Take Advantage of Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are one of the power weapons in social network. Since customers and companies are connecting with multiple social media, customers have the control of what they think about the companies. Social media changes the relationship between customers and companies. In the past, customers have limited information about products and services which provided by the productors. But right now, people can share their experience about the products and services to public by using social media tools. These comments are much more powerful than what the companies said about themselves through other media channls. In other words, people prefer to believe others' reviews or comments rather than advertising.



In the book "Groundswell", the authors also points out five strategies for tapping the groundswell: listening to the groundswell, talking with the groundswell, energizing the groundswell, helping the groundswell and embracing the groundswell. Based on the power of social media, I think energizing the groundswell is the most important part for companies to tap their customers by using social media. In the book, it explained that energizing the groundswell means tapping into the power of word of mouth by connecting with, and turning on, your most committed customers. But it's not that easy. In order to succeed in this endeavor, companies should make effort to connect your brand's enthusiasts with your customers. First, tap into customers' enthusiasm with ratings and reviews. Second, create a community to energize your customers. Third, participate in and energize online communities of your brand enthusiasts.

Speaking of the interaction between companies and customers, the first one come out of my mind is socail media reviews. Reviews change the relationship between companies and customers. People can make any comments about any companies, products, services on any social media at anytime in anywhere. Consumers have gone social, and businesses are overwhelmed. With a Twitter, Facebook status update or instagram picture, customers have more ways than ever to publicly praise or criticize your business. Ron Kaufman, author of the New York Times bestseller "Uplifitng Service: The Proven Path to Delighting Your Customers, Colleagues, and Everyone Else You Meet", says customer reviews are more important than any marketing you could pay for because they're seen as more credible. He also says that businesses can take back the power and leverage social media for their own benefit. In his book, he mentioned that marketers should tell happy customers to go ahead and be social about their great experiences and encourage unhappy customers to come to you via social media so that you can make it right and improve your overall service.

 

There is an old saying that give people what they want. It's exactly what marketers need to do in social networks. Social Media is impending flood of customer unlikes.Many brands are now fouriously creating profiles in social media such as Facebook and Twitter in hope of building engaging communities with customers and giving people what the brands think they want. The main activity in this effort is to spur consumers to "like" and "follow" a brand's Facebook and Twitter streams. But it's not enough because sooner or later more and more people in social entworks will begin realizing that they hold control of their social streams and can simply unlike or unfollow brands that don't deliver values. So it's time for companies to rethink their approach in social media. Effective brand engagement is directly linked to the value customers take away from the branded social experience and how closely their expectations and desires are met. In order to connect with customers effectively, it's important to understand what customers want in social relationships.

 

Consumer reviews are incredibly important. Over 70% of consumers trust the reviews of others more than any from of advertising. It is clear that reviews are important, but what if your product or service receive negative reviews? I believe that many companies are afraid of receiving negative reviews. Consider of the power of social networks, negative reviews do can damage brands' image or even worse. However, how exactly people think about negative reviews. For me, I would like to view some negative comments as constructive criticism. So in my opinion, companies don't need to panic when you receive negative reviews because these reviews also can be very positive.Here are some positive effect of negative reviews.

1. Mitigate Skepticism

Consumers have been trained though experience, advertising, media, education, and many other external influences, to be skeptics of anything that appears to be "too good". While I certainly won't argue against the obvious value of receiving mainly positive reviews, the odd negative review can actually mitigate consumer skepticism by pointing out the flaws that exist in each product, service or anything they might be making a decision on. The end result is that consumers will be able to formulate what they feel about your product or service and will make their purchase decision with increased confidence.

 

2. Opportunity for continuous improvement

Negative reviews can function as a modern day comment box and provide you with valuable information and insight on how your company can be improved.

3.Create brand evangelists

Receiving a negative review can be a huge opportunity to convert those individuals into brand evangelists. Because of the inherent consumer skepticism that exist, if you are able to over-deliver on how you address a negative review, you have an opportunity to parlay that negativity into a huge emotional swing for the consumer and shift them toward becoming a brand evangelist.

 

4. Transparency

As a community manager, it is important to leave negative reviews visible for all to see. This demonstrates a willingness of your business or brand to be transparent with consumers, which will result in increased consumer trust, greater value given to positive reviews, and a perception of increased legitimacy of brand or corporate communications.

Branding with Pinterest

Have you ever heard about Pinterest? Well, as you see, Pinterest, pin what you interested in. Offically, Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows you to creat and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Pinterest's goal is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting" via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing. At the end of 2011, Pinterest already has over 11 million unique users and became one of the top 10 largest social network services in US. Since Pinterest is such popular, many marketers started use Pinterest as a new social media marketing channel to branding themselves.

