had hundreds of views in a few short hours. We've blogged about this as well. Again, thousands of hits. The twitter amplification has topped 250K views.  Please go visit, and comment, because it is supposed to be social media after all. And help us prove a point !

And to KFC South Africa... you might want to rethink and refashion your complaints handling process, because it's not working to protect your brand from the terrible service and poor quality food your restaurants serve up here in South Africa. Social media is about creating conversations. So go online and talk *with* your customers and stop talking *at* them.

Oh yes...and remember, blocking customers won't stop them talking on social media, it just encourages them to talk more...

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So, Why does my business need to be using Social media?

We get asked this question a lot! Prospective clients often feel confused and even scared of being active on the web, and think that having a website is enough... well, its not.

Not any more. Websites are static and difficult to use for conversations. They are the 'Shop Window' for your business, but nowadays, a good website will be integrated with social media. Here are a few reasons why you can't afford not to be using social media for your business..

• Answer and address complaints quickly. Increasingly, businesses are using Twitter and Facebook to handle complaints. Just check out KLM, Vodacom, and Virgin for good examples.If you want to see badly used social media,look at the KFC South Africa FaceBook page!
• Get feed back on your business activity. If you want to gauge the possible reaction of consumers or customers to something you're planning, Social Media is almost like an instant polling station! Just ask your questions on Twitter or Facebook for almost instant answers.
• Share photo's and video of your business activity and products. Its a vibrant community out there and with the right images, you get wonderful free exposure. 
• Word of mouth marketing is a powerful way to boost your sales. And without the cost of radio or television campaigns either. Its quick and effective, and all about making connections.
• Increase loyalty. Your social media activity will make your connections feel a strong sense of loyalty to you. After all, you're not just broadcasting to them...you're engaging with them
• Market research. You can easily search your business area or market and see what's happening. People will be talking about it, that's virtually guaranteed on social media. 
• Your competitors will be on it. So you don't want to be left out and lose business. If they're not already on social media, they soon will be!
• Statistics tell a story. You get tons of useful information from the data provided by social media activity. Web analytics and traffic reports tell you where your activity is coming from and allow you to position yourself vetu clinically to where you need to be.
• Become the expert in your field. Using content curation (collection and aggregation) positions you as the expert to ask questions from in your field. People will come to your sites for information and advice. before they even get near your competitors.
• Brand protection. You don't want people to criticise you on line, but if they do, you need to be able to talk with them instantly.Just look at HMV in the UK - they ignored social media and were driven into bankruptcy by a barrage of negative social media commentary they failed to answer.

                                                           creating conversation...

Social media is how you can engage with your customers and business contacts in real time and almost instantly. Increasingly, its how we do business, search for purchases and perhaps most importantly, make complaints about poor service or products. 

Social Media is growing and is a powerful force in marketing and brand protection. Nobody wants folks out there saying bad things about them on Twitter, facebook, Pinterest and all the other platforms which give people a genuine voice. That voice is affecting the way we buy products and services. Social Media sites are replacing traditional search engines (YouTube is second to Google for the number of searches recorded).

But you need to be positioned on the right Social Media platforms for your business. Thats where we can help. The advice of a good social media consultant is vital. A good consultant will live and breathe social media. They won't design websites, or do advertising. They'll just know exactly where you need to be on the many platforms that exist out there. 

This is our business. Social media is what we're all about. So we can help you with your website...from a social media integration perspective. But Social media is our speciality here at Nomsindo. 

We Create Conversation for your business...

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