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January 20, 2012 at 11:05 PM
My January edition of Wired magazine arrived last week, and the cover headline caught my attention—“#RIOT: How Social Media Fuels Social Unrest.”
The headline triggered the memory of a recent conversation I had with a corporate communications specialist. This specialist told me it was essential that corporations have a social-media manager to monitor and respond to what’s being said about them on social-media sites.
Recently, I heard a story about an entrepreneur who lacked an online presence. His business dropped significantly after one unhappy customer expressed dissatisfaction in a personal blog. In the absence of an online presence, this single customer’s dismay became the only social-media message about the company.
Past studies have shown that a satisfied customer will tell two to three people about a positive experience with your company. A dissatisfied customer, however, will share his or her feelings with eight to 10 people. And some will push that number to 20. Add in the effect of social media, and one dissatisfied customer could tell hundreds of thousands of people about a bad experience and effectively shut down your business.
That’s if you don’t have a strong social media presence by way of a website that can include testimonials. You could call this Social Media 101. The next step would be to have a page on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Participating in conversations on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter would constitute a graduate seminar in the subject.