However, branding with Pinterest is more complicated than with Facebook or Twitter. In Pinterest, marketers need to think about how to stand out your brand from thousands of photos, and how to attractive Pinterest's users to "pin" or "re-pin" your brand.

In the book "Pinterest for Business: How to Pin Your Company to The Top of The Hottest Social Media Network", it pointed out that when staring on Pinterest, marketers should keep in mind that a company is only as strong as its understanding of its own market and customer base. Marketers should think of their brands in different ways. For example, if your company were a car, what would it be on Pinterest? The book suggested maketers think of their boards as different car lots, and their pins as different cars. It will help marketers understand the reasons why their pins will exist, and why their followers should care about their brands. To be specific, is your car traditional, fun, or outlandish? Is your car rusty or affordable? Family-friendly or stylish? Just remember one thing-don't allow your brand to identify with a plain, boring car when you show off on Pinterest because with Pinterest, your images tell the story. Here is a successful case how promote your brand in Pinterest. Let's see how Volvo uses Pinterest to re-branding itself through a customer-driven social media contest.

Business is all about purpose, and so is social media like Pinterest. Understanding your brand and how it affects your potential clients is necessary to accessing all possibilities of Pinterest. For example, many hotels have the opportunity to sell themselves by pinning photos of their rooms, facilities, and surrounding areas. By pinning and organizing photos on your hotel board, you are able to reach out and grab the attention of an audience that may or may not know about your hotel. In addition, the social aspect of Pinterest enables other users to repin photos of your hotels, pin their own photos to other boards, and write reviews for others. Pinterest offers a best way for you to attract a wider audience.

Here are some best Pinterest Brand Pages. Let's see how they branding themselves in Pinterest.

Chobani Pinterest Page doesn't just feature its different yogurt types, but it also shares recipes of how users can use its products differently.

Oreck has taken its industrial cleaning product and made you forget that a vacuum cleaner brand is behind the pinboards you're looking at.

In particular, with Pinterest, it's important for marketers to understand and define their competition. In Pinterest, marketers have an opportunity to take direct advantage of their competition's pins, promotions, or contests, while directily reaching customers.

Social Media - A Permanent Magic For Your Business

Have you heard of "Groundswell"? Of course, it's not just a kind of ocean wave. Right now, it's a new word to describe the boom of social media. In the book "Groundswell", the authors Charlene and Josh told about how social media influence the business and how should the manufacturers should take advantages of social media to improve their own business.

In the book, the authors gave a new definition about groundswell which means a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need form each other, rather tan from traditional institutions. The social media is definitely a new things. It changes people's behaviors, the business strategies and the relationships between manufacturers and customers. Groundswell, the book brings out a point about the attitude that people toward to social media, especially the manufacturers. It said that the boom of social media is something that we can't stop and the only thing we can do is to understand it, live with it and thrive in it.  At this point, I absolutely agree with it. In my opinion, social media is a magic that can bring a lot of unexpected outcomes to your business.

Let's go back to the past first. How we did business without social market and what differences between our traditional marketing and the new social media marketing?

There is no doubt that manufactures do their best to build up their brands and try the multiple ways to make sure their brands' images look great in front of their customers. But now, there is a new way to manage your brand or your brand is been managed. It's called social media. In the "Groundswell", the authors pointed out a truth that customers are talking abut your brand in any social media without your control. And what customers said in social media will all influence your brand and your business. Your brand is what your customers said it is. Many manufacturers may worried about the power of social media since in the social media people's comments are worldwide and totally visable. And don't forget the most important things is that people are willing to listen to others than yourself. So what does this mean? It means people in socal media are building up a long-term relationship which based on trust.

Let's have a look how exactly social media is changing our business.

It's clear that social media is a boom right now, if marketers can know how to use it in a correct way, social media will give you a surprise. The picture list below is showed the benefits that social media can bring to your business.

Actually, many marketers recognized the power of social media, and move forward to the social media area to make sure they don't miss this big potential market.

But even through marketers want to use social media, how they can start with social media? Before marketers can get benefits from social media, the first and the most important thing is to understand the relationship between themselves and customers in social media. This picture gives us a clear explanation.

Then marketers can start using social media to grow their own business. There are a lot of social media tools, marketers should know what differences between them and what's the main feature of these social media. Then they can choose the best social media tool and use it in the most effective way.

Here is good example to show us how social media will help our business.

I talked a lot about social media and social media marketing. Well, what I want to say is that social media is a fantastic thing in our life and in our business. We should fully use it to improve our life and our business. After that, you will see the magic that created by social media.