During a conversation one day with an old mentor of mine, he pointed at his ears then pointed at his mouth stating: " you were given two of these (ears) and only one of these (mouth), which means that you should listen twice as much as you speak. If you take the time to listen, your customer will tell you everything you need to know in order to maintain a great long-term relationship with them." Not only have I found this to be true but now we have the tools to reach this golden goal to with the masses.
Social Media Marketing for B2C businesses is exploding at the moment. The benefits of using online tools such as twitter, facebook and You Tube, are something that traditional marketing methods simply cannot give you. We try to emphasize this with our One WiFi hotspots by pushing the one-on-one connection to guests that our systems provide. Our hotspots paired with these SMM tools gives companies a tremendous opportunity to interact with their customers in an unprecedented way. Sadly what has been happening for many when using these SMM tools is that they continue to use the old school marketing mindset of simply speaking at consumers and forgetting about the interactivity now available. They forget that they now have a better opportunity to listen.
Your twitter followers are tweeting and re-tweeting about you. Your facebook fans are commenting about you and sending out links to your sites. Both friends and enemies are posting video blogs or video clips about their experience with your business. The most important thing to understand is that ANYONE with an internet connection can see what people are posting about your business. That has a tremendous effect on the public perception of your business. You now have an even greater ability to exercise some measure of control over that public perception and to do it in real time.
So if these people are your virtual friends why not treat them like you do your real-life friends. You listen, you discuss and you take note of their concerns. In a nutshell SMM is all about PR. The "R" stands for relations, the "P" does not stand for preach. So try to resist the urge to use SMM to simply preach your message or you may lose friends and an opportunity for brand loyalty. Instead use SMM to enhance your relationship with your friends. After all, who wants a friend who is always preaching at them and never listens?
